Sermons

“Can You Imagine?”

Luke 6:17-26; Ephesians 3:14-21 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – February 17, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might open our hearts and minds to your creative power and join in the life-giving work you are doing all around our world.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

We don’t all have the same relationship to imagination. Some of us love to imagine, to leave behind the strictures of reality and envision all sorts of wild and beautiful scenarios, each more amazing than the last.  For these folks, imagination can be a form of life-giving escapism, a stress-release valve to help us remember that we don’t have to be content with our current situation.

Others prefer planning over imagining, assuming it to be a waste of time thinking through things that aren’t possible.  These are the folks whose contemplations include measurements and accountings of available resources.  They may think of themselves as “doers not thinkers,” yet their planning is often just as creative.

And then there are the times when any of us can devolve from imagining to catastrophizing; instead of using our imaginations for holy, fruitful purposes, we get caught in the trap of imagining every horrible way things could go wrong.  We let the troubles of our lives and the problems of the world overwhelm us, imagining ourselves powerless to do anything about them.

What I appreciate about this year’s Week of Compassion theme is that it incorporates all of these approaches to imagination. Even that last example, the one that isn’t all that helpful, was recognized at the beginning of the video we just watched.  “All across creation,” the youthful narrator reads, “the challenges are more than you can imagine. … It can feel as if we’re too small to make a difference.”  But the other, more powerful forms of imagination are the real point, of course, both the wild, creative visioning and the reality-based careful planning.  Indeed, in many of these situations, those two approaches often meld.  For people whose lives have been ripped apart by hurricanes or 1000-year floods or fires or mudslides, even reasonable plans for how to re-build can seem like so much pie-in-the-sky.

Imagination is a key tool for the ministry of Week of Compassion, in part because it’s required to motivate people like us, whose lives haven’t been affected by disaster (yet!), to connect with those who have. There is a story on the insert in your bulletin about a Puerto Rican seamstress named Maria Trinidad whose house was destroyed in Hurricane Maria.  Let’s watch now and hear a little bit more about her experience.

. What I love about the way they’ve designed these videos is how those translucent lines showing what can be imagined – what seems almost impossible to Maria herself, that her house could be restored – are really just the lines any builder would be following in putting her home back together.  The dreamers and the planners are meeting in the middle to make a miracle! That is what we help make possible with our gifts to Week of Compassion.

Last week in Discipleship Class, we spent a lot of time talking about various Christian spiritual disciplines.  But one we didn’t discuss is imagination.  Does it seem funny to put imagination and discipline in the same sentence?  Perhaps. But the truth is that imagination is one of the gifts God has given us to carry out the work of Christ.  And it becomes a spiritual discipline because in order to do so, we must make sure it’s God’s imagination we’re following in our dreams and plans.  How do we do that?  By getting to know Jesus, spending time in the Gospels, giving time to contemplating how Jesus’ compassion for the poor, the troubled, the sick, and the excluded and reviled can be manifested in our own lives.  The compassion is clear and challenging.

Indeed, in the passage we heard today from Luke, we discover that Jesus’ imagination has a bit of an edge to it.  We’re all quite happy to hear about the special blessings Jesus wants to hand out to those in need.  But when he starts warning about woe, things get a little tense.  Surely he’s not saying we can’t laugh?  If God loves us, doesn’t that mean God should be pleased if we’re rich and full and happy?  Here, as most places in life, context matters.  It’s one thing to be rich and full and happy.  It’s another thing to be rich and full and happy, in the face of neighbors who have lost everything.  When a hurricane has come and destroyed the island, happiness is not a holy response.

Did you know there’s a thing in our world called “disaster capitalism”?  Political theorist and author Naomi Klein has done the most research on this phenomenon, which she’s found in situations all over the world, from Chile to China to the Soviet Union to the United States.  In her book, “The Shock Doctrine,” she lays out the patterns of “rapid-fire corporate re-engineering of societies still reeling”[1]from the shock caused by disasters.  Land where poor people farmed is bought up by luxury resort developers.  Public schools and hospitals are never re-opened.  Oil reserves in countries ravaged by war are freely handed over to corporations, rather than benefitting the people.  When the response to devastation is to grab more and more for those who already had more than they needed, the idea of Jesus crying out “Woe to you!” begins to make more sense.  Sometimes our imagination is aided by cold, hard research into the ugly realities of our modern world.

By contrast, Week of Compassion invites us into the world of holy imagination by offering us the chance to help people re-build with dignity and hope.  I want to show you one more story from Puerto Rico, this time about Iglesia Cristiana La Grama in Ciales, where Milly Cortez is the pastor.  Again, we will see the devastation, but we’ll also hear about everything Pastora Milly’s church was able to do in spite of it.  And we’ll see those translucent lines of imagination showing us what our gifts will make possible.

Their roof was blown off, but they ended up serving 1500 people with food and clothing and hugs and more.  There was a line in there that reminded me of us.  Did you hear when she said, “Even when we had nothing, we served with our hearts”?  That’s what can happen when we tap into the imagination of God.  When we live out the compassion of Jesus, offering whatever we have, even if it’s just our hearts, the poor are blessed, the hungry are filled, the reviled and excluded are embraced and made whole again.  We see this happen in our own congregation.  And through our gifts to Week of Compassion, we can help make it happen all around the world.  God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.  Alleluia and Amen!

[1]http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine