{"id":1610,"date":"2017-07-09T11:00:01","date_gmt":"2017-07-09T15:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/?p=1610"},"modified":"2019-09-24T13:16:46","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:16:46","slug":"imagination-and-discipleship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/2017\/07\/09\/imagination-and-discipleship\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagination and Discipleship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service<\/a><\/p>\n

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67<\/a><\/p>\n

Romans 7:15-25a<\/a><\/p>\n

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>Click here to listen to the meditations only<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/i><\/b>Upon this summer Sunday, let us meditate together on imagination, and its influence in discipleship. \u00a0Our gospel turns to the playful imagination of children in the marketplace. \u00a0St. Paul wrote in a similar way to his Corinthian congregation:<\/p>\n

One<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

19\u00a0<\/span><\/i>For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

20\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

21\u00a0<\/span><\/i>For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

22\u00a0<\/span><\/i>For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

23\u00a0<\/span><\/i>But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

24\u00a0<\/span><\/i>But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

25\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

26\u00a0<\/span><\/i>For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

27\u00a0<\/span><\/i>But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Discipleship requires more than wisdom alone. \u00a0The walk of faith evokes and involves imagination, the free play of insight, the province of children and saints.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

What a gift are the parables of Jesus! \u00a0He taught them in parables, says the Scripture, and without a parable he taught not one thing. \u00a0Here, in a story form, is the same sentiment just remembered from Paul, <\/span>God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Jesus stands in the marketplace. \u00a0He sees two warring groups of children. \u00a0All community is endless contention and intractable difference. \u00a0One group wants to play a game called \u2018weddings\u2019: \u00a0we have our pipes, we are ready to dance, come and join us, and let us play the game of weddings. \u00a0Another group wants to play a game called \u2018funerals\u2019: \u00a0we have our tears, our wailing, our gathered mourning clothes and forms, come and join us and let us play the game of funerals. \u00a0One game for the enjoyment of life preferred by Jesus himself, one game for the dour, self-discipline for life, preferred by John the Baptist. \u00a0Come and join! \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet neither group will give way. \u00a0Groups, as Reinhold Niebuhr taught us in <\/span>Moral Man and Immoral Society<\/span><\/i>, have a hard time changing direction, or giving way, or forgiving, or summoning an imagination ready for discipleship. \u00a0That requires a childlike heart. \u00a0It requires an imagination soaked discipleship. It requires the person whom you are meant to become.<\/span><\/p>\n

Did you ever know and love somebody who was always a bit on edge? \u00a0I mean a beautiful person with a heart of gold, who was run raw by the gone-wrongness of life? \u00a0This can be a rough world for a sensitive soul. \u00a0Someone who has an unquenchable passion for getting things right and for knowing when things are wrong. \u00a0A little of that can go a long way. \u00a0If your very hunger is for what establishes the soul, you can sometimes go hungry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine with her eyes: \u00a0Every child in the community was attending a safe, well-lit, quiet school, where virtually all could read at the sixth grade level by the time they finished the sixth grade level. \u00a0Every sick person in the community had ample medical care, most of it preventive, and all of it shot through with a heavenly infusion of time, talent and money. \u00a0Every person of color in the community felt confident entering the public spaces\u2014theaters, churches, stadiums, stores\u2014in every corner of the community. Every man was free to be a man. \u00a0And every woman was free to be a woman. \u00a0Every person is seen and heard as a real human being. <\/span><\/p>\n

Three<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Here at University, we are blessed with intelligence, youth, freedom, and reason. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We want to be careful, and caring, so we pause here. \u00a0We educators sometimes \u00a0tend to leave civil society to the rest of society. We have much freedom, but how we choose to use it, in relation to the rest of community and society, is another matter. We after all have that next paper to write, 50 pages of small print not including footnotes, titled with some version of the title, \u2018Obscurity Squared\u2019. \u00a0To do that, one needs a capacity to spend 12 hours a day alone in a library or in front of a computer screen. \u00a0To do that, to write that series of scholarly papers become books become resume become tenure become professor, can risk leaving aside, if we are not careful, or leaving to others, if we are not careful, the imaginative stewardship of forms of civil society. \u00a0Girl Scout cookies. \u00a0Umpire work for the Little League. \u00a0Pinewood derby leadership. \u00a0A seat on the PTA. \u00a0Sunday worship. \u00a0Neighborhood watch. \u00a0Refugee resettlement work. \u00a0These we have to leave in the hands of others, or at least we think we do, those basic cultural building blocks that rest on a willingness to sit quietly in dull meetings, hoping against hope for the blessed refrain, \u2018I guess we\u2019re done for tonight\u2019. \u00a0In civil society we have the chance to influence others, and to be influenced among others, in lasting, personal ways. \u00a0You want to speak to others, to convince others, to educate\u2014good. But. \u00a0You cannot speak to others until or unless you speak for others. \u00a0To be speak to requires first to speak for. \u00a0Others will not hear or heed you, and should not, in your speech to them, if they do not, with utter confidence, feel, feel, that you speak for them as well. \u00a0To speak for, you have to be with. \u00a0At breakfast. \u00a0Playing golf. \u00a0In book club. In church. \u00a0At the YMCA. \u00a0Then, only then, will you enough funds in the relational bank when you need to withdraw some to say something that may then be audible. If you want people in Wisconsin to hear you, candidate, you have to go and be with people in Wisconsin. \u00a0If you want people to hear you, preacher, you have to go and be with people, in visitation, on their turf. \u00a0If you want to speak to others, educators, you will have to find a way to speak for others, not just to others. \u00a0This is the whole genius of American civil society, from the time of De Tocqueville. \u00a0\u00a0Whether we will find, in the humiliations of an era whose leadership is shredding inherited forms of civil society on an hourly basis, the humility to go out and suffer with and for others, over the better part of the next decade, in order then to speak, is an unanswered question. \u00a0To get to an answer we may just need some imagination in our discipleship.<\/span><\/p>\n

Four<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. \u00a0Our Gospel lures us and lures our imagination forward, for discipleship. \u00a0Have we yet learned the lesson that what one means\u2014by an act, a word, a statement, a vote, say\u2014is not all that such an act means? \u00a0We have experienced this lesson this year. The lesson, that is, that what you in your heart meant by an act, a word, a statement\u2014a vote, is not in fact the limit of what that act, word, statement or vote meant:\u00a0 in fact it is a small part, the greater part of the meaning being found in the effect, the impact, the historical influence of the deed.\u00a0Wisdom is vindicated, known, in her deeds. <\/span>The meaning of a text is found in the future it opens, the future it imagines, the future it creates. (Ray Hart). <\/span><\/i>So too, the meaning of an act, a word, a statement, a vote, say, is found in the future, bright or dark, which it creates.\u00a0 What you meant is not what it means.\u00a0 For that, you have to listen to those harmed, or helped, by it.\u00a0 Meaning is social, not individual, hence our use of words, our developed language, our investment in culture, our life in community.\u00a0 You may have meant it one way, but its meaning is found along another.\u00a0 Such hard, tragic lessons, to have to learn and re-learn. <\/span><\/p>\n

Jesus is our beacon not our boundary. \u00a0Imagination is a dimension of discipleship that is waxing not waning, needed not superfluous, crucial not peripheral. \u00a0Our passages today, Genesis, Psalms, and Romans, draw our imaginations to forms of authority, and our engagement with them. \u00a0In Genesis, the authority in ancestry. \u00a0In Psalms, the authority in government. \u00a0In Romans, the authority in conscience. \u00a0In all these, the writers struggle to imagine a way forward, following the light of the beacon across the challenge of the boundary.<\/span><\/p>\n

Five<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Pause and meditate a little this summer on your own enjoyment of <\/span>play.<\/i><\/b> Our esteemed colleague and beloved mentor, now of blessed memory, Peter Berger did so, with imagination for discipleship, years ago in his little book, <\/span>A Rumor of Angels. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>1. I see grown men enthralled on a green field following a wee little white ball, which seems to have a mind of its own, for three or four hours in the hot sun. \u00a02. I see grown women shopping together without any particular need, but immersed, self-forgetful, in the process of purchasing, God knows what. \u00a03.I see emerging adults fixed and fixated, days on end, in the World of Warcraft. 4.Can you remember playing bridge in college all night long, to the detriment of your zoology grade? \u00a0Peter Berger: A. <\/span>In playing, one steps out of one time into another\u2026When adults play with genuine joy, they momentarily regain the deathlessness of childhood<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0The experience of joyful play is not something that must be sought on some mystical margin of existence. \u00a0It can readily be found in the reality of ordinary life\u2026The religious justification of the experience can be achieved only in an act of faith\u2026B. <\/span><\/i>This faith is inductive\u2014it does not rest on a mysterious revelation, but rather on what we experience in our common, ordinary lives\u2026<\/span><\/i>Religion is the final vindication of childhood and of joy, and of all gestures that replicate these. <\/span><\/i>\u00a0One said: \u201cI played basketball today, on the intramural team\u2014it was awesome.\u201d \u00a0Talk about it a bit, parents and children.<\/span><\/p>\n

Six<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Imagination in discipleship forms a wisdom vindicated, justified by her deeds. \u00a0(Luke has changed the ending to \u2018justified by all her children\u2019\u2014maybe an even closer memory to the marrow of imagination.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Hear again the imaginative wisdom of Boston University\u2019s own late personalist philosopher, Erazim Kohak, <\/span>The Embers and The Stars, <\/span><\/i>with ten of whose epigrams we conclude, this summer morning, to kindle the imagination:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018We shall dig again the wells of our Fathers.\u2019<\/code><\/code><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Humans grow angry so easily, so heedlessly venting their anger at those nearest and most vulnerable, needlessly, wantonly injuring what is most precious and most fragile\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Humans are not only humans, moral subjects and vital organisms. \u00a0They are also <\/span>Persons<\/span><\/i>, capable of fusing eternity and time in the precious, anguished reality of a love that would be eternal amid the concreteness of time. \u00a0A person is a being through whom eternity enters time.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018There is self-discovery in remembrance.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018We have a sense of history. \u00a0But we have lost a sense of eternity.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The authentic relation between beings is the personal encounter of mutual\u2019 respect. \u00a0208<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Most of the time we possess and covet far more than we can care for and cherish.\u2019 212<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Generosity personalizes as greed depersonalizes.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018We need to rediscover ourselves as persons, not as need gratifying organisms.\u2019 215<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The chief task of philosophy is to write footnotes to the text of experience\u2019 219<\/span><\/p>\n

But to what shall I compare this generation? \u00a0It is like children sitting \u00a0in the marketplaces and calling to one another, \u2018We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn\u2019\u2026Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

– The Reverend Doctor, Robert Allan Hill, Dean.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to listen to the full service Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 Romans 7:15-25a Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30 Click here to listen to the meditations only Upon this summer Sunday, let us meditate together on imagination, and its influence in discipleship. \u00a0Our gospel turns to the playful imagination of children in the marketplace. \u00a0St. Paul wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1610"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1864,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions\/1864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}