Sunday
April 18
Imagine That
By Marsh Chapel
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When I was young, my family moved from upstate New York to Northeastern Pennsylvania. We settled outside of Harford Township. A town with just over 1000 people at the time and still is not much larger today. I have grown accustomed, especially in New England to emphasizing the Harf. in Harford. There is no t in the name, but there is a yearly fair. The Harford Fair was always held in late August just before the start of school. The Fair held the promise of fireworks, friends, food, animals, and many other wonders to children and adults alike. Kids below 12 were always free, so my sister and I frequently roamed the fairgrounds.
Over time, my sister closest in age and I learned how to glean at the fair. There was loose change to be found below the bleachers after sheep showings and tractor pulls. We generally found enough for pizza or ice cream. A booth offered apples if you made a hole in one at mini-golf. It was free and the attendants were gracious if you missed. You just went back in the line until you made the shot. You could get free water from the Baptist booth, candy from Democrats and Republicans, popcorn from a local bank, and you could watch a 30-minute Christian cartoon in the shade to break the August heat. There were even a few years when family artwork won some ribbons at the school-house exhibits. To us, the fair teemed with possibility. We never quite knew what we would find, whom we would see, and the fun we would have but every August, the fair came and went.
Usually, we would watch the yearly fireworks as a family, and that meant a trip to the midway. The midway was the location of the rides and carnival games. We spent more time watching than playing there, but the lights and action were fun to see. You could feel the wind whipping from rushing rides, hear balloons popping from darts, and smell French fries. At our family trip to the Midway, Mom and Dad, or my older siblings, would slip us a few dollars and we would play some skee-ball for 10 cents a game back in the day. We would also play a ping pong ball toss game. For a dollar or two, you would get a basket full of ping pong balls, enough for all of us to take many turns. The objective of the game was to throw the ping pong balls into a narrow-rimmed cup. Most did not make it and fell to the wayside. Like many carnival games, the odds weren’t really in our favor to win the big prizes. The balls would hit the rims of the cup and bounce off but most years, one or two of us would manage to get a ball in a small prize cup. The small prize was always a goldfish in a plastic bag.
Whoever won the fish got to name it and it was theirs but we were all excited no matter who won. Throughout the evening, the fish would be thoroughly examined before being brought home. The fishbowl full of water would already be prepared and fishfood ready to be sprinkled. No matter what we did though, no matter what we tried, no fish ever lasted more than a few days. Most had gone belly up overnight. This meant that the fishbowl sat empty for most of the year. It sat empty until the fair rolled back into town. The empty fishbowl resided on a shelf across from my seat at the dinner table. I’d look at it longingly. It was a sign of death and failure. A source of discomfort. A wound for a child who mourned the loss of fish barely known and hardly attached. The empty fishbowl was a sign of death; yet, by grace it was also something else. It was also something more.
By grace, the childish wound of the empty fishbowl was also a sign of hope. For every year, with hopeful expectations I imagined what it would look like to have the fishbowl be a place of life. Every year, I looked forward to filling it with water with the hope that that year, things would be different. Filling the bowl with water each year and hoping took faith. Imaging the empty bowl full was an act of faith. This involved looking past what was to what could be seen through the childhood imagination. It was dreaming and wondering what could be if things were different.
There is a difference between childish imagination and the wonder of children’s imagination. Too often, the wonder of the imagination is set aside as childish but imagination is central to the recognition of what is real and what really matters. Science, language, arts, theology all rest upon some form of imaginative thinking and imaginative expressing. The imagination provides us meaningful paradigms to interpret life and hope in faith for goodness. The imagination does not have to be an escape from the world it can be a way of hoping for the world to come. Sometimes we have to imagine to recognize what cannot be seen otherwise. Sometimes we have to imagine to wonder at what could be. This type of imagination does not have to be childish or lead to passive reception of wounds. This type of imagination is not an opiate of the people it can be the very work that propels us to action. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream stemmed from a holy imagination that refused to allow white racism to dictate the terms of reality. He dared to dream from a different imagination. His imagination sparked hope when many thought hope was lost. The imagination can be a spark that rises from ashes to kindle new possibilities. It can propel us toward recognition of the ever-elusive presence of divine love in loose in the world today. This is desperately needed in this time of great woundedness.
Luke writes about wounds in this post-resurrection narrative following a post-resurrection narrative. Prior to this reading, Luke records that Jesus encountered disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus and the disciples spoke but the disciples did not recognize Jesus. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus taught but recognition did not come through quoting texts and convincing speeches. The disciples came to recognize Jesus when bread was broken. Broken bread. The bread of the Eucharist gives life but to do so has to be broken. Perhaps, another way of saying broken bread is wounded bread. After recognizing Christ in the wounded bread, Christ disappeared from the disciples. Then, the disciples turned around and went back to Jerusalem.
After returning to the eleven, it was while they were still speaking that Jesus appeared to them and said peace. Despite having just heard the testimony of those on the road to Emmaus, the disciples were startled and terrified when Jesus appeared to them. The text says that the disciples thought Jesus to be a ghost. A phantom spirit present but not physically there. He addressed the doubts verbally but then did something odd. To alleviate the concerns, Jesus invited the disciples to touch and feel his flesh but before doing that, he showed them his hands and feet. That is odd. Jesus did not ask them to look him in the eyes or tell them something that only he would know. He draws attention to his hands and feet. He showed them feet that journeyed with them and hands that had served them. He showed them hands and feet that they would recognize. But these hands and feet were not unchanged by the cross. Recall the Johannine passage read last week which makes explicit what Luke points toward. The hands and feet of Jesus bear the marks of the nails from the cross. Jesus drew their attention to the wounds of the cross.
Practical Theologian Mary Mcclintock Fulkerson tells us that “like a wound, theological thinking is generated by a sometimes inchoate sense that something must be addressed.”[1] Wounds, true wounds, cannot be ignored. They seek to be addressed. Theology, belief and faith about God often stem from wounds or relate to wounds. Wounds that could lead to questions and fear. Wounds that need to be addressed. Luke and John affirm that wounds can also be a place of recognition. A place where God has gone before us, not to justify, redeem, or cause wounds unilaterally, but to be recognized. Wounds can be a sources of imagination. Faith in Christ does not take away wounds, but faith in Christ is faith in a wounded God. Christ knew wounds and Christ knows wounds. This is the Christ that Black Liberation Theologian James Cone imagines as present among the lynched and suffering. Christ present and wounded at the site of suffering. Cone also tells us that it doesn’t take rope and a tree for a lynching to take place. They just as easily take place at the barrel of a gun. But whether it be at the barrel of a gun, the lynching tree, or the Roman cross, the God who suffers is the God of the oppressed. The risen Christ is the wounded Christ. Christ showed his wounds to the disciples so that they could imagine and recognize different possibilities.
In order to address their doubts and fears, Christ showed the disciples his hands and feet. Recognition did not come through a whirlwind of cosmic power or a glorious triumphal miracle. Recognition stemmed from wounds. The cross is foolishness but honestly, radical love involves foolishness. Imagining God’s radical love cannot speak past wounds or over wounds. It cannot spiritually bypass materiality. Jesus invited the disciples to see the very places where the nails were driven into his body. The resurrection did not take the scars away. Recognition of the scars led to recognition of Jesus as the Christ. “39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.” See that it is I myself, or in Greek, egō eimi autos. egō eimi, I am. Jesus convinced the disciples of his personhood and presence by drawing attention to his scars. Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself… We see wounds all around us today. Wounds of the economic divide, racial divide, and political divides. We see wounds but do we see Christ? Do we imagine the wounded Christ present and propelling us toward change? The risen Christ is the crucified God. There is a great temptation to forget that. There is a great temptation to join Peter in his avoidance of Christ as Isaiah’s suffering servant. We cope with the wounded Christ on Good Friday. We sit unsettled with the death of Christ on Holy Saturday, but what about the wounded Christ as the risen Christ in Eastertide? This Christ is unsettling. Wounds are unsettling even as they call to be addressed.
In this Lukan scene, Jesus calls the disciples to witnesses to these things. Part of the resurrection, part of the witness is to wounds. Witnesses are those who have seen and testify through belief about that which they have seen and know. Christian memory is a witness to this Christ or it misses a core part of how to recognize Christ and imagine Christ. Christian witness is partly kindled from the imaginative spark called forth from wounds. To always miss wounds is to risk missing Christ. Wounds should not be unilaterally glorified or celebrated but they also cannot be ignored.
The disciples were looking right at Christ, but until bread was broken, until the wounds were shown, recognition of the risen Christ did not take place. This Christ is present in the work of love and liberation today. This Christ is present in places of suffering and oppression seeking to bring about wholeness and restoration. This Christ is recognized by wounds and in wounds. This work often takes form as resistance and counter-narration. The temptation to see Jesus only when the fishbowl is full precludes the work of imagining Christ when the fishbowl is empty. It is not just a good times and in bad time’s reminder, it is a question of faith, presence, and Christology. Christ is wounded even in glory. This Christ does not call us to ignore pain and circumstances or seek out suffering. This Christ is a reminder that the power of God is not in chariots and horses, nuclear weapons and guns but in everyday resistance to suffering with the wounded God.
The wounds of Christ are meant to imagine a world without wounds. In The Cross and Lynching Tree, James Cone put it this way, “The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair.”[2] These are ongoing activities seeking present day actuality. Wounds can help us identifying the liberating presence of incarnate resurrected love today. The risen love is loose in the world today but if we cannot recognize it, we will not see it.
Luke-Acts should certainly be read and interpreted together but it is significant that this wounded resurrection account frames the conclusion of Luke’s Gospel account. The final image of Luke is of the ascension but before the ascension, Jesus opens up the imaginative interpretive possibilities latent in the experiences and memories of the disciples. He shows the disciples how to interpret Scripture Christologically but also how to believe in the presence of wounds. The risen Christ continues to be present in the work of justice, liberation, and love today. The end is a new beginning. One unforeseen and unimaginable without the grace of God. But by the grace of God, we can imagine this world.
A few years ago, I was stuck in traffic on my way home from downtown Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley. Zip-tied to a bridge over the freeway was a sign with one word written on it. The homemade sign said, “Imagine.” I’ve always wondered, “Imagine what” but even in imagining what, the sign has generated imaginative thought. The resurrected Christ is a Christ who asks us to recognize wounds and to imagine other possibilities. The imagination is not always an escape from the world it can be a way of hoping for the world to come. We stand at the intersections of wounds and woundedness. We recognize the risen Christ as the wounded Christ. We see the scars, and let us dare to imagine something different. Let us dare to imagine a world where people can get home safe regardless of skin color. Let us imagine a world where people can get home safe regardless of sex or gender. Let the imagination come to be, by the grace of the risen wounded Christ. Let us incarnate the love of God loose in the world today. Imagine that.
[1] Places of Redemption, 14.
[2] 150.
-The Rev. Scott Donahue-Martens
Ph.D. Student in Practical Theology: Homiletics
Boston University School of Theology
