Imagine This!

Sermon, November 27, 2011

Advent 1

Rev. Dr. Craig S. Strobel

Luke 1:68-79
Luke 3:1-6

Luke 1:68-79

 67John’s father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:

     68"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,

        because he has come and has redeemed his people.

     69He has raised up a horn of salvation for us

        in the house of his servant David

     70(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),

     71salvation from our enemies

        and from the hand of all who hate us--

     72to show mercy to our fathers

        and to remember his holy covenant,

     73the oath he swore to our father Abraham:

     74to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,

        and to enable us to serve him without fear

     75in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

     76And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;

        for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,

     77to give his people the knowledge of salvation

        through the forgiveness of their sins,

     78because of the tender mercy of our God,

        by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven

     79to shine on those living in darkness

        and in the shadow of death,

    to guide our feet into the path of peace."

 80And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel.

Luke 3

 1In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar--when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene--  2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert.  3He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  4As is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:

    "A voice of one calling in the desert,

    'Prepare the way for the Lord,

        make straight paths for him.

     5Every valley shall be filled in,

        every mountain and hill made low.

    The crooked roads shall become straight,

        the rough ways smooth.

     6And all mankind will see God's salvation.' "

I       I love watching science fiction shows. Not the horror kind, but the kind that depict possible futures, exploring space, time travel and the like. Science fiction functions as a vehicle for people to think about alternative ways of living or ways to address current social problems. Some of my favorites have been TV series such as Star Trek (all the various series), Star Wars, Firefly, The Time Tunnel, Lost in Space, Aeon Flux, Solaris, among others.

What especially appeals to me is how these shows imagine and then depict a different world from that which I experience everyday. Occasionally the things imagined come true in “real” life. Think of the communicators from Star Trek. They look and act just like today’s cell phones. I’m still waiting for the convenience of transporters to be able to teleport to work, rather than just telecommute via computers.

II     The ancient prophets had a similar imagination.

A    Lions laying down with lambs, leopards eating grass with sheep, and today’s magnificent vision of great and powerful mountains being brought to the same level as the valleys, and the crooked places being made straight.

B     Where would we be with out imagination? Some quotes:

1     “Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.” Jamie Paolinetti

2     “Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you everywhere.” Albert Einstein.

3     “A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

C    This is the crux of the matter – what we apply our minds to and especially the resources of our imaginations, that is what we will create and become.

1     Imagination creates a world. 

2     Process of creativity externalizes what exists only as an image or an idea.

3     Jesse Jackson puts it this way: “If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

III   John the Baptist in this morning’s scripture reading is giving voice to God’s imagination for human existence. What the prophets conceived in their imaginations, John the Baptist believed, and prepared the world to be achieved in Jesus Christ. But what he believed in was a very different world. John came to prepare the world for the coming of a new world – a world conceived in the imagination of God.  Listen to what John’s father Zechariah prophesied about him:

His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:

     "Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,

        because he has come and has redeemed his people.

     He has raised up a horn of salvation for us

        in the house of his servant David

     (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),

     salvation from our enemies

        and from the hand of all who hate us--

     to show mercy to our fathers

        and to remember his holy covenant,

     the oath he swore to our father Abraham:

     to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,

        and to enable us to serve him without fear

     in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

     And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;

        for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,

     to give his people the knowledge of salvation

        through the forgiveness of their sins,

     because of the tender mercy of our God,

        by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven

     to shine on those living in darkness

        and in the shadow of death,

    to guide our feet into the path of peace."

A    Salvation from our enemies and from all who hate us

1     Jesus achieved this by teaching us the way to transform our enemies into our brothers. This is what loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us is all about.

B     Enable us to serve God without fear and in holiness and righteousness

1     John imagined a world in which righteous living was possible. Before that time, achieving a righteous life was not really considered to be possible – that is why it was necessary to have the whole sacrificial system – to ameliorate the effects of sinful living.

2     Jesus taught a way of life that was the way of righteousness. It was based upon a new way of living together as people, a way that Rowan Williams calls “communion”: “a relation of profound and costly involvement with each other and receiving from each other.” (The Truce of God, p. 27).

C    To guide our feet into the path of peace.

1     How far we have gone off this path!

IV   This imagination of God has persisted in the Church over the centuries. I would like to tell you about an amazing bit of inspired and imaginative thinking and action taken by the church around the time of the first Millennium after Christ. It was called the Truce of God, or the Treuga Dei.

A    The Truce of God arose amid the anarchy of feudalism as a remedy for the powerlessness of lay authorities to enforce respect for the public peace. There was then an epidemic of private wars, which made Europe a battlefield bristling with fortified castles and overrun by armed bands who respected nothing, not even sanctuaries, clergy, or consecrated days. It forbade fighting or hostility from Thursday through Sunday, and later included certain seasons of the Church year, such as between Advent and the octave of Epiphany, from the beginning of Lent through the octave of Easter, and from the Feast of Rogations through Pentecost.

B     Through this the church attempted to limit the scourge of war and violence through non-violent means. The punishment for violation was excommunication.

C    It met with very limited success, but its chief strength was in articulating a different way to be. It was an attempt to conceive the world God had conceived, to believe that it was possible, and to take the steps to achieve it. “If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

D    The imagination of God created this world, and the imagination of God envisioned how it is that people should live. Today, our world is very far from that vision. But this is also a time of year in which that vision creeps back into human consciousness. But it requires more than lip service to a vision, a nod of the head to an idea. It requires a new way of being, a new way of thinking, a new way of acting and relating. That is what repentance is all about. John the Baptist says start there. Start with a new way of thinking, and put your mind to living in the new world that God has imagined for us.

1     J. G. Gallimore: Image creates desire. You will want what you imagine.

2     Antoine de Saint Exupery : If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

E     So this season of celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace, use your imagination. Yearn for that vast and endless sea. Think about what that might mean for our world. And then start living it.