Imagine others are there
Isaiah 65: 17-25
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
November 13, 2022
(So I started a silly humorous Facebook community page, entitled "How the Hell Should I Know?", of which I am one of the admins and church was accidentally livestreamed from it this past Sunday. Makes for a funny joke...where is this past Sunday's livestream? How the hell should I know? And you would be right! The church Facebook page can be found here.)
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| Photo of a neon sign the word "open" in lower case letters, in red, yellow, green, and blue letters, hanging in a window. |
Poet Wendell Berry, in his brief poem entitled “Dante”, wrote, “If you imagine/others are there/you are there yourself”. Of course, he is referencing hell, in that when we imagine who we would like to consign to eternal punishment, we put ourselves there as well. When we persist in thirsting for revenge and derive satisfaction from such thoughts, we have created our own little corner prison cell. And yet we could also imagine same about these new heavens and new earth that God is creating. If you imagine others are there, you are there yourself.
And yet who are the others we imagine will be in these new heavens, this new earth? If they look like us, sound like us, live like us, they really aren’t others—they’re us! And again, we will have created more of a prison than something that gives life, which is change and diversity and new ways of being.
It is all too human to want to reach back to what was familiar, even if it comes with its own problems, because at least we know what to do within our customs and habits. Traditions ground us and give us a sense of story and context and yet we now know that some traditions are based on myths or even distortions of truth. Our Thanksgiving holiday is a prime example. We know that our modern meal was nothing like what may have been eaten by early settlers, certainly not the quantity of food. There certainly was not an attitude of equality between Europeans and Indigenous Americans—Europeans who thought they had found their new heavens and new earth, a new Jerusalem, in a land whose inhabitants had been there for over 10,000 years.
So when we imagine others are there in these new heavens, this new earth, we must imagine those who are wholly other than us. Not only that, we must also possess a certain dissatisfaction with the way things are, we must care about what God cares about, if God is truly going to create something new. God isn’t talking about reform or a few tweaks or five steps to a more resilient you or fill out this form to receive your benefits. God is imagining and creating something new, not shiny but strange, not the latest technology, rather we don’t know how it works or what it will even look like. Social justice theologian Henri Nouwen wrote in a prayer, “I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.”
In this reading from Isaiah, God wants to give God’s people something they’ve never had before: wholeness. No more trauma and grief from the wounds of exile. No more captivity or enslavement or bloodshed. No more greed or exploitation of labor or housing. No more unhoused people. No more food deserts or famines. No babies dying only after a few days, no one dying before they’ve had a chance to grow old. No more suffering that comes from seeking only after self-interest. At long last there will be rejoicing, fulfillment, and peace.
The God of Isaiah is the Creator of the heavens and the earth, who is in control of history. Yet we know that the moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice not only if we bend that arc, but if we are willing to bend toward justice. Again, Henri Nouwen wrote that we can’t think our way into a new kind of living. We must live our way into a new kind of thinking. It is not a utopia we are out to build but to allow a better world to be made through us, through our lives and our life together. A repairing of the world. A transformation of the heart. When we imagine others are there, we are there ourselves.
The spiritual address of every human being and community is “now and not yet”. We are always living in the ‘in-between’, the interim, the temporary, a liminal place in which we look for guarantees but find none. Part of the big lie that is White supremacy is that the end of White dominance, capitalism, White privilege is the end of the world and so billionaires and politicians are seizing control as much of it as they can. Part of the big lie that is Christian nationalism is that the decline of the Church is the end of Christianity. What arrogance! Indigenous and Black and brown people and their worlds have been destroyed again and again and in spite of that, out of their trauma and grief and their unconquerable hope they have shaped new ways of living. We ring the bell when our conveniences are threatened, when we sense that our time is running short. Time isn’t running out; only our individual experience of it is but we are not the fulcrum on which this earth or its history turns.
When he was 20 years old, former U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold began his personal diary with these words: “For all that has been, thanks. For all that is to come, yes.” We don’t know what the future of the Church will be—what the future of this church will be. It probably will not be the church we miss from just a few years ago or even the one we know now because the only way something grows and transforms is through change. In our fear we cling to the impossible: we want things to change but we want to keep what we have. Each year in our budget we flesh out, we embody what our faithfulness will look like but more often than not, we are asked to be church in ways we did not anticipate.
When we give, we open our hands to a future as yet unwritten. Better days are not promised to us, and yet when we imagine others are there, and are there before us, queer and trans, Indigenous, Black and brown, poor, disabled, everyone who has been consigned to hell on earth but nonetheless has made new ways of living, when we imagine others are there, we are there ourselves. How will our church be part of the transformation of what is into what could be? Let us imagine what we could be and then live there.
Benediction
Imagine others are there, and there you will be also.
Imagine others are there, and there compassion and justice will be also.
Imagine others are there, and the web of interconnection appears
Healing the kindom of all living things and the Living God
In one glorious living whole. Amen.
The spiritual address of every human being and community is “now and not yet”. We are always living in the ‘in-between’, the interim, the temporary, a liminal place in which we look for guarantees but find none. Part of the big lie that is White supremacy is that the end of White dominance, capitalism, White privilege is the end of the world and so billionaires and politicians are seizing control as much of it as they can. Part of the big lie that is Christian nationalism is that the decline of the Church is the end of Christianity. What arrogance! Indigenous and Black and brown people and their worlds have been destroyed again and again and in spite of that, out of their trauma and grief and their unconquerable hope they have shaped new ways of living. We ring the bell when our conveniences are threatened, when we sense that our time is running short. Time isn’t running out; only our individual experience of it is but we are not the fulcrum on which this earth or its history turns.
When he was 20 years old, former U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold began his personal diary with these words: “For all that has been, thanks. For all that is to come, yes.” We don’t know what the future of the Church will be—what the future of this church will be. It probably will not be the church we miss from just a few years ago or even the one we know now because the only way something grows and transforms is through change. In our fear we cling to the impossible: we want things to change but we want to keep what we have. Each year in our budget we flesh out, we embody what our faithfulness will look like but more often than not, we are asked to be church in ways we did not anticipate.
When we give, we open our hands to a future as yet unwritten. Better days are not promised to us, and yet when we imagine others are there, and are there before us, queer and trans, Indigenous, Black and brown, poor, disabled, everyone who has been consigned to hell on earth but nonetheless has made new ways of living, when we imagine others are there, we are there ourselves. How will our church be part of the transformation of what is into what could be? Let us imagine what we could be and then live there.
Benediction
Imagine others are there, and there you will be also.
Imagine others are there, and there compassion and justice will be also.
Imagine others are there, and the web of interconnection appears
Healing the kindom of all living things and the Living God
In one glorious living whole. Amen.
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