Improvising Together: Christian Solidarity and Hospitality as Jazz Performance

The metaphor of a jazz combo can be a productive way to understand how innovation and preservation are held together in the church, (1) for jazz performance illustrates a kind of double-truth nestled deep in the way we dwell together communally. It involves the integrative sway of continuity and structure as well as the creative vitality of flexible interplay between differences. As jazz, religious traditions endure only because distinct, identifiable patterns of practice and communication have become stabilized and preserved in an ongoing way of life, a sociocultural identity. Yet, also as jazz, and as postcolonial theorists such as Edward Said have stressed, there is no tradition or culture whose identity is not at the same time constituted by multiplicity and difference, and, therefore, perpetually open to variation and discontinuity. (2) With this double-truth in mind, thinking in terms of jazz offers possibilities for envisioning Christian community as a creative and redemptive tension between (1) the integrative power of "identity" and (2) the innovative power of "difference." My overall thesis is that Christian community is a praxis of interactive "solidarity" opened outward in "hospitality" toward the stranger, the different, the other, who is in fact my neighbor and loved by God. Hospitality in this way qualifies the solidarity of integration and continuity, extending it in ever more differentiated and novel shapes. Here, the parallels with jazz are striking. As jazz performance depends upon a musical heritage, the presence of other musicians, and a song structure, yet opens up to new and different interpretations in the play between musicians, so, too, Christian community trades upon a heritage, the presence of other Christians, and the good news of God's redemptive work; yet, it opens outward toward differences in anticipating the innovative and transformative continuation of this work. Thus, the church is a relational performance that mimics jazz. It becomes distinct not by something it possesses but by what it does: It participates in God's love as a gracious welcoming of the stranger. Far from merely assimilating differences and enforcing conformity, this welcoming means improvising together, taking risks, and playing in new keys. This suggests the possibility of a deeply ecumenical dialogue between the various churches that compose the Christian ecclesia, the assembly of those "called out" into God's redemptive work. Of course, like the jazz combo, the church is fallible and can become selfenclosed and exclusivist, resistant to improvisation and to God's hospitality. But, as a metaphor for the creative dynamic of human interrelationship, jazz offers some fruitful possibilities for eschewing this peril. (3) So after a brief exploration of the character of jazz (part I), I shall discuss how communities are composed in jazz-like fashion, embodying a paradoxical tension between preservation and innovation, which generates solidarity at the same time that it is exposed to the possibility of hospitality (part II). Subsequently, I shall unpack how hospitality is fundamental to biblical witness, made palpable in God's redemptive work (part III). Given this, I conclude that the church is structured ideally as a kind of jazz performance, what I would call a "traditioned form of improvisation open to the different and new." Indeed, such improvisation means multiple voices joined creatively together in an ongoing conversation about what is shared, that is, the gospel message of God's saving nearness. I. The Dynamic and Relational Character of Jazz Performance As a uniquely American art form derived from the blending of African and European musical heritages, jazz has been defined in many ways. (4) Almost all, however, agree that improvisation is a central ingredient in jazz performance. The element of improvisation, which blurs the line between composition and performance, makes jazz almost a paradigm case of musical spontaneity, innovation, and novelty. …