Muppet Theory?
The Rev. Stephen Siptroth
Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 22, 2023
Isaiah 9:1-4 • Psalm 27:1, 5-13 • 1 Corinthians 1:10-18 • Matthew 4:12-23
I wonder: have you heard of Muppet Theory?
Nearly 10 years ago, lawyer and writer Dahlia Lithwick wrote an article about Muppet Theory.* As the theory goes, there are two kinds of Muppets. There are Chaos Muppets and Order Muppets. If you know the Muppets, you may be familiar with some of them. Order Muppets you might know would be Bert, or Kermit the Frog, or Sam the Eagle. According to Lithwick, Order Muppets are “averse to surprises and may sport monstrously large eyebrows. They sometimes resent the responsibility of the world weighing on their felt shoulders, but they secretly revel in the knowledge that they keep the show running.”
Chaos Muppets, on the other hand – Muppets like Ernie, or Cookie Monster, or Animal – according to Lithwick they’re “emotional, volatile. They tend toward the blue and fuzzy. They make their way through life in a swirling maelstrom of food crumbs, small flaming objects, and the letter C.”
According to Muppet Theory, all people – each one of us here – can be classified as one or the other – each one of us here is either an Order Muppet or a Chaos Muppet.
Now, at this point you may be starting to make judgments – perhaps even about your preacher! Please don’t. According to the theory, neither type of Muppet is better than the other. The real beauty of Muppet Theory, the wisdom of this theory, as Lithwick explains, is that every partnership, every marriage, every relationship, every organization, every board or committee, and dare I say every church needs a balance of Chaos Muppets and Order Muppets to be healthy and to carry on effectively. Chaos and Order go hand in hand; they need one another.
And I think there is wisdom in the theory. In fact, I think Jesus’s being and the whole of his mission and ministry were made up of Chaos and Order – maybe we might say “Disruption” and “Order.” Jesus was disruptive in how he encountered systems already in place, disruptive in how he called the disciples, and disruptive in his mission and ministry that would upend and turn things upside down – from social conventions, to tables in the temple courtyard. But Jesus’ purpose also had a sense of order – he was acting for the sake of calling people and systems into an order that better reflected God’s will for their lives.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus begins with disruption. Fishing was hard work, and for many it was the work of who we might call the “middle poor.” Fishing was integral to the health of the empire. Fish was food; fish brought income and profits. But the people who did the hard work of fishing saw none of that, even as they worked to support the empire. They really survived right on the edge as they maintained their nets, and lines, and boats to keep going out, day after day. The empire had no interest in changing any of this. And, because they and their families depended on the system for their livelihood, Peter and Andrew, James and John probably couldn’t question, or push back, or make any changes themselves. It was too big for any of that. Indeed, they had no leverage to do anything other than to go out and fish again and again, day after day.
Jesus meets Peter and Andrew, James and John in this reality and confronts and disrupts their lives and maybe even the lives of those around them. And, in a very quiet way and very small way, I think, Jesus even disrupts the empire’s system by offering another way to these four. Leave their investments; leave their income source; leave their place in the empire’s economic system. Repent. Repent of their own wrongdoings, and perhaps even their own complicity in the empire’s system – surely it changed them over time. And turn. Turn and follow a rabbi who will show you another way.
This is incredibly disruptive! Repent? Leave everything? And follow?
But the disruption was integral to the reformation, the ordering and reordering of their hearts, and minds, and imaginations, and lives to better live into the Kingdom of God that was already at hand – the Reign of God that was among them, marked by healing, and restoration, and love.
Repent, turn, and follow are the first movements of a reorientation of the disciples’ perceptions that they might take their first steps toward living in the knowledge of the Kingdom of God come near:
The first steps into perceiving better God’s Kingdom marked by abundance, love, mercy, and generosity.
The first steps into God’s Reign that invites them to follow by sowing seeds of healing in the world.
The first steps into a Beloved Community that promises to fulfill their deepest hopes and most intimate longings for their lives and for the lives of all of God’s People.
Peter and Andrew, James and John, and eventually others, would go on to follow and participate in something new: to follow in the way of Jesus, to proclaim Good News, and to bring healing to God’s people. They are being disrupted, yes; and they are being reordered and reoriented by the One who came to upend and turn everything upside down, but only so it could be made right- side up. Soon they will learn what the meek will inherit. Soon they will be reminded whose Kingdom it is. Soon they will hear who will receive their mercy. Disruption, yes, but for the sake of a different order.
In our own lives of discipleship, Jesus invites disruption and reordering, reorientation. Jesus invites each of us to repent, to turn, and to follow him into a reimagining of our lives rooted in love, and a reordering of our world rooted in justice. God invites each of us – Chaos Muppets and Order Muppets alike – into discipleship. Indeed, God invites disciples who can bring holy disruption into the neighborhood to confront systems of oppression, systems of violence, dehumanizing systems; God invites people who can confront systems in the church and challenge the way we’re doing things; people who can dream big and imagine creatively and see from the mountaintop the beautiful, vivid colors of God’s promised future and interpret that for us now. And God invites Order Muppets into discipleship – people who can move the creativity into frameworks that are usable and sustainable for the church and for God’s people. God invites all of you and God’s people need each of you.
The invitation to discipleship is extended to each of us, again and again, and, over the course of our lives, I think we are able to accept it, again and again: to repent, to turn, and to follow the One who disrupted for the sake of restoring and reordering. May we accept God’s invitation to follow each day, more and more, as we live, more and more, as a people of love, and healing, and mercy, and justice for the sake of all of God’s people and God’s planet.
* https://slate.com/human-interest/2012/06/chaos-theory.html A special thanks goes to Rev. Dr. Stephen Hassett for exposing me to Lithwick’s article at the 2020 St. Stephen’s (Orinda) Vestry retreat.