This past Mon. to Wed., I’ve been on the UBC campus for a conference on what it means to be a Missional Church in the 21^st century.  Learned quite a few things that I think directly impacts the Tap as a church, especially now that we have a building - What does it mean to be a church in our context of an increasingly diverse, urban, consumer-orientated Richmond? 

Anyways, on the first day, during lunch, I take off for a walk and discover a Labyrinth behind the Vancouver School of Theology.  Labyrinths are these ancient mazes of prayer and contemplation.  This Labyrinth was modeled after the one at Chartres Cathedral in France.  Unlike mazes, however, there is only 1 path in and 1 path out.   There is no choice of which path to take next.  You are to think of a question you want to ask God, go into the Labyrinth and to walk the path, pray, and listen for God to say something.  The answer is what you hear when you walk out.  So, I entered with a question (I won’t say what), but when I left the Labyrinth, I think the word I heard from God was “Wrong question, Albert.”

Hmmm… so next day, during lunch, I head back to the Labyrinth.  Only this time, it’s been taken over by the cast and crew of the TV series Smallville.  They were taping a short segment in one of their upcoming shows.  So, I spend the next hour hanging out on the set of Smallville!  I’m standing next to the cast, talking to some of the crew members, and just hanging out!  And no one asks me to leave! (I guess they thought I was Kirstin Kreuk’s older bro or something…ha!)   Anyways, for the entire hour, it took around 30 people to shoot two 10 second shots that will probably end up to be 3 seconds of footage after they edit it.    

So what do Labyrinth’s have to do with Smallville?  Is it a metaphor of how superhero spirituality has now taken over ancient practices of spirituality?  That maybe we have forgotten what it means to pray and to contemplate and to hear God’s voice because we have replaced it with the noise of our secular culture and TV?  Style over substance? 

But the more I think of it, the more I think we have to be careful not to set Labyrinths up against Smallville.  We have to be careful not to differentiate the sacred from the secular.  After all, isn’t God in everything?  Isn’t the God of Labyrinths, the same God of culture?  Don’t people who watch Smallville and those who walk Labyrinths ultimately try to answer the same questions?  I don’t watch Smallville, but from the little bit I’ve seen, the episodes I’ve watched deal with the big questions of life that I found myself asking in the Labyrinth - Questions that deal with relationships, faith, and identity (Who am I? Who do I love? What do I do with my gifts? How am I to live?).  Isn’t it interesting that the TV show being filmed happens to be Smallville (and you need to hear my Superman podcast) as I think Superman is the most Christ-like of the superheroes. 

What does it mean to be human?  What are we doing in life?  Are we fighting for truth and justice?  What is God saying to us today?  Whether walking in Labyrinths, or interacting with the God of culture, what is God saying to you today?

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