Imagine That

Revelation 2:8-11
Isaiah 40:26-28
Luke 15: 4-10

It could easily be argued that the most valuable characteristic to have as a Christian is an active imagination. I know that it didn’t make it onto Paul’s top three list, faith, hope and love, but that’s okay, I suppose this is just one more thing for me to put on my list of things to talk to Paul about. To be sure, I don’t think that it is possible to live into faith, hope or love without a working imagination. Not, at least, as they are described in scripture. Not in the ways that we are to have faith, hope and love as Christians. God is always trying to get his followers to do the impossible, or at least the improbable, by having faith in the face of destruction (like in the midst of persecution), or hoping when there is no hope (like by a graveside), or loving the unlovable, (like your enemy). I’m just not sure that those things are possible if our imaginations are not employed. I don’t know how to have faith if I can’t imagine something other than what I see. I don’t know how to hope if I don’t know how to imagine in a world other than the one that ends in the grave. I don’t know how to love my enemies if I can’t imagine them being somebody else, somebody who is not just hated by me but loved by God. I simply don’t know how to live into this faith without an overactive imagination.
The church has known this since the beginning. Which is where all of these churchy type things come from. The church quickly figured out that if we were going to survive in this world as followers of Christ, we were going to have to sharpen our imaginations. Thus, these churchy things that seem archaic, irrelevant, non-evolving and inaccessible were born. They are actually tools the church uses to help our imations. We build buildings that draw you out of yourself, to help you imagine actually being somewhere God might be. We hang paraments to point to another world, one decorated by the Holy. We wear vestments to help imagine something more than MTV or Target. We have a different calendar to imagine living into someone else’s time, God’s time. The trick, of coarse, to all of these things is that they are useless, they are utterly irrelevant, they are perfectly archaic and inaccessible and nonsense…unless you use your imagination.
St. John’s Revelation is the same way. Talk about archaic, irrelevant and inaccessible. The entire book is filled with imagery and claims that are wild, caked with heavy-laden symbols that come across as nonsense. When you open the pages on which John’s Revelation is recorded, you stand on the cusp of a whole new world, like Lucy in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. As you come to this odd book, standing on the brink of this new world, you are given an option: You can either stand outside of the world and gawk at the silliness of it all, or you can employ your imagination and participate in a whole new world be created all around you.
It is impossible to read this book with any sort of integrity without using your imagination. Which is really the point. John is teaching the church how to survive, how to imagine another world, another reality. As Shay told us last week, John is sitting in prison on the Island of Patmos for being a Christian when he writes this letter to seven churches on the mainland. Both John and the churches are under persecution from the world around them, if they preach, they can get thrown in prison, and if their friends and families find out that they are Christians, they cut them off, from their homes, from their business, from even being able to buy and sell goods. So the church is sitting in the middle of a world that is unbearable to live in as a Christian and impossible to be a good citizen and a good disciple. Into that context, when the church is at it’s wits ends and seems to be stuck in a no way out situation, St. John writes this text and with it whispers to the Church, “imagine.”
“To the church at Smyrna, God says imagine a new world is coming. Everything you see is hopeless, is lifeless, is frightening, but imagine that God has actually seen your affliction and your poverty and intends to make it right. Imagine that God says, ‘I know that you are poor in things, but imagine the rich blessings that you have in your fellowship with God and one another. I know that you are suffering, that some of you are going to prison because of your faith, some of you are being tested, some of you are even about to be martyred, but imagine the crown of life that is yours in Christ Jesus.” The letter to the church as Smyna is nothing more than a call for the believers there to employ their imaginations in order to live faithfully to the end. In light of John’s Revelation and the call of God to the churches, it is entirely possible that our ability to live faithfully in this world depends our our ability to faithfully imagine God’s kingdom in the world to come.
Which sounds a lot like Jesus, now that I think about it. Jesus, after all, was always trying to get his disciples to imagine something bigger than what they already knew, to imagine living into a world other than the one that they were already living in. Like when Jesus said that In his, Message, Eugene Peterson always has Jesus begin his parables with the word, “imagine.” There Jesus stands, telling his disciples, “look, I know the world you see around you functions out of hate and anger and retribution, but imagine for a second that there is another world, one that functions out of faith, hope and love. Imagine, for instance, that instead of God writing you off because you strayed away, that God is actually searching, turning every corner of creation upside down looking for you. And imagine that when one lost soul is found, that all of heaven explodes with celebration. Angels start singing; cherubs start playing their harps. God weeps. Imagine that, and your world changes. Imagine a God like that, and you can’t help but enter into a whole new reality; a reality known in Revelation as the New Jerusalem, the new promised-land.
Can you imagine? When your life has taken a turn for the worse, when loved ones get sick or die, when war and famine seem all to imminent, when your job overlooks you or working is less than heaven on earth, when life is just too much and it seems like being faithful and being alive in this world is all too much, imagine that God actually knows your sufferings and intends on making them right. Can you imagine what that is going to be like?
Because, rumor has it, that in the end, Christ is coming again to wipe the tears away from every eye, to have a feast where all are fed and to bring peace to all the earth. What’s more, that reality is already in motion, it’s already in place. And God is right now standing in this new world of faith, hope and love and beckoning even us to come and participate. God is planning on using you and me to be the ambassadors of this new world, to embody this new reality where faith, hope and love are the guiding laws of the land, where the hungry are fed, where the naked are clothed, where the captives are set free. With the help of God, we are able to start righting wrongs and creating a whole new world right here, right now.
God wants to use us to make this new world a reality. You and me! Imagine that!