“Just Imagine . . .”

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Tellico Village Community Church

August 12, 2001

Stephen Nash

When I was just a boy, I would shoot hoops in my back yard and imagine that someday, someday I would be discovered. The basketball coach would see me shooting alone in the gym of my college yet to be, come over, and hand me a uniform and a scholarship and say, “You’re starting next week against Duke.” Never mind that I had not played high school basketball; I didn’t even go out for the team. I was 5’10” at the time probably, I couldn’t dribble very well. I could shoot okay, if no one was guarding me. I could not have made my high school team if my life depended on it. I knew that no college coach would ever look twice at me, but that made it no less enjoyable to imagine.

Imagination. Artists have it. Poets, painters, architects, social visionaries, every now and then a preacher, would be basketball stars. . . . Imagination is a sign of life. One of the saddest things that we can say about any human being is, “he has no imagination.” The Bible is an important book to people of faith, not because it offers easy answers to all of the dilemmas of life or presents step by step solutions to the problems which confront us. The Bible is important because it stirs the imagination. It reminds us that a lively imagination is necessary for lively faith. Don’t misunderstand me. Faith is about what we experience, it is about what we understand, it is about what we think, it is about what we know. But I have to wonder if one of the reasons that faith comes hard for many individuals is that as we grow older we spend less time in our imagination.

People are bringing children to Jesus so that he can bless them. Can you see that scene in your mind’s eye? Can you visualize it in your imagination? The disciples are trying to prevent it: “Leave! Leave! We’re trying to have a kingdom here.” Jesus encourages, welcomes, invites. He says, “let the children come to me. Don’t hinder them. For to these, to these belong the kingdom of God. I tell you unless you become like a child you can’t enter the reign of God.”

Now what does Jesus mean by that? I’ve heard preachers tell me all kinds of things. I’ve heard them say you’ve got to trust like a child can trust. You’ve got to have faith like a child has faith. You’ve got to even be aware of your absolute dependence upon another, just as a vulnerable and weak child feels dependent upon his or her parent. Is that what Jesus meant? Perhaps. Perhaps. But sometimes I also wonder if he did not mean that we might have to engage our imagination if we are going to be a part of the kingdom of God, or even to discern it. Having faith means at least in part having the ability to wonder what it would be like to live in the reign of God—what in contemporary terms I like to refer to as God’s commonwealth of love.

One of the things that we know about Jesus of Nazareth, and really there is nothing more certain than this about him, is that Jesus came to teach, to proclaim the meaning of and the inbreaking of the reign of God. His method of teaching requires imagination. He taught in riddles, in parables, in short little stories, and in metaphors. He did not say, Jesus never said, “Now John, right this down. I’m gonna say this just once. Here are the five easy steps to salvation.” He never said it. What he said was, “Do you want to be a part of the movement of God in the world? Here’s what it is like. It’s like a mustard seed. A little tiny seed. It’s like a man who went out to sow. It’s like a woman who lost a coin. It’s like a man who had two sons. It’s like a person who owned a vineyard. It’s like a person who found a treasure in the field.

In a Bible study that I was teaching several years ago a man asked, “Why didn’t Jesus ever tell us what this kingdom of God thing is all about.” I answered, “He did. That’s virtually all that he talked about.” The man answered, “Oh, I don’t mean all those parables and stories we have to figure out. Why didn’t he just come out and say it?” Did the man lack intelligence? Well, probably not. I think he was a reasonably intelligent man—maybe a very intelligent man. What was difficult for him was imagination.

There is a sense in which the church is an act of imagination. If you look around you at the church gathered, and beyond, you can, if you will, catch a glimpse of what the reign of God might look like. All people, all people invited, all people welcomed. The guilty and the shamed able to accept their absolute forgiveness. The frightened reassured. Adversaries reconciled. The lion and the lamb laying together. All gathered to sing, and to pray, and to seek the presence of God. All gathered at one table to remember our common heritage and to celebrate our common future. All committed to infiltrate society as a divine beachhead of compassion and justice. Granted, we don’t always look like what God intends for the reign of God. But if you look around and use your imagination, can you catch just a glimpse of what God has in mind?

Please don’t leave your imagination at the door when you come to worship. Please don’t leave your imagination in the other room when you sit down to study scripture. Faith absolutely demands imagination.

The Bible invites us to use our imagination to see things differently, to envision a world that is very different from the world we normally encounter. The world in which we normally believe. Earlier in the service was read for us the story of Jeremiah, a few words from that prophet. They are words I believe invite us not so much to understand as they are words which call from us a response of the imagination. Let me tell what we know about Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was born in the seventh century before Jesus was born. He began his ministry around the end of that century. It was a time of conflict in the known world. There were three powers vying for ultimate control. Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. Imagine that, conflict in the Middle East. Judah and Jerusalem were caught right in the middle of this struggle. Ultimately, Judah and Jerusalem were captured and destroyed by the army of Babylon. Jeremiah saw it coming and he saw it happen. Prophets live in what we usually call the real world. The world of political schemes and terrorism and thirst for power and violence and oppression and enslavement. It is into the real world of social and political and religious issues that the prophet word/the gospel word comes. It is in that world, in that real world that the prophets called for a different kind of wisdom than conventional wisdom, a different kind of social vision than the traditional, and a different kind of faith and religion, than that which merely legitimated the power that be and their injustices and oppressions. The notion that faith is just about otherworldly things could not be farther from the truth.

Any faith that does not equip us to live in the world is not biblical faith. What we heard this morning was Jeremiah’s account of how he came to be a prophet, a person who spoke for God in the midst of this confusing and sometimes very frightening world. The memory, I believe, challenges the way we see the world and invites us to use our imagination to see that things aren’t always the way that we believe them to be.

You may believe that you are unimportant, that you are unnoticed in the cosmic scheme of things. My kids used to like to use that expression. “Dad, in the cosmic scheme of things, what does it matter?” I would often respond, “It matters in Dad’s scheme of things!” But in the cosmic perspective, you may feel that you are insignificant. Neither your face nor mine has ever graced the cover of People magazine. Your name has never appeared on the front page of the New York Times. When I think of all the people living now on the face of this planet, much less all of the people who ever lived or who ever will live, it is easy to think, “What difference do I make? I am one among millions and millions on this little planet. Who knows, I may just be one member of a thousand, a million self-aware species scattered throughout the vast universe. Does my life count for anything? It is easy to believe, easy to believe that we move through life, birth through death, unknown and insignificant.

And God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Imagine for a moment that you are known. Imagine for a moment that there is one above all, beyond all, a part of all, the ground of all who knows each of us, all of us better than we know ourselves. God came to Jeremiah and said, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born I consecrated you.” Is that just a figure of speech? Jeremiah’s way of trying to express his sense that this prophetic call was an inevitable calling for him? Or is it possible that we are all known by God from before our birth. All of our knowing is limited, partial, incomplete. Is there a reality whose knowing is not constrained by the things that usually limit us; space and time? “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” Jesus asked his disciples. Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from your father’s awareness, and even the hairs of your head are counted.

In our rational world, we can intellectualize away the reality of the divine presence and involvement in our lives as so much pious sentimentalism. Imagine a family of mice who lived all their lives in a large piano. To them in their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was Someone who made the music—though invisible to them—above yet close to them. They loved to think of the Great Player who they could not see.

Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated. They must revise all their old beliefs; none but the most naïve could any longer believe in the Unseen Player.

Later another explorer carried the message further. Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanistic, impersonal, mathematical world. The Unseen Player came to be thought of as myth . . . but the pianist continued to play. What the mice knew, they knew well and accurately, but they lacked . . . imagination.

We may believe that our relationship with God, our awareness of God’s presence, our awareness that there is something above and beyond and within is, something divine, begins with us. There is a great deal of conversation in the church these days about how one can get close to God. You’ve heard them. If you’ll just read your Bible. If you’ll just pray. If you’ll just pray more often. If you’ll just pray with more fervor. If you’ll just pray with the right attitude. If you’ll just claim this list of doctrines. If you’ll just assent to this list of beliefs or embrace this creed, or engage in this activity. If you’ll just be a part of this congregation, if you’ll participate . . . and you see the list goes on and on.

Now don’t misunderstand, I am in favor of you reading the Bible, and I hope you pray, I hope that you know what you believe and I’m glad that you’re a part of this worshipping community of faith. All of those things, all of those things are important because they sharpen our awareness of God’s presence. But God’s presence does not depend on our awareness.

We do not get to God by what we do. Can you imagine being known by God long before you know God? Can you believe that God loves you, cares for you, gives God’s self to you long before you can love? I remember very well the first time I saw the image on the ultrasound screen. It’s just a little blob. Lots of specks and unidentifiable shapes and curves and bumps. When my children were born, ultrasounds were not done routinely on pregnant women. But Grandpa had the privilege of taking my daughter Beth to her obstetrician for her ultrasound. The technician pointed to that screen and said to her “That’s your child.” And before she knew me, I loved Allyson. Just as had loved Beth and John Michael before they were born. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I consecrated you.” God. God who sees all things from the viewpoint of eternity. God who knows and loves us and loves and cares for us like a parent loves and cares for a child.

In all honesty, I find that difficult to understand. And so, if you ever have a hard time believing that you are known and that you are loved, let me make a suggestion. Just imagine . . .