Imagination Training

John 6:1-21; Ephesians 3:14-21

How active is your imagination? Do you see things that aren’t right in front of you? Fill in the back-story when you see a single scene, or hear a snippet of story?

Let’s try it out.

I want you to imagine big.

Let gigantic, enormous, huge, roll through your mind and heart, and turn your imagination loose.

Anybody want to say something about what you imagined? 

[Mountains and open air. Sometimes I see stars, and distance; sometimes success, lights, fame  -- big can be a lot of things]

Now that we’ve practiced a little, close your eyes again, stretch out your imagination, and listen to this:
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Could you imagine the reach and size of the love of Christ?  Could you imagine how full the fullness of God must be? 

Do you regularly stretch your mind and heart so that you have the space and reach for the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s glory and God’s love?

That’s what’s going on in the gospel story today.

It sounds like it’s a story about dinner, but it’s really about Jesus stretching the imagination of the disciples and the crowds, stretching and training and exercising our hearts and minds, so that we’re ready to begin to understand the sheer immensity of God’s presence and God’s love.

We’re going to try a bit of that for ourselves.

Everybody take something from this basket. [pieces of bread rolls]

Would you say that what you’re holding is about one serving size? [No, too small!]

Excellent – now we’re ready. 

Listen:

When Jesus looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?" He said this to test him. Philip answered him, "Six months' wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?"

Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.”

Look what you have in your hands and think about Philip and Andrew looking at the rough equivalent of two tuna fish sandwiches.  And they looked around, and saw five thousand people waiting – can you imagine that crowd?

They’re scratching their heads, straining their minds to figure out what Jesus is talking about, what he’s up to.

Listen again:

Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.  When they were satisfied, the disciples gathered up the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten; they filled twelve baskets.

Now look at what you have in your hands again. 

Look with your ears and your mind and your heart.

Who do you imagine, what do you see, when you think about bread?  How big is this bread that you hold in your hands?

This miracle of feeding that we heard about today is a big deal.  (It’s the only miracle story that’s told in all four gospels.)  It’s about abundance.  It’s about wonder.  It’s about God providing.

But even more than that, for Jesus, it’s about expanding our minds and hearts, exercising our imagination. Where we would normally see lunch, or even where we see a miracle, Jesus is teaching us to see much more:
to look at bread, and see the gift of God’s presence, right here in our ordinary lives.

To see the extraordinary scope of God’s glory, to see all those with whom we share this gift, and to understand that every single object and moment in our lives is meant to be transformed by our understanding of God.

Any ordinary object: water, keys or rock, animals or laborers, words, plants or currency, is as full of God-potential as this bread – potential for wonder and love, healing and wholeness, and mind-bending glory.

Every Sunday, when we share and eat those small tokens of flour and water, we’re here to exercise our imagination.  To train our minds and hearts, like Olympic athletes.

To practice seeing bread so that we experience with our minds and hearts and whole selves the extravagant abundance of God’s presence, the creation of community, the miracle of receiving food from God’s hand, the generosity with which Jesus makes himself known in the daily objects of our lives.

Today, we do one other training exercise in opening our minds and hearts.

In a few minutes we’ll invite God to transform ordinary water into eternal life, so that we can baptize Daniel, bringing him into the company of saints – of ordinary people filled up with God’s blessing so abundantly that it spills out to change lives far beyond our own. 

And we’ll offer ourselves to be transformed into abundant signs of God’s love and God’s presence, as we renew our own baptismal promises.

So eat the bread.

Splash in the water of baptism.

Then go out into the world and play with your food.

Look at your broccoli, your water glass, your dinner companions,

at keys and animals and rocks,

and set your imagination free.

Stretch your mind and heart to see the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s glory and love in the most ordinary of objects. In us. In you.

Open your heart and mind as far as you can to the breadth and length and height and depth – and then expect even more.  

Because God at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.

Health Care

Mark 5:21-43

I had the radio news on on Thursday morning and it sounded like the reporters were actually holding their breath. “This health care decision is the biggest Supreme Court decision since Bush v. Gore,” they kept saying.

And finally the news broke - messy and confusing at first - then with forests of analysis and comment.

It’s done.  It’s law.

You may be delighted with the news. You may be mad. You might be bored or just wish it’s over.

But the story isn’t over because the fighting isn’t over.  It’ll go on and on through the November election – and quite possibly beyond.

It’s a Big Deal.

Not just because it’s a big political fight.  Not just because the Supreme Court got involved – that happens all the time.

It’s a Big Deal because this political is so very personal,

because it’s about our bodies. 

It’s about what it means to be human, and to be whole.

That’s the story on the news, and that’s the story in the gospel.

There’s a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years.

Twelve years of physical discomfort, embarrassment, shame and limits.

She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all she had, and she was no better, but rather grew worse.

You can bet that if there’d been such a thing as insurance in first-century Palestine, she’d have been long past her lifetime coverage limits and banned because of a pre-existing condition – but it’s the simple human tragedy – both sublime and ridiculous – that resonates in Mark’s brief description.

And there’s a girl – on the brink of womanhood, on the brink of death – whose high-powered, respectable father realizes there is nothing he can do.   His desperation is evident as he falls at Jesus’ feet and begs repeatedly for a cure.

It’s not very hard to feel the gaping wound, the deep, profound ache of a parent helpless to cure his child. It’s not that hard to imagine the bitter, raw, continuous pain of chronic disability – of being forced to be the person you never expected to be, out of money, begging for any assistance, cut off from ordinary life, ordinary human touch. To imagine the holes that digs in your self-respect and hope.

You can hear those stories in the news this week, too.

I hear them often – from some of you; from the people who come to our door to ask for just a little help to fill a prescription, or pay a bill because caring for their own or a family member’s illness has cleaned them out – financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

These stories have a power beyond their facts,

because the costs of our health aren’t only measured in dollars,

but in our sense of self,

our wholeness,

our very soul.

That bleeding woman reaches out in desperation to merely touch Jesus’ clothes. 

And her bleeding stops.  She’s cured.

But it’s when Jesus speaks to her that she is healed; made whole.

She is transformed by his words from a desperate outcast, helplessly reaching for someone else’s power, to a woman of grace and faith, a woman of initiative and power. 

That's when she is made whole. 

It’s about stopping the bleeding, yes. But even more about restoring her human grace, her ability and self-respect.

And then Jesus comes to that tragic house after the child has died – when mourners have gathered to begin the funeral rites.  And he gives the parents back their ability to parent, to nurture their child.  “Do not fear,” he says, “only believe.” 
The disbelieving crowds are shut out, and only those who can be trusted to believe in the child’s wholeness witness the miracle.  

She’s cured. And then he tells them to feed her.

And her parents are made whole, restored to the responsibilities and joys of caring for their own child.

We’re fighting about this health care law not because it’s about money and access to treatment,

but because it’s about our self-respect, our independence. 

Our health is our self; our bodies shape our souls.

So often when a chronic or critical illness takes over – in the hospital, in the marketplace, doctors and insurers and sometimes family and friends see only the brokenness, the problem.  And often – not always! – that focus brings a cure.

But healing is about wholeness, about being yourself again.  Or being made new. About respect, and love, independence and deep relationships.

Whether or not there’s a cure, infusing our treatment with respect and love, guaranteeing independence and deepening relationships, is care for our health, because it’s care for our bodies and souls, and the way they make us whole.

And that’s what this conversation about health care law is, at the level of truth below the politics.

It matters that we choose to take care of our bodies.  It matters that health and healing connect us to one another, when illness can isolate and outcast us, financially and spiritually as well as physically. 

We must pay attention to health and care as a community, a nation – because we are a people committed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  We are committed, from our birth, to human wholeness. 

And you and I are committed, from our baptism, to love of our neighbors and the dignity of every human being.

Those reporters on Thursday morning were right to be breathless.  They were right that this decision and this law are enormously important. But they were wrong to compare it to Bush v. Gore, because this one is bigger.

This one is about being whole.

This story isn’t over yet.

There are more women bleeding out there.

There are more children dying.

More parents quietly, desperately helpless.

Some of them are among us this morning.

Some will never be.

The law of the land is about the details.
The law of the gospel is about wholeness.

So let the story continue,

and in every chapter, let it be said of us

– as a nation, as our selves –

“Your faith has made you whole.  Go in peace, and be healed.”

Holy weeds

Mark 4:26-34

Everything I know about mustard I learned from biblical commentaries.

Well, almost.

I know that people put it on hot dogs and hamburgers, and that’s not mentioned in the commentaries.

But since Jesus’ story about the mustard seed comes up in three of the four gospels – and every summer in our lectionary – there’s a LOT of ink spilled about biblical mustard.

It’s a tiny seed – if it’s not the smallest seed (according to the internet, at least some varieties of orchid seeds are smaller) – and it grows into a substantial plant – whether it’s a shrub or a tree is a matter of heated religious debate. 

That by itself would make Jesus’ point about great things coming from tiny sources.  But there’s one other thing about mustard that I’ve learned from biblical commentators that’s the real zinger about the comparison to the kingdom of God.

It’s a weed.

It seems that when Jesus was talking about mustard, he expected his hearers to be thinking about the sort of plant that no one would actually plant in their garden because it would take it over, like mint or kudzu.  And be just as hard to get rid of, once it’s in.

The kingdom of God is like a weed.

From a tiny, unnoticeable seed grows a plant that nobody invited or wanted, impossible to get rid of – and that provides shelter for the birds (and a somewhat spicy food).

It’s true that the kingdom of God is like a weed sometimes. 

The Jesus movement two thousand years ago massively upset the normal, appropriate, expected patterns of religious life. 

The notion of freedom of religion that was planted in the United States is wonderfully messy and regularly dangerous to our comfort these two centuries later. 

A faithful commitment to the dignity of every human being disrupts travel, economies, custom and comfort in every stage of the blossoming of civil and human rights around the world.

We don’t grow weeds on purpose, and we don’t build the kingdom of God to our plans.  The seeds fall.  God provides the resources – earth, sun and rain, or people and ideas.  The plant or the kingdom grows, and what Jesus says is that it’s up to us to respond.

To make nests in the shade, or to rejoice in the harvest.

There are seeds all over our lives.  A smile, a word, an idea – a tiny gift of time, attention, cash or goodies.  Seeds that grow in spite of us, and blossom into the unexpected – sometimes inconvenient, but ultimately wonderful – kingdom of God.

And because the kingdom of God is a weed, there’s no way it fits in a regular sermon from the pulpit. 
It doesn’t happen here – it happens out there.  In your lives, and all over the world outside of church.

So the rest of the sermon is up to you.

Think, right now, about some small thing – a smile, a question, a mistake or a chance encounter that has grown beyond your expectation.  A marriage? a friendship? A kind of service, or a part of your faith?

Or a big result that you can’t track back to any single seed.

Go ahead, think about it.  In church, we shared those growth stories out loud.  You can share yours - it's just like a gardening story, after all!

That’s the gospel, the good news, the kingdom of God, growing among us,

like mustard.

Of course, all of us also have seeds we’ve planted in hope – kind words, little gifts given – that haven’t borne fruit yet, perhaps for years. Those tiny seeds of the kingdom are in the hands of God, and we don’t know how they grow – so those are our prayers.

In a few minutes, when we pray, put those seeds in the hands of God, with a word or a name for each. 

And this week, this summer season of growth,

keep your eyes open for mustard,

for the kingdom of God, growing unexpected and uninvited, to nourish and shelter God’s creatures, and you and me.