In the Zone

In the liner notes to his 2011 album Alone at the Vanguard, jazz pianist Fred Hersch described his playing on the night of the recording as being “in the zone.” Hersch’s live performance, captured in this album, was the culmination of a week’s worth of performances at New York City’s famous Village Vanguard jazz club.

You don’t have to be a jazz musician to understand what Hersch meant when he described being “in the zone.” He wasn’t bragging about his playing. He was acknowledging that, as a performer and improviser, something felt right during that live performance at the Village Vanguard.

Hersch’s playing on that album conveyed an intensity of musical genius. Any performer knows that the art of performing is more than just playing the notes with an acceptable degree of musicality. Being “in the zone” as a musician, means that the performer is acutely aware of her or his surroundings and capable of responding musically in the moment. This is particularly true of improvisation. The room’s energy feeds musical inspiration. It’s hard to improvise to an empty room.

On the album Alone at the Vanguard, one can hear the audience’s enthusiastic response to Hersch’s musicianship, both in the applause following numbers and in the middle of them as well. The playing is electric. There is no doubt to the listener that Hersch was definitely “in the zone” that evening.

Perhaps you have had moments in your life where you felt that you were “in the zone.” I suspect that we all know those moments when everything seems to be falling into place. The right inspiration happens. We have the necessary energy to accomplish the task before us. It’s hard to describe, but we all know what it feels like to be “in the zone.”

When reading the Acts of the Apostles, one has the strong feeling that thousands of people were constantly “in the zone.” The conditions were just right for the proclamation of the Gospel.

The book gets off to a dynamic start as Jesus ascends to heaven and the Holy Spirit’s Pentecostal fire lights upon the disciples. Thousands of people come to the faith and are saved. Many people are healed, some even being raised from the dead. And we are told more than once that Jesus’ earliest disciples proclaimed the Gospel with great boldness. Everyone, it seems, was “in the zone” all the time. There was something in the air in those days. People were fired up about Jesus, and the whole world was reaping the benefits of this.

And as if this were not enough, we are told in today’s reading that there was a profound unity among all these earliest believers. They were “of one heart and soul.” No one felt that their possessions were their exclusive property. People seemed to comprehend that all they had was held in trust for God. And as a result, no one was needy among them.

It is no wonder, then, that many have tried to write off the Acts of the Apostles as a piece of hyperbolic storytelling. How could everything have been so dynamic? Could fallible humans truly have been so selfless and altruistic? Did all those miracles actually happen? It is almost incomprehensible to imagine that so many people could have been “in the zone,” tapping into the same Pentecostal Spirit, feeding off the dynamism of post-resurrection power.

If we were to continue reading after today’s passage, we would know that there were indeed counter examples. Ananias and his wife Sapphira met their unhappy fate precisely because they did not adhere to the standards of communal living and self-sacrifice. But on the whole, the early pages of Acts seem to represent the epitome of Christian love, charity, and service, where all the characters are “in the zone.”

Two thousand years after the fact, we are tempted to put our heads in our hands and wonder what has gone wrong. Do you not feel even a bit guilty that things now seem so different? Is our own skepticism of the historical accuracy of events in the Acts of the Apostles proof itself that we do not expect the same things these days?

The other temptation is to assume that the palpable evidence of God’s work and action were only in full force in those earliest days of the Church. We may imagine that God’s work in the world is like a battery. In the immediate aftermath of Pentecost, the battery was fully charged and everyone was powered by its energy. But so many centuries afterward, we are left with a battery that has lost its charge, and we have no clue how to recharge it.

Where are the miraculous healings? Where are the thousands coming to the faith? Where are the bold testimonies of the resurrection? Where is the gumption that led the earliest believers to risk their lives for the sake of the Gospel?

This perceived disparity between the old days and the present stands out in vivid relief when we try to comprehend a group of people sharing everything in common and providing for the needy. How do we analyze this without twisting our own view of economics? Can we really believe that there was not a single needy person among them?

The only solution with which we are left, so it seems, is to write it all off. Either it did not happen that way, and the Acts of the Apostles is a huge example of storyteller’s license, or we employ all manner of hermeneutical gymnastics to justify why our own economic policies can never replicate those of the early Church.

And we are back to where we started. We are left puzzled by an age in which we seem to be desperately out of the zone. We might not want to be out of the zone, and yet we don’t know how to be in the zone.

But maybe the problem lies in our own perception. Could it be that our vision is myopic? Could we be looking for all the wrong signs? Are we looking for too many visible signs while ignoring the inward and invisible graces latent among us? Have we given up hope on our world when we should demand more of it? Have we let ourselves off the hook when we should hold ourselves to higher standards? A world that is constantly “in the zone” just might be too threatening to our complacency and require too much of us.

Because if what we believe is true—and I, for one, believe wholeheartedly that it is—then the central event of our faith has once and for all upended the world. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and ascension to the right hand of the Father has unleashed a power upon this earth that defies our expectations. It is a force so incomprehensible in its scope that it is no wonder that every fiber of the world’s being wants to resist it.

And maybe that’s why we seem so out of the zone. Maybe the world has gotten so used to a rut of normalcy that feels right only because it serves the self. Maybe we have forgotten how exhilarating it can be when Jesus upends our reality.

Our vision has followed suit. We have come to see the prevalence of the needy among us as a fact of life, impossible for us to change on this side of heaven. We are afraid of boldly proclaiming the resurrection because we will upset conventional sensibilities and others will think we are foolish. We are taught to stand against those who disagree with us because that is how we assert our independence and individuality. And while we’re at it, we might as well cling to all that we own, because, by golly, we earned it.

But if we can find a way to enter into the zone again, we might be able to believe what the Acts of the Apostles claims: that there is a buzzing undercurrent of dynamism let loose in the world with Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It is there, buzzing all around us, even if the buzz is too low or high to hear at times. And it is available to us.

This force gains strength in numbers, too. When we tap, however, briefly, into this zone of Good News, we will find ourselves being pulled along with it. And we, like those early disciples, will want to cry out what we have heard with boldness. Others will also want to join in. And little by little, we will find things changing.

Look around this room. Listen. Do you hear the buzz? It’s there. Haven’t you seen the Gospel energy lighting up all over this church and among this congregation? Don’t you see it from time to time making its way into the news? Even in a world that so often seems to be dead to the Gospel, it’s there, if you are attentive. If a numb complacency hasn’t dulled our senses, we will see it. God’s power has not left us. There is still boldness echoing the strains of the Good News to a world that wants to hear it. And that persistent buzz is proof that God is still calling us to be “in the zone.”

Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 2021