Creekside Church Sermon of December 10, 2000 "Can You Imagine?" Luke 3:1-6	Rev. David Bibbee
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This set me to thinking about how I responded to it as a child. I'm not too proud to say I got choked up when Dorothy said goodbye to her straw, tin, and fur friends and chanted the mantra, "There's no place like home..." I was touched by the reunion with Aunt Em and all the others, but I always felt sad after it was over, and could not understand why. The author of the Annotated Oz said the conclusion of the film gave children the wrong message. The Emerald City, and Dorothy's love of her friends was not real. Her odyssey was the result of a bang to the brain. It is sad to think that dreams can be so wonderful, but not real. We all must wake up. So it's best not to imagine things that do not exist. From that time on I became suspicious of dreams and imagination.

We live in a time that values the rule of facts and figures. The statistical carries more weight than the spiritual. When we say to someone, "You're just imagining things," we are really saying, "You are not seeing things right. What you say has no basis in reality." But one of the reasons we gather each Sunday is to enlarge our understanding of reality. Life that is only understood on the basis of facts is flat.

Christians never should be comfortable with what is. We should never make peace with and adjust to the status quo because we believe God has something better for the future. Many of the problems that continue to plague us are because we haven't been willing to think in new ways or imagine new possibilities.

The movie, Good Will Hunting, is about a tough man named Will who grew up on streets of Boston. He ran into trouble with the law. He was going nowhere fast. But there was something about Will no one knew. He was a mathematics genius who confounded the most brilliant mathematicians with his abilities. This discovery created enormous turmoil. Will possessed a gift that could take him to unattained heights. But the way he had always thought of himself exerted tremendous pressure upon him to settle for his familiar life in a depressed neighborhood. Will could not imagine his life any other way.

The Bible is a book designed to set our imaginations stirring about what God has done and is doing and will do in the world. We read it and study it to help us see God's plan for the world so we can think imaginatively and take risks to be a part of what God is doing.

The need for imagination is especially evident as we ponder the stories surrounding the birth of Jesus. Today we find John the Baptist out at the Jordan, preaching repentance and calling people to be baptized because the one who had long been waited for was coming. "Prepare the way of the Lord." But what does preparing mean for us? How do we make his path to our perceptions straight and smooth and how do we turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones? How can we think imaginatively about angel visitors and a pregnant woman and choirs in the cold winter's night?

One way is by not being rigid over what is real and what is not, and by reclaiming imagination which most of us have left in our childhood. Someone observed that, "As a rule, grown-up people are fairly correct in matters of fact; but in the highest gift of imagination, they are sad to seek." The Bible tells the story of Christmas to us in a way that touches us on a deeper level than mere fact.

In George Bernard Shaw's drama, "St. Joan" the king angrily questions Joan of Arc about the voices which she claims are guiding her. "Oh, your voices, your voices. Why don't the voices come to me? I'm king, not you!" Joan then responds, "The voices do come to you, but you do not hear them, you have not sat in the fields in the evening listening for them. When the bell is rung for prayer, you cross yourself and are done with it, but if you prayed from your heart and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they have stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do."

This sanctuary is filled with voices and music which we cannot hear. But if I turned on a radio you would be able to hear them. I believe the presence of the voice of God is always available to us, but we are not aware of it. I further believe that using our powers of imagination is one way for us to experience the presence of Christ. It is a capacity that each of us has. Someone put it this way... "If you do not suppose you have incredible, imaginative possibilities, consider that every night, even the most stodgy person dreams. He or she devises a plot, assembles a cast of characters, writes extraordinary dialogue and proceeds to the most intricate dramas any playwright ever fashioned. All of us do this every night, whether we remember our dreams or not."

But what about that which we can consciously imagine? The legendary football coach Vince Lombardi said, "Good football coaches always have in the back of their minds a picture of that perfectly executed offensive play or the perfectly run defensive play. Although the coach has never seen his players execute it perfectly, the coach still has a vision of what it would look like if they ever did run it perfectly. Because only then can you coach toward it."

Martin Luther King saw a world where people were judged by the content of their hearts and not the color of their skins. He did not live to see it. We still haven't seen it... not completely. But he said, "I have a dream." It wasn't just a dream. It was his ability to imagine a preferred future. He gave his life to it because he had faith that it was God's will and that in God's time and in God's way it would come.

If reality is only what we can see and touch... if all we see are the facts of life as we have them, then about all Christmas has to offer us is a temporary escape... excessive shopping, gift swapping, over- consumption, a toast to the New Year, cross your fingers and hope for the best, but don't become too depressed if the best doesn't show up.

I suspect that for most of us, it is the facts of life which bring us to church each Sunday. We desperately need to counter the facts with an infusion of faith. There are those among us who carry a tremendous sense of loss. Loved ones have died.

Relationships did not turn out as we had hoped. Hopes we had for our children have not come to pass. There are those among us struggling with uncertainty because of cancer. Will it go into remission? Will life ever be the same? There are those among us struggling with discouragement and depression for whom the thought of Christmas is a source of anxiety and dread. There are those among us who feel they are about to be buried under an avalanche of indebtedness. These people do not need to be reminded about the facts. They need more than coping skills. They need a different vantage point.

Can you imagine there is more going on in the world than meets the eye? Instead of houses adorned with millions of twinkling lights, can you imagine a brilliant star? Instead of canned carols at Wal-Mart, can you walk into the cold December night and imagine angel choruses. Instead of standing in a long, slow checkout lane and being waited on by a cashier who, it seems would just as soon have a root canal as wait on you, can you imagine yourself out behind the inn, waiting your turn to kneel before the Holy Child of Bethlehem?

In a little while the Deacons will be serving hors d'oeuvres. That's what St. Augustine called communion... hors d'oeuvres from heaven. You will come forward for a piece of bread and a sip of juice. You will imagine it is Jesus' body and blood. You will imagine you are taking his life into yours. You will imagine it is the most important thing you'll do because He is the most important reality there is.

Advent is the time to prepare the way of the Lord. We prepare for it by imagining that because He came, nothing will be the same. Imagine He is here. Imagine He is available. Imagine what can become of us if we see ourselves in a new way and accept risks because we boldly believe God has a better future for us.

As you take the bread, think of it as a foretaste of the day when God will see to it that all hungers are fed. Imagine that because of our lives are gathered up into His, we have something grand to live for...

For lo, the days are hastening on, by prophet bards foretold,
When the ever-circling years come round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song which now the angels sing.

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