LIFE BEING SHAPED BY IMAGINATION…
The season of Epiphany is the season of awakening and imagination.
Awakening… because in 2022 some amazing scientific discovers were revealed:• An under-ice Antarctic river 485 kms long• A 4 billion-year-old chunk of Earth's crust in Western Australia• City of towering hydrothermal vents deep beneath the ocean near Mexico
• Oldest evidence of plate tectonics unearthed in South Africa
And so we have… a visible world and a cosmic world full of wonder and awe!
“We need a spirituality that emerges out of a reality deeper than ourselves,” writes geologian Thomas Berry,
“even deeper than life, a spirituality that is as deep as the earth process itself, a spirituality born out of the solar system and even out of the heavens beyond the solar system.” (Berry 2009:74)
Imagination… because in 2023 the scripture readings are being coordinated
by the anonymous storyteller we call Matthew
as he continues to shape his ‘book of origins of Jesus the chosen one’.
And so we have…
• The non-historical story about an infuriated Herod and the ‘slaughter of the innocents’
which acts as a kind of bridge between the nativity stories of Jesus
and the birth and early childhood of Moses,
• A visit by legendary Magi, or astrologers, or magicians… Tradition is not sure.
According to European romanticised imagination their given names were:
Gaspar,
Melchior, and
Balthasar… along with their ‘royal’ gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Although I am sure you have also been told the counter-story about ‘Three Wise Women…’
They would have asked directions
Arrived on time
Helped deliver the baby
Brought a casserole
Cleaned the stable
And there would be peace on Earth!
• The calling of the two brothers: Simon Peter and Andrew and the beginnings of a movement,
coupled with Matthew’s extended use of the metaphor of ‘fishing’
• Jesus leading a group of supporters to the western shore of the Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret)
where he begins to teach and stretch their imaginations
in what we now call The Beatitudes.
• The short, pithy, memorable sayings concerning the everyday images of ‘salt’ and ‘light’.
And the application of some rules concerning anger and behaviour…
sayings which Matthew seems to want to uncover
about the indirect social outlook of his later community.
Originating stories. Journeyings. Jesus-sounding short sayings. Awakenings. Imagination.
All bound together in the season we in the church call Epiphany 2023.
oo0oo
One of the first contemporary biblical theologians to recognise
the importance of imagination and story in the tradition of the various Jesus Movements
was American, Amos N Wilder.
I still have on my library shelves one of his books of poetry: Grace Confounding,
and while preparing these comments,
read again his poems “The Journey of the Magi” and this one “Grace Confounding”.
He came when he wasn’t expected
as He always does,
though a few on the night-shift had the release early.
He came where he wasn’t expected
as He always does,
though a few mages were tipped off.
He came where even the Apostles couldn’t go along,
in Nazareth of all places, on the edge of nowhere;
they had to place it in David’s home town.
He is always one step ahead of us;
the space-age calls for new maps
and its altars and holy places are not yet marked.
Way back in the 1960s Wilder said Jesus’ speech
“had the character not of instruction and ideas but of compelling imagination, of spell, of mythical shock and transformation.” (Wilder 1964/71:84)
He identified that it is through imagination and story that God ‘speaks’.
That Christianity is a religion of imagination and the word.
And behind the particular gospel stories and images
lie a particular life-experience and a language-shaping faith.
Jesus of Nazareth and his first followers
broke into the world of speech and writing of their time,
with a novel and powerful utterance...
Not a word of instruction and ideas.
But a word of compelling imagination.
Biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan describes him thus…
“an illiterate peasant, but with an oral brilliance that few of those trained in literate and scribal disciplines can ever attain.” (Crossan 1994:58)
In poetic terms we could say Jesus spoke as the birds sing,
“oblivious of any concern for transcription” (Wilder 1964/71:13) or written record.
Jesus was a voice not a penman, a herald not a scribe.
Less romantically we can say that Jesus’ use of the spoken word alone
has its own theological significance.
For writing things down has about it a sense of permanence.
It presupposes continuity and a future.
What we call the ‘gospel’ arose out of a radical break, when
old customs and continuities were undermined.
An alternative reality where boundaries were pushed.
And empires challenged.
But the spoken word is temporary.
The words are gone as they are spoken.
Even when spoken by a preacher!
Thus, one of the consequences of Jesus’ oral communicative style is,
he never, at least that we are aware of,
“gave a systematic summary or key points of his … thinking… His focus was… in interactively engaging with people about rethinking the nature of faith and their ethical behavior in relation to issues they were concerned about.” (Horsfield 2015:20)
Neither did he see himself as the founder of a new religion, nor did he claim
“many of the exalted claims made about him in the later Christian tradition.” (Horsfield 2015:20)
His intention seems to have been that his stories and sayings and teachings
be engaged with and lived, not codified into doctrines and creeds.
Love your enemies
Give to all who ask of you
Turn the other cheek
Forgive and you will be forgiven
Study how the lilies grow…
oo0oo
In our culture, but especially during these early new year days,
we make a big deal about giving tangible Magi-like gifts to each other.
Christmas gifts
Birthday gifts
Anniversary gifts
But sages tell us better are the intangible gifts we give and receive…
Gifts of time, listening, wisdom.
Gifts of care, compassion, wonder, awe.
These intangibles can motivate us into action.
Intangibles becoming tangibles…
food for the hungry
healing for the sick
shelter for the homeless
reverence for nature
Like the Magi of Epiphany we too have journeyed from far places…
From lands of joy but also of sorrow,
through hope and also through despair.
Like the Magi of Epiphany we too can find ourselves confused, improperly informed.
Like the Magi of Epiphany we too can be faced with tasks in life for which we are unprepared.
And like the Magi of Epiphany there is little we can do about it
but to live life as best we can, rather than perfectly,
both as individuals and as a jumbled mix called ‘congregation’.
“[F]or we are at our best when we reflect what is deepest within us and most meaningful around us.” (McCarty 2019:4)
As if by some sort of reply, radical English theologian and philosopher Don Cupitt,
founder of the Sea of Faith movement put such a jumbled mix this way:
‘Religion [is] a way of affirming the value of human life, from the first breath to the very last. It is up to us to give it that value: to affirm human dignity in the face of the indifferent universe’.
Religion is natural.
Religion is reality-embracing.
The world awaits us.
Our best is good enough.
oo0oo
It was after the war in Japan.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Living conditions were the worst and the people had lost any peace
they may have had in their minds.
A poor old blind woman called Nobu, who lived in a corner of a burnt and devastated area,
came to worship at a temple, and quite joyously said to the priest of the temple:
‘Reverend, I have had a light placed near my house.
‘Did you! Why?’ asked the priest.
‘It is outside my room.
My room is in a tenement house in the midst of an alley.
The walk is in a terrible condition, and at night it is very dangerous for people to pass through.
I have long wanted to place a light for them’…
Bibliography
Berry, T. The Sacred Universe. Earth, Spirituality, and Religion in the Twenty-first Century. New York. Columbia University Press, 2009
Crossan, J. D. Jesus. A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco. Harper, 1994
Funk, R. W, R. W.Hoover & Jesus Seminar. (ed). The Five Gospels. The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. New York. Polebridge Press/Macmillan Publishing, 1993
Horsfield, P. From Jesus to the Internet. A History of Christianity and Media. Chichester. Wiley Blackwell, 2015
McCarty, D. Thoughts from a Gentle Atheist. Religious Readings for the Skeptical. UK. Lightning Source/Gentle Atheist Press, 2019
Peters, K. E. Spiritual Transformations. Science, Religion, and Human Becoming. Minneapolis. Fortress Press, 2008
Wilder, A. N. Grace Confounding. Philadelphia. Fortress Press, 1972
Wilder, A. N. Early Christian Rhetoric. The Language of the Gospel. Cambridge. Harvard University Press 1964/7