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Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, that we might be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you. Then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people. We pray this in the name of Jesus and in the power of your Holy Spirit. AMEN. When I was a boy, I built a tree house. I don’t remember just how I did that or even what my tree house looked like. I’m sure it was a simple abode, since I’ve never been much of a carpenter, architect or engineer. I do know this: it felt good up there, in that lofty place. I wasn’t all that high up, and yet it felt a bit like flying. Mostly, though, it was a place to hide out, to relax, to be myself. And I could invite a friend to join me up in my tree house, sharing a safe place, what I would now call a sacred space – just for a little while. On most any summer day I’d go up there with my books and comics and snacks. Sometimes I would read, but lots of times, I would just daydream, sing to myself, and think about making a secret club. I was sure my tree-house-become-club-house would be a place where only certain people could join and come to stay awhile. It would definitely be off limits to my little sisters. Reading the parable of the mustard seed this time around, I thought of that tree house. The description we’ve just heard – a seed that “when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all seeds on earth, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches…” (Mark 4:31-32) – that’s an image I’ve worked with and preached about often. But the last part of the image – branches large enough to let the birds of the air make nests in its shade – that’s the part that got my attention this time around. This time the story evoked memory and imagination in a way it never had before, as if Jesus were saying, Imagine it THIS way, Tom! Jesus went around evoking memory and imagination all the time. That’s what parables are supposed to do. As the Greek root para ballo suggests, parables are “stories thrown (like a ball) alongside our lives” (Nibs Stroupe, Feasting on the Word, p. 141). They connect us with something familiar, then surprise us by pointing us in another direction. They play with us. They mess with our tired, worn-out habits of thinking and being. I really don’t remember now, but I think I built that nest of a tree house because, as much as anything, I wanted to be under the branches of that tree. I must have climbed it dozens of times before I settled on that particular tree. It needed to be an old, safe, shady tree, grand and glorious enough to share with my friends. And yet, great as it was, it grew up from a small, single seed. In Jesus’ time, before there were electron microscopes, before molecules and atoms had been discovered, before anyone could conceive of quarks or photons, the mustard seed was a common image for the smallest thing you could imagine. Jesus knew this, and he used this image, this metaphor of the mustard seed to teach people about God. Now I’m not exactly sure what Jesus had in mind when he told this parable, but I think it’s about what seems like a crazy notion: that size, power, status, rank, physical prowess, or money just doesn’t matter to God. In God’s reign, God’s culture, God’s economy, Jesus seems to be saying, everything, everything is measured differently. Even a life. This means that, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant you feel, no matter how little your life may seem, in God’s world, Jesus tells those who would dare to listen, you actually have mighty, miraculous powers. Any garden can show us this is so. Who ever planted or helped something to grow in a garden or a field or a farm and wasn’t bowled over with amazement? Perhaps in this green, growing season, it’s time. It’s time to let our imaginations grow, right along with our tomatoes and cucumbers. What would happen if we had BIG dreams? What would happen if we let our imaginations go wild? What if we unchained our hearts, our minds, our imaginations? You might already be using your imagination to think about this afternoon, to consider what’s for dinner, even to dream of what’s going to happen on vacation. But what if we used our imaginations differently for just a few minutes this morning? What if we let Jesus so draw our hearts to God, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, that an image is evoked, an image of the way things are, the way things might be in God’s world? What might God’s world look like in Frederick, Maryland? Jesus invites us to imagine that. As we seek to connect our stories with the story of God’s Spirit at work in the world, even now, Jesus might be saying something like this: You count. You matter. Just like that mustard seed, that shrub, those birds, you matter. You matter because God made you, too, and God is still working in your life. Your life, your imagination, your witness in the world to God’s love have great value, because God gave all of that to you. God has filled you with gifts, including the gift of imagination. Now it’s up to you. Only you can figure out what your gifts are and use them in the world. But don’t worry: God will even help you do that. Imagine. Imagine that. Jesus might also be releasing the power of our imaginations about God’s Spirit at work in the church, too. Jesus might also be saying something like this: You know, the church matters, too. Your church – whether it’s Evangelical Reformed United Church of Christ or All Saints’ Episcopal Church or whatever church it is – your church matters, in this broken, fearful, sin-sick world. Every time you come here to worship God, every time you put money into the collection plate, every time you go on a mission trip or hospital visit or committee meeting, it really matters (Well, OK. Maybe not EVERY committee meeting.). Whatever your church does to build up the economy of God, to strengthen the reign of God, to create a culture of God, on earth as it is in heaven – all that matters. It matters because it’s all about God. God inspires it, and God empowers it. God even imagines it! Fancy that. Imagine that. Sisters and brothers in Christ, God has called us together today in this place for the fourth Sunday in a row. God has called us to share a bit of rest in this sacred nest – here, for a few weeks during this summer season of pilgrimage. For Christians, all of life is a journey and a pilgrimage, with Christ and in Christ and for Christ. That’s true for individual people, for partners, for families – even for churches. The journey of All Saints’ and the journey of Evangelical Reformed – our two pilgrim journeys are such that God has seen fit to have them intersect and connect, to have us come together as partners for a season. This season of sharing a sacred nesting and resting place is indeed a good one for us. Yet like all seasons, our time together will end. The journey will continue. Then what? What if we imagined? During these remaining Sundays, what if we imagined what will happen next, when you return to your own sacred space in August? What if we thought of our two churches as two birds, two Christian bodies in flight? Are we simply birds of a feather, so to speak, flocking together for a season, resting peacefully under the branches of this particular grand old tree, nesting and resting together – and that’s it? What if, when God calls you to leave this nest, to take flight on your own, separate journey again – what if both of us, both our churches together considered the great things God might be calling us to do together next? What might sharing space, sharing flight, sharing dreams, even sharing ministry look like for our two churches this fall? Just imagine , Jesus is saying to us this morning. Imagine ALL that. - The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg, June 14, 2009 |
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