Sermons
Spiritual Imagination
February 19, 2012
Transfiguration
2 Kings 2:1-12; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman
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Nearly thirty years ago, when I was around thirty years of age and just a few years into my ministry, we were still living our pre-urban existence in a small upstate community. Among the congregants there I developed a genial relationship with a retired teacher whose husband had died some years earlier. Betty was a warm, garrulous woman, some thought a little goofy, but generally well-liked. She also possessed an authentic spiritual restlessness, and though she was many decades older than me, she often came around to my office agitating for conversation about God and life and death. I came to like her quite a lot and found that her questions revealed honest, homespun wisdom.
Among other things Betty would say she wasn’t entirely sure what she believed from a religious point of view—and this worried her, caused her quite a lot of anxiety. When she spoke of her husband, which she did often, her eyes would well up with tears; she feared her sense of deep loss would never lessen. She fretted about her remaining days, about her loneliness and about her relationship with God. She wondered where her life was headed, where anyone’s life was headed, for that matter. I was always struck by what seemed a robust faith flowing underneath her questions. Inevitably we wound up laughing a lot. Part of her wisdom included a self-deprecating sense of humor.
Oddly, I found her questions strangely resonant with my own situation even though I was on the other side of life. It began to dawn that we had some things in common that I would not have guessed initially. So I came to learn how to listen to her questions. I was less good at providing satisfactory answers at that time in my life, but Betty was O.K. with that. It was enough she had a safe place to ask them she said, with someone who wouldn’t think she was, as she put it, “off her rocker.”
One day she walked into my office especially euphoric and after closing the door recounted in hushed tones how she had experienced a powerful vision that morning. Something like this had never happened in all of her 80 years. And it came while she was driving to the store, of all places. She described a certain stretch of two-lane highway with which I was familiar, unexceptional in its landscape, except for a sharp rise that topped on a small hill revealing a far, unobstructed view.
Breathlessly she said it wouldn’t sound like much in the telling, and that she hoped I didn’t think she was nuts, but as she came over that hill the landscape had been transformed into a vista of breathtaking, indescribable beauty. The dull winter-gray sky had become a brilliant blue and the land was lush and verdant stretching off into the distance. It felt holy. And eternal. Overwhelmed with all her senses on fire she pulled the car to the side of the road and sat as the experience washed over her. She was filled with a sense of overwhelming peace and gratitude. God was there, she said. She knew it with absolute certainty. She and God, together. And though the vision eventually faded back into a mid-winter gloom, her sense of God did not fade.
Normally very chatty, for the first time in our relationship she became very still and sat for many minutes in silence, her eyes focused on that far place. A palpable peacefulness settled in. Eventually she said quietly that I probably thought she was just some crazy old lady, but by God she knew what she knew. I replied that on the contrary, she seemed eminently sane.
As more days accumulated it became clear that this had been a life-changing experience for Betty. There was no doubt about that. And I found that every time I drove over that stretch of road in the weeks that followed I slowed down, secretly hoping that what she caught there might be contagious. Her experience, as small as it was in scope, nevertheless opened into a realm that was vast, and indeed, holy for her. I was a very green minister, but I was sure Betty had experienced an important epiphany. She lost her anxiety about what lay ahead for her. She was confident, assured and at peace.
Over the years I have come to understand that an important aspect of my role involves stimulating the spiritual imagination—prodding, agitating for a deeper engagement with what we call “the holy”, or “the Great Mystery”. Teaching and preaching are fine as far as they go, but they won’t amount to much without aroused, visceral engagement with Spirit. This spiritual agitation animates worship for the alert participant. Usually this doesn’t happen with a full frontal assault, but by invitation and surprise for someone on the lookout for the things that matter most of all.
A space like this and the worship we prepare in here is intended to cultivate the spiritual imagination of people seeking after God. That’s what all iconography is about. Our glistening portrait of Jesus up there, the golden mosaics, stunning marble, the soaring vault, talented musicians, inspiring choir are all meant to stimulate our senses in a way that opens new vistas; they are meant to soften our defenses against God, throw open some windows and doors in our spiritual house.
Those who come weekly discover that over time the worship discipline affects how they function outside these walls. Just as regular exercise increases physical stamina, exercising our spiritual imagination provokes a deeper understanding of the routine content of our lives, which are then punctuated with moments of insight. If, as I believe, it’s our spiritual imagination that reveals the deepest meaning of our days, it stands to reason there are no more important activities that could occupy our time than the sorts of things we do in here.
As our Gospel lesson tells the tale, Peter, James and John had been hanging out with Jesus for a while when they take a walk up a mountain and are surprised by a transfiguring vision. They had been steeped in the life of the temple of course; they knew the stories of Torah well and regularly participated in sacred ritual. They would have been very familiar with the wonderfully imaginative, mystical tales like the one Juliana read earlier about Elijah and the chariot and horses of fire that swept him into heaven in the midst of a whirlwind. Talk about spiritual imagination!
But now their own imaginations are stimulated into overdrive; as though an obfuscating scrim has been peeled away and they see what has been there all along, but hidden from view. They see the larger thing, the truer thing, the holy thing. And their lives are changed—but not immediately. At first they’re befuddled and afraid. It won’t be until some months later, after their own betrayal of this same Jesus, after his death, and their experience of resurrection, that this vision will disclose its meaning and take its place among the stories we now tell about Jesus and his friends, that it might stimulate our own imaginations.
At Christ Church we say our mission is to love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves. To claim and then actually attempt to embody such a thing requires spiritual imagination. You can’t get to it through any other means. From the world’s point of view this is a very counter-intuitive life mission, where, the reasonable directive might more nearly resemble, “Love yourself, and to hell with everyone else!” In order to get to our mission we have to see the world peeled of its outer appearance, to see it the way God does, so as to witness the glorious vista beyond.
When Jesus says things like, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled; blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”—to really hear and embody that way of living requires spiritual imagination. You can’t take in this wisdom through any other medium. Peacemaking, in a world of war? Humility, in a world of arrogance? Hungering and thirsting for righteousness, in a world where lusting after every conceivable material desire is the norm?
You can see how bereft we’d be without at least some handfuls of people developing their spiritual imaginations. Ultimately they are the ones who make it a far better place, who see its potential and who commit themselves to living into the vision that has been revealed.
Remember Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech? Remember how he envisioned the world through the lens of the gospel? It was as though he had a vision of our American culture peeled of its cracked veneer to see the glorious vista beyond. He had his eyes fixed on that far away place. And you know how that elicited fear and befuddlement for the longest time, even within those who thought they caught a glimpse of what he saw. You know that very many spiritually unimaginative people could not take in that vision. In fact, they fought that vision for the longest time, some even to the present day. Evidently in this broken world it requires spiritual imagination to recognize we all share the same sacred genetics.
Spiritual imagination requires openness to something larger than what we’ve known or expected, because to have a spiritual imagination is to want God to come by for a visit. And one thing is certain if God does show up: we won’t have control of the outcome.
On the night before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. famously concluded his speech in Memphis by saying this: “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land… Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Can you see it, too?
