IMAGINE
Advent 2a, Isaiah 11:1-10 (December 8, 2013)
(Images of Nelson Mandela, of dead stumps and dead hearts, of cut off places)
How are you doing? Really, how are you doing? I invite you right now, wherever you are, to have an internal conversation between yourself and God. Carefully examine those places where you experience joy. Identify them. Sit with them for awhile. Rejoice and give thanks....
Take the time to do that. Then later in the light of that joy also identify and listen to those places in your life where there is heartache, regret, anger, vengefulness, disappointment or even hatred. Don't run from those realities but allow them to be taken out, set on your lap and listened too. Don't let them run your life – but identify them. Perhaps even ask God to help you do what most be constructive with them, as warning signs or needing love and attention. (take 5 minutes or so to do this)....
I wonder if we have the courage to employ our imaginations? Sometimes as we grow older we may come to think or even "believe" that imagination is only for children. But, wait a minute! Imagination is a God given gift. Sometimes imagination is the vehicle that allows us for a moment to escape the harshness of reality. At other times imagination is the means to put us in touch with a larger dream than our own, a dream that God may be imagining. In such a dream, with such imagination we may hear God calling us to work and spring into certain realms of action. So, let's not be afraid to employ our imagination. (Pause)
Imagine that you have been born into a reality where you are limited in your movement. I mean REALLY LIMITED. Many times you are prevented from, not allowed to go where you want, even if that might be to visit an aunt or uncle. You are told from a very young age, for as long as you can remember, "THIS IS THE LAW". In addition you are not allowed to pursue your educational dreams. Many questions are simply forbidden for you to ask. Such declarations foisted upon you and your family aren't only the declaration of a few mean people, a few people who totally dislike you because of our religion or the color of our skin. No , this is the law of the land in which you live and have been born.
You watch your children work hard and never get ahead. Deep in your heart you dream someday of a good education for them, or for their children, of an education and opportunity to travel, to contribute to the larger world. But this just isn't possible. It just isn't allowed. It can never be!
So, one day, you decide to speak up – AGAINST THE LAW, AGAINST ALL THE OPPRESSION YOU AND YOUR PEOPLE HAVE EXPERIENCED AND ARE BEING PLACED UNDER.
But the powers that be are not happy with you nor your protest. Now the powers that be, threaten you. When that doesn't stop you, they threaten your family. They call you names – names that shouldn't be uttered anywhere, but certainly not in a place that we call holy. They threaten to do horrific things to your mother, to your sister and eventually to your wife and daughters. My God, now you are afraid. You are tempted to shut up, to not speak out against these powers that be – that on occasion have surrounded your family with barbed wire, that pass laws that put further limits on any freedom you know as a human being that you have the right to.
Now, you realize – if you are quiet about these injustices that you have been forced to endure – well the very stones would cry out. If you are quiet now, you will be so far less than what God intends for you and your people. So, you continue to speak out. Now, OTHERS BEGIN TO HEAR YOU. People around you and even people far away have ears that are being opened. Some of these others begin to publically question these so-called laws. The collective heart of your own people begins to stir. You are simultaneously excited and afraid. You are excited because others are catching the vision – a vision you are convinced that God has placed not just in your mind or only on your lips but in your heart. So, you keep speaking, you keep working against the oppressive laws. And the THREATS that emanate from the powers that be GROW.
One day they come and take you. But they cannot silence you. They throw you in prison for 27 years, but they cannot cage your yearning for freedom. Indeed the vision, the fire, the dream of freedom for all, including your own people cannot, will not be silenced! That movement within, without, throughout the world now is GROWING EXPONENTIALLY.
Can you imagine any of this? Of course, I have been trying to have us imagine just a little bit of the life of Nelson Mandela... So, keep imagining: after 27 years you are freed. You keep on speaking and dreaming as God is at work through so many now. The winds of change are whipping. Your people will be free. Your country is surely being transformed. Amazingly you are now being asked to be the President of your country. Can you imagine that? President in the country you love so much but in which you have never even been allowed to vote.
So what will you do? Will you hate those who have unjustly persecuted you, thrown you into prison, committed hateful atrocities against your people, your brothers and sisters? Will you seek to have them prosecuted to the full extent of the law?
What would such exercise of the law do for them, or for your country?
Or, will you forgive them – not pretending that what they did is OK? It wasn't! It isn't! But can there be healing? Can there be new life in this, your country, where for so long there has been hatred, ignorance, prejudice, bigotry - oppression? Can God be at work, bringing about God's dream of new life, equality, hopefulness, a mutual sharing and caring, right now? What would you do?
Mandela, by God's grace, courteously invited his former prison guards to come and be in the front row of his inauguration. Can you imagine? And then Nelson Mandela oversaw a commission where people who had been wronged could tell their stories and invite others, including those who had wronged them, to come and hear those stories.
This is not just an amazing story – this is the reality of one man's life and his country – of God working through people.
There are too many times when we only see with our eyes or hear with our ears. Sight and hearing are wonderful gifts. But sight and hearing are not all there is. God can take what are seemingly dead stumps: systems, hearts, minds, (individually and collectively) and bring from them a new shoot.
The most important sign of this is the birth we are about to remember and celebrate as God dares to take on our frail human flesh. The very Spirit of God calls us in trusting this One who has come, is here and is coming again, to live with HOPE. We are by God's grace to be open to transformation for ourselves. And as our transformation is being birthed we are also called to work for transformation in the world. Justice, equality, and mercy are not fairy tales. They are part of God's good and gracious will. For someday there will be a security that is not over against or dependent upon sophisticated alarm systems or seemingly forged through the violence of militarism. Instead some day there will be a security that comes from God where all can live together – and raise their voices not in hatred, but in love and praise of God who makes us all brothers and sisters.
For the child that arises out of the seemingly dead stump of Jesse, which was Israel, shall lead us. May we somehow hear his voice, even as Mandela did. For his voice has the power to transform us and this world. Amen and Amen.