A
Reflection for XXVI Pentecost (Proper 28) All
Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC
November
13, 2016 (8:30 AM) Thomas E Wilson, Rector
A Different Imagination
The
Bishop is coming for the 10:30 service today so the 8:30 people have to put up
with me. But he will be here for a forum at 9:30, so you can get a chance to
meet him for coffee hour and beyond.
Walter
Brueggemann, Hebrew Testament scholar, posits the Bible has an underlying theme
showing history of the world as a contest between two different imaginations.
There is first the Empire Imagination which says that the fearsome God of the
Empire has blessed the rulers and the way to live into that Empire Imagination
is to control and conquer others, to force compliance to the Empire’s agendas,
to allow the rulers to rule in the name of their security and the hierarchies
to be nourished by the exploitation of the vulnerable. Empires are ruled by
fear; fear of loss of power, fear of neighbor, fear of those who are different,
fear of loss of influence, fear of scarcity, fear of being merciful, fear of the
loss of their fearsome God’s blessing and therefore those Gods must be appeased
by sacrifice. The height of the Empire’s power becomes the “Golden Age”, an
idealized past and so there is a tremendous distrust of the future and a
compulsive desire to live in that nostalgic moment of the idealized past. The
people and pages of scripture have a narrative that is sprinkled with struggles
with Empires; the Egyptian, the Philistine, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the
Persian, the Greek, the Roman and even their own homegrown attempts at Empire.
In
contest against the Empire Imagination there is the Prophetic Imagination which
is an attempt to change the narrative of the people to create and live in a
community with a loving God of justice, mercy and peace with neighbor and with
each other where fear no longer rules our lives. The prophets come forward out
of what they hear God calling them to live now faithfully in the hope of the
future. “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, love mercy and walk
humbly with your God.” This is the message that leads us into the New
Testament. This is the message of Jesus. This is the message of the church when
it is not infected with Empire Imagination.
Let
me say a word or two about the Book of Isaiah which is a proponent of the
Prophetic Imagination. It is a long book there are 66 chapters. When I was in
Jerusalem years ago, Pat and I went to visit the Shrine of the Book, a
repository of the Dead Sea Scrolls and it is shaped like a rolled up scroll. In
one circular room there is a copy of the unrolled scroll of the Book of Isaiah printed
on the circumference of the wall that is 24 feet long defining the room. The
Dead Sea scrolls were found in 1947 by the Dead Sea when a Bedouin Shepherd boy
was watching his sheep and he was idly tossing stones. He threw the stones and
they made sounds of hitting the ground except one in which he threw into an
opening in a cave and he heard the surprising sound of breaking pottery. He dug
and squeezed into the opening and found a hidden cave room There were a whole
collection of sealed pots containing a total of 220 scrolls. They had been
hidden and placed in that cave sealed in these pots for safe keeping in about
the end of the 1st Century after Christ in the dry desert air by a
religious group at Qumran who looked all around them and thought that the final
battle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness was about to begin
and they were expecting the ends of the world as they knew it. The scroll of
the Book of Isaiah was the best preserved. The scroll was carbon dated to the 4th
Century BC with some marginal notes in the 2nd Century BC. Scholars
suggest there seems to be three sections to the Book of Isaiah The first 39
chapters seem to be attributed to an 8th Century BC prophet, Isaiah
of Jerusalem, when the Northern and
Southern Kingdoms are facing a tremendous threat by the Assyrian Empire, and
corruption in the government, and abuse of the poor and marginal by the
homegrown Empire mentality, and the nations need messages of hope. In the
Northern Kingdom we get Amos and Hosea
and in the Southern Kingdom we get Micah and Isaiah of Jerusalem. The Psalm for
today is from the writings of the original founder of the School of Isaiah from
the 12th Chapter as he sings about the presence of God in the middle
of daily life; “trusting in God and not being afraid”. Hope in the middle of so
many things going wrong. Faithful hope is always tinged with sweat as we work
with God to create the better future.
The
Second section of the Book is written in the Spirit of Isaiah by students of
the School of Isaiah in the 6th Century BC, about 150 plus years
later, when the people, conquered by the Babylonian Empire, are in exile and
need a message of hope. This section from the Book of Isaiah comes from a time
when the nation lies in ruins after a series of years of disastrous decisions
made by warring factions in the ruling elites and by hostile enemies of the
homegrown Empire wannabees. The economy is in ruins, the city walls are torn
down so there is no protection from marauders. Only hope can keep them alive,
faithful hope tinged with sweat working together as a community with God for a
better future.
The
third section is still later as some of the exiles are returning and the blame
game is intensified as each side finds fault with the other. In the middle of
this fault finding, God calls forth one of the prophets of the School of Isaiah
who tells the nation what he or she had heard God say. Our first reading is
from that writer. In the first 16 verses of this chapter before this 2nd
part of the chapter, the prophet goes through the past suggesting that the
present can be understood by the past of wanting to live in the Empire
Imagination. However, here in verse 17, the prophet changes tack and sings that
we do not have to dwell in the nostalgia of the dim shadow of the past but can
now live into a full present lit by the hope of the future. The prophet sings
the vision that as humans change from fighting each other the world will itself
change. Faithful hope is tinged with sweat.
Paul
when he writes to the Thessalonians in today’s lesson is giving the people
hope. Some have given up hope and move into wish fulfillment fantasies that God
will fix all things and they will leave the sweat tingeing the hope to others.
They have been infected with the Empire Imagination when they attempt to take
advantage of others. They claim a special privilege and status from God over
mere working folk. Paul writes that we are all in this together to work
together following the Christ Jesus, faithfully working, sweating and hoping
together.
Jesus
in the Gospel lesson from Luke for today listens to some nostalgic drivel from
his disciples about how impressed they are with the Temple, an Empire
Imagination symbol of the need to appease a fearsome God, which had been built
during the time of their fathers, but now they were under the rule of the
Romans whose God needed to be appeased as well. They are nourishing themselves
with an Empire Imagination about how good it would be to trust in the trapping
of Empire, the monuments of ego. Jesus tells them that they are not to put trust
in institutions or building but in the strength of God working within us to be
able to endure all things. Hope is how we live boldly in the present by the
light of the future even when everything is going wrong.
What
kind of world are we living in today? What kind of Imagination do we use to see
the world? Where is our hope? To what or whom do we commit to work for in the
present by the light of the future?
A
Different Imagination
Election
Day is now past almost week:
brutal
victory campaigns do not cease
the
bitterness that will deny us peace,
we’re
made tired and opponents weak.
Not
Isaiah vision; wolves savage lambs,
lions
clawing ox, passing up the straw,
serpents,
preying on yet another flaw,
preening
to fans like rock show hams.
Today’s
prayer is that “these former things
shall
not be remembered or come to mind”
so
ere soon all we as one might be aligned
whenever
the bell sounding worship rings,
blessing
an enemy, remembering to commit,
gain strength in imagining Prophetic Spirit.
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