January 10, 2010 – Baptism of Christ Sunday
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 and 1 John 4:14-15, 18-21
Rev. Jeffrey L. Phillips, pastor
Jan. 12 issue of Christian Century: Survey by the Pew Forum asked people if they have had a “religious or mystical experience” – a moment of religious or spiritual awakening.
White evangelical Protestants – 70%
Black Protestants – 71%
Whites belonging to mainline Protestant churches – 40%
Roman Catholics – 37%
I thought that was what we were in business for!
For many Christians, faith is about having right beliefs or doing right – knowing about God.
I think Christianity is about knowing God – sensing God’s love for you, having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Being certain about the reality of God in the world and in your life
Having a confident faith that comes from knowing that you belong to God through baptism
Knowing God as your friend
Knowing that God is always there with you, on your side, in you, being one with God through Christ
Having a “religious or mystical experience” - all the time!
What about you? Do you know God?
If having this kind of strong, personal faith is hard for you, maybe it’s not because there is no God, or because you aren’t believing the right thing or doing the right thing.
Maybe it’s a failure of imagination.
Left brain (rational, analytical, objective, scientific, breaking things into parts) versus right brain (artistic, creative, intuitive, subjective, holistic, integrative) – two different “modes” of thinking.
We need both sides of our brains to make sense of life, including the life of faith, even if we tend to use one side more than the other.
A lot of us are “left brain Christians.”
We also need to develop the “right brain” capacities of our faith – the kinds of thinking that employ our imagination.
Imagination – taking words, symbols, and acts, and playing with them in our minds so that they take on meanings beyond the words, symbols, metaphors, and acts themselves.
A healthy faith requires a vivid imagination.
Why? Christianity is frequently expressed in words, symbols, metaphors, and acts. To get to the God they point to, you need to receive the words, symbols, metaphors, and acts non-literally, and then allow them into your creative, meaning-making right-brain. That is where the “magic” happens. As you “play” with them as they are, you find yourself being taken to the Reality (God) to which the words, symbols, metaphors, and acts point.
In the same way Christians like us read the Bible (“seriously, but not literally”), we also need to “read” the words, symbols, metaphors, and acts of our faith – seriously, but not literally.
It’s time for an example!
God (or Jesus) as friend. “What a Friend we Have in Jesus” - a metaphor, but not “just” a metaphor!
Exercise: close your eyes and imagine Jesus as your friend. Go ahead.
OK – did you sense God near you? Did you have a “religious or mystical experience”?
Friend: just a word, right? An ordinary word describing a common human relationship and experience. But when we use our imaginations and apply the concept to God, it can take our relationship with God to another level.
SpongeBob and Patrick: episode where they buy a big flat screened TV just so they can use the box it came in to create a world of their own, using their imaginations.
Another example, this one an act: baptism.
Just water on a person’s head, right? That’s the left-brain way of viewing it.
But the right-brain way is to understand baptism is to imagine that at the moment the water hits the head, the power of sin is removed from the person for the rest of their lives; the moment the pastor puts his or her hand on the person’s head and declares her/him a “child of God,” the person is joined to God forever; the moment the pastor takes the child into the congregation, s/he becomes one with you, the church.
This requires an active imagination, a willingness to go with the intent of the word, the act, the metaphor, the symbol – suspend pure rationality for a moment, play with it, and allow it to work on you.
Many more examples – poetry, for example. This is how poetry works, and our hymnals are full of poetry, figures of speech, word pictures, images - all designed to point beyond themselves to the presence and power of a living God who loves each of us and wants to draw us near.
Just one more: the simple word “in.” 1 John 4:13: “We live in him and he in us.”
Implies being one with the object you are “in.”
Implies safety
Implies intimacy
Paul: Our lives are hidden with God in Christ.”
When I use the word “imagination,” you might be thinking that I’m saying that our faith is “made up,” that it’s all “pretend” and “make belief.”
That is not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the words, symbols, acts, and metaphors are tools, vehicles designed to take us to that which is Real – God. The words, symbols, acts, and metaphors may be made up by people. They are very human, aren’t they? Water, bread, wine, stories, parables, poetry, music, simple words like “friend” and “in.” In that sense, they are not to be taken literally, scientifically, or rigidly.
But that to which they point, if we get in them and allow them to do it, is Real. It is the Reality that stands behind the symbol.
Like the flag. The flag is not
Likewise the cross. Just a piece of wood, right – or two pieces of wood, right? Not if you use your imagination to remember what happened on this cross, and what it means about the extent of God’s love for you, and what this might mean for your life. But that requires some creative thinking on your part.
Well, in the world of Christianity, we have dozens and dozens (millions?) of symbols, words, acts, metaphors that are not the thing they point to, but, if you allow yourself to enter them and play with them, can help you get the Meaning to which they point – God.
Story from high school ministry class. I described communion as a “mere symbol” of Jesus Christ.
In our faith, we have no “mere” symbols or words or stories or rituals or images. Rather we have a multitude of cherished words, acts, metaphors, and symbols.
And, even if people have made them up, they are good gifts from a good God who wants to use every available tool to reach us until we get it – a relationship with the living God that is able to transform and renew our living.
So, are you ready for a “religious or mystical experience”? If so, use your imagination! It, too, is a gift from God.
[Morning Prayers – Taize]
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