sermonboy.com

Third Sunday after Epiphany

Nehemiah 8
And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen’, lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’


We all have it, but it’s not clear how it works.
We use it everyday, but it helps transcend the everyday.
It makes new things, but it seems to build on the old.
It exists beyond what we can see, hear, or touch.
Without it, we would likely not be here.

As I give you a moment to guess what I’m on about, but I should tell you that one of my professors at York described a paper I wrote as “oblique, vague and self-negating.” Then he gave me a D+.

If you guessed ‘imagination,’ then take the rest of the day off. We all have imaginations, even though some of you will think that you’re not that imaginative. And for something that we all possess—and use everyday—it seems astounding that we don’t know how it works.

Everyone from psychologists to literary theorists have taken a go at it. Those who teach education refer to it endlessly, but even they concede that the ability to enhance or stimulate imagination is the subject of theory and not fact.

Somehow imagination allows us to inhabit a new world, something that we create that allows us to escape the everyday and see an alternative for ourselves and the world around us. The new reality it creates could be something as simple a solution to a common problem or something completely new, like a fictional universe.

Certainly it begins in the senses, in the ordinary world that we can see, hear and touch, but then it moves beyond the factual and literal and moves into the new. For this reason I suggest we likely wouldn’t be here without imagination, because overcoming defeat is one of the gifts of imagination, and one of the things that allows us to carry on.

So if just now you can’t imagine how all this fits with Nehemiah at the Water Gate, I will explain. Let me know if I do better than a D+. We begin at the moment they open the book:

So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

The casual reader can be forgiven for not spotting the revolution that is happening in this moment. Some call it the very first sermon, the first time the scriptures are interpreted before the people. This may be true, but I think there is more. This may well be the first time that imagination is applied to the text, in this case summarized with the careful phrase “they gave the sense.”

More than helping the passage read ‘make sense,’ Ezra somehow applied the reading to the setting, to the moment that the passage was being shared and the situation in which the people found themselves. It was an imaginative exercise, one that meant more than the simple application of rules, but rather ‘the sense’ that might bring the scriptures to life.

But before we continue, some background. Ezra was an exile, part of the population that was carried off to Babylon the period after 586 BCE. While there, two things were happening. The religion of Israel was being formalized, mostly through writing, and young men like Ezra were busy learning.

On one level, it seems counter-intuitive. We equate defeat and exile with punishment, and not the ability to regroup as a religious community. It seems oddly generous to allow bright young Israelites to go to school and join the Babylonian civil service, but that is exactly what happened. Ezra was learning about the heart of his religious heritage and learning statecraft, two things that would serve him well when we arrive at that day at the Water Gate in Jerusalem.

So the exiles returned, and were given permission to rebuild the Holy City. Leadership fell to Ezra and others, schooled in public policy and steadfast in their belief that this was a second chance, an opportunity to begin again. It was commonly held that defeat and exile were the result of disobedience, and Ezra and his generation were going to lay a foundation to ensure this would never happen again.

Of course, there were some large problems to be solved. First of all, the city was in ruin. Luckily, the bright young people who had no aptitude for public policy were likely sent off to engineering school, and returned with the knowledge needed to rebuild. Problem solved.

The second problem, the more vexing one, was how to reintroduce religious practice among those who were not carried off into exile, those who had not experienced the revival that happened among the newly religious elite. Some the non-exiles had taken foreign wives, and were experimenting with their foreign gods, and the whole situation had disaster written all over it. Somehow the renewed religion would need to be reintroduced to Jerusalem, and it would need to be done with care.

Back at the Water Gate, Ezra and his companions were busy giving the sense of the law of Moses, and we get to listen in:

‘This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.’ For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, ‘Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.’

It requires imagination to confront a crying crowd, grieved as they hear of all the ways they have failed to keep this law that only now is being reintroduced. It requires imagination to confront fear and sorrow and redirect it to something life-giving and creative. It requires imagination to begin again when the people seem paralyzed by the past and all that has happened during the exile.

The imaginative answer was to sanctify the moment, important enough that Ezra says it twice: “This day is holy to the Lord your God.” Do not mourn or weep, do not be grieved. This is a new beginning, that much was obvious, but imagination allowed the prophet to declare it the Lord’s day, a day to be met with joy. To be met with joy and an joyful response: eating and drinking, and sharing with those who have none.

Imagination allowed Ezra to sanctify the moment, to begin again in the context of a loving God who always wants us to be joyful as we begin again, trusting in God’s abiding presence. It’s a remarkable vision, one that we ought to carry forward, using imagination to face the future. So what does that look like today?

Here we are, one year from Inauguration Day, and I don’t want you to imagine President Trump and Vice-President Palin taking the oath of office. That might be more a failure of imagination, but stranger things have happened.

I fast-forwarded to the ‘stranger-that-fiction’ story unfolding in realtime because to illustrates the power of imagination to capture our attention. And the power can be used for good or for ill. On one hand, we have an imaginary wall build along the border with Mexico, which they will somehow pay for, at the same moment that eleven million people are being expelled from the country, and a religious test is being applied to everyone seeking to enter the country, even for a visit.

On the other hand, we have what can only be described as a dream of Canada, with Sen. Sanders describing free health care, paid maternity leave, and a higher minimum wage, things that most Americans find as preposterous as a giant wall. It is a campaign of extremes, with the people in the centre feeling ignored and dislocated from the campaign they once understood.

Imagination, you see, lends itself equally well to fear or hope. It can be used to speak to our basest instincts or our greatest aspirations. It can help us create a weapon or a tool, and in this way it is remarkably mixed. Like fire, the imagination can power our dreams or destroy everything, and we get to decide.

May God fill our hearts with a divine imagination, seeing hope rather than fear, and imagining together a world made new. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 6:28 AM