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.