Of Course: That is How the Messages of God Come to Us...
Sunday Morning Service
March 2, 2008
Preacher: The Rev. Pamela L. Foster
I read this past week that in early catacomb art the story of the man born blind, who is given his sight by Jesus, is a symbol of baptism. I think I can see why. When he goes into the pool of Siloam, the man is still blind. When he comes out of the water and goes back to Jesus, he is beginning to see. Early Christians would have interpreted the scene to mean that before we are baptized, we are blind to the ways of God. But after coming for baptism, our blindness is washed away — as was the man’s in the pool of Siloam — and we can see, however dimly, the way of following Jesus and pleasing our God.
When I come to this story, I think of a play I first saw a long time ago that so affected me I went out and bought it so I could have it around to read. The play is “St. Joan” by George Bernard Shaw. In Act I, Scene 1 of “St. Joan,” Joan and Robert de Baudricort, a very bad tempered man, according to the notes, are in heated conversation.
Joan: Good morning, captain squire. Captain: you are to give me a horse and armor and some soldiers and send me to the Dauphin. Those are your orders from my Lord.
A little later she says, “My Lord is the King of Heaven.”
They spar verbally. Presently Joan says, “I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.” Robert counters, “They come from your imagination.” And Joan comes back with, “Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.”
Imagination — of course, that is how the messages of God come to us.
By “imagination” the gentleman means something akin to “hallucination” or perhaps “unbalanced, unhealthy fantasy.” Shaw has Joan, however, meaning something quite different. She means imagination, as in the capacity to image through sight or through hearing or through what we have come to call a sixth sense, imagine God inviting us to participate in making all things new.
Shaw’s point in the play is that Joan could imagine, envision and go forth to try to effect the change she believed herself called to effect in the name of God.
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What if the future need not necessarily be the extension of the present? What if the future can and by God’s design and desire, will, be different in significant ways from the past and from the present. What if God’s design and desire calls us out of the past and the present into the new, while honoring the integrity of what has been and what is. What if God’s desire is not to cancel the past or the present but to continually transform and make new, freeing us from old binding ways, freeing us to new, expansive ways of praying and praising and serving.
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To be born blind in the ancient world was to be born to a predetermined future. One would be cast out … pitied, perhaps, but only by a very few. More certainly, feared and condemned. The prevailing belief was that physical illness and conditions such as blindness or deafness or lameness were evidence of having been cursed, cursed because of sin. So, the man we meet in the Gospel for today is twice isolated, for he is feared and condemned. People cast him out, reasoning from the convenient prevailing belief that he is being punished, cast out by God. The future for him can only be an extension of his cast out state.
My time as a hospital chaplain coincided with beginning public awareness of a disease called AIDS. One of my first nights on call, a nurse pointed down the hall, saying that a man at the end would probably die that night. When I got to the room I was confronted by a wall of signs demanding I take this and that precaution before entering. A cart to each side of the door held gloves and masks and gowns. Inside I found the man, his wife and her mother who was there to support her daughter. The burden on that grieving woman and on her mother to keep silence about what was really happening, really causing the loss of her husband was crushing. “Who sinned?,” wasn’t even in question in our city at that time. It was assumed that he sinned. And cast out as he was at the end of his life at the end of the hall, his wife would have been cast out for a long, long time if the name of the disease that wracked his body ever got out. Our fear of HIV/AIDS was that virulent, almost as virulent as the disease at that time. A time which is only about 30 years in our past. So ostracism around disease is not something consigned to the distant past. It is alive and well.
My point is that our fear and misguided, mistaken beliefs can take over and cripple the capacity to imagine God’s messages of healing and compassion and love.
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This is Lent. I think of Lent as Christian pilgrimage. I am on a pilgrimage. You are on a pilgrimage. We make this pilgrimage together. A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken in order to renew and refresh faith by going in the company of others toward a holy place. Our holy place, our holy destination in Lent is Easter. Easter, when Jesus who died is raised from death by God to new life.
That blind beggar had to die to being blind, the familiarity of it, the certainty of it. He had to be able to imagine that someone touching his eyes with fingers covered in a paste made of spit and dirt and sending him off on his own to bathe in a pool, that someone might have healing on his mind. He had to imagine that he could be free of curse and condemnation and that small acts like walking to a pool when he was told to do so could transform, make new. And he had to imagine himself into courage to bear the consequences of being given sight — remember, he was cast out again.
He had to imagine that God might actually be preparing a table before him in the presence of those who cursed, reviled and ignored him; that God might desire to anoint his head with oil and run after him to clothe him with goodness and mercy. The man had to image, envision, be ready to be surprised. His future need not be the extension of his present. Behold, all things could be new for him.
Perhaps as we continue our Lenten pilgrimage in self-examination and repentance, we need to acknowledge our failures of imagination: the ways in which we have turned from, refused opportunities to appreciate and participate in God’s project of making all things new. Perhaps God is suggesting to us that we could be more open than we generally are to imagination, to intimations of a future that honors God in new ways and heals us of old ills.
Yes, imagination takes courage… the courage of a Joan of Arc, who was labeled witch; the courage of Jesus, who was labeled blasphemer; the courage of a man or a woman born blind surprised into sight by God in Christ. Easter tells us that we are not bound to replicate the past or get stuck in the present. Facing our failures of imagination as we make the pilgrimage together toward Easter can, with God’s help, free us to be ready for the new things God has in store for us, God’s people of the resurrection, God’s people of Trinity Church.
We are the bearers of God’s hope in the world. We are the bearers of God’s healing in the world. We are the bearers of God’s mission for the world. We have been given the capacity to imagine, imagine God calling and giving into our hands the blessings and the work God has for us.
Perhaps some will say to us, “That is only your imagination.” God grant us the courage to reply, “Of course that is how the messages of God come to us.” Imagine what that could mean if only we believe. Amen.
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