Straw Lion
Isaiah 65:17-25; Luke 21:5-19

November 18, 2007


All the TV and media coverage which inundate our minds and souls have one serious side-effect. These images, commentaries and opinions are robbing us of our imagination. Who can argue with the stark and brutal camera of live events, not to mention the babble of political rhetoric around so many issues - and it doesn’t matter whether it is supposedly bleeding heart liberals managing the news or right-wing fundamentalist conservatives. We seldom feel we can think of anything possible other than what we see on TV and our souls are burned out and impoverished by what we see. The suffering of the world’s poor and powerless are not helped one iota by the poverty of our imagination.

When Jesus preached to his disciples this apocalyptic message, the only people who find it enjoyable are the Late Great Planet Earth types, those who are convinced that when this world destroys itself, the true Christians will be rescued and rewarded - among which number they naturally assume they are counted. After all, Jesus reassures us, “Not a hair of your head will perish!” “It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!” Wow, is that an imagination when everything is going to hell, only we good guys will survive!

Most of us when we hear all this stuff do not believe we will survive. Overwhelmed, depressed, powerless in the face of powers far more cynical and ruthless and beyond our control, even Christians turn to a quiet resignation, understanding it all as a brand of fate and destiny. The Christian spin on fate - which is not a Christian idea - is usually called predestination, a logical extension of the notion that God is all powerful and all knowing, that God knows every detail of what is going to happen to you before you are born. But predestination is not really Biblical because God has a persistent habit of changing her mind. (Hey, if you insist on inclusive language, you have to take the hits!) God is involved with you and me totally and since God is not an automaton, a divine machine programmed into one track, God being the ground and source of all imagination lets her imagination - the ability to think of something new - rub off on you.

The prophet Isaiah is now recognized to be a split personality. Many believe there were three historical people who wrote under his name - the original Isaiah, son of Amoz, who wrote chapters 1-39 prior to the Babylonian Exile; a second who wrote during the exile in chapters 40-55, including the Suffering Servant songs; and here a third who wrote after the exiles had returned to Jerusalem in chapters 55-66. This third Isaiah is watching the Israelites returning to a wasted and destroyed homeland. They parallel many a segment of earth’s current population of refugees who are victims of war, deprived of their freedom and native land, and now apparently free but finding little left behind that is recognizable and useable. Their hopes certainly had taken a hit and would they ever be able to rebuild their city, their culture, their faith? Who would blame them for their deep despair?

Isaiah offers another way of thinking and of imagination. “Imagine, I am creating new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.” Something really new is afoot, but lest we forget, we refuse to forget about war and violence and oppression and have come to believe that our worst ways are the way of the world, that this is what reality is. Until you forget, better yet refute and deny the legitimacy of the corrupt violence of this age, you will keep making excuses for it, tazer guns and all, hoping only that you will luckily keep out of violence’s way.

Remember a few years ago when a Roughrider was caught with marijuana, he berated the media and the public that in the real world these drugs and their use happen all the time. He tried to claim that he knew what reality is and that we are living an illusion. Take note next time you hear somebody talking about the “real world.” Does that real world redeem lives and offer sustenance and hope that creates cooperation, respect and love among diverse people and peoples? No, the “real world” - the one you better get used to - is always dealing in corruption and favouritism, manipulation and oppression of those who are powerless, hell bent on financial profit, a universe of abuse and abusers, of violence and brutal power. No wonder we are despairing if that’s what reality is. No wonder we cannot forget violence if that is the only thing that is real.

Here were people who had been prisoners of war, deprived of their culture, and now they had returned home to discover that their home was no longer home, that it too had been destroyed. The one thing they did have left was imagination. They did not settle for remembering backwards and seeing only what once was and no longer is, but they remembered forward, sharing God’s joy in what can possibly be.

Lest we forget, in the first place God alone is real. The Israelites now look to a new Jerusalem where life will be considered precious, infant mortality and epidemics no longer a consideration, 100 hundred year olds the new 40, the work of our hands will not be confiscated and plundered by the Mafia or armies or governments. Reality will be as Isaiah says it for God, “Before they call out, I’ll answer. Before they’ve finished speaking, I’ll have heard.”

Imagine a world where the wolf and lamb feed together - and not on each other - and where the lion shall eat straw at the same trough as the ox. We have each seen such a real world countless times, though never enough. You have watched a poor man help a rich man, an Ulster Protestant sit down to eat with a Belfast Catholic, a Christian marvel at the words of the Muslim Sufi poet Rumi, a Hindu named Gandhi emulate the non-violence of Jesus and a Black Southern Baptist preacher emulate Gandhi. The real world is driven by a God who sees only his different children emulating God’s love and imagination, not disintegrating into hatred and anger over what makes us richly different. It takes imagination, God’s re-creation of our minds, to remember what is genuinely and enduringly real. With the nightly news constantly barraging and assaulting us, we have to remember to keep imagining what is really possible, and not whimper out in defeat and despair .

Roberta Bondi remembers another story from the desert. One day, when a brother came to his teacher despairing because he was so far behind in his prayers he figured he would never catch up, his teacher told him a story:

A man had a plot of land that had become a wilderness of thistles and thorns. He decided to cultivate it and said to his son: “Go and clear that ground.” But when the son went to clear it, he saw that the thistles and thorns had multiplied. He thought, “How much time shall I need to clear and weed all this?” and lay on the ground instead, and went to sleep. He did this day after day.

When his father found him doing nothing, the son explained his discouragement. The father replied, “Son, if you had cleared each day the area on which you lay down, your work would have advanced slowly and you would not have lost heart.” The son did what his father said, and in a short time the plot was cultivated.

We know this story already, for it is real in the best sense possible. Keep weeding, for that lion really needs good straw.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan