Apr. 26, 2009 - Can You Imagine? - 1 John 3:1-7
Just a week or two ago, we all caught a news clippings about our president visiting the Queen of England. There was a lot of discussion and even some controversy about how Obama and his wife interacted with her highness.
I wondered how hard a life that must be – to have all the promise of the crown of
I wondered how hard it must be to keep that goal in mind. To know what he will be when the day comes, if he continues in his duties. I wondered just how hard it is to live your entire life in preparation for a goal that never quite comes and always seems just a little bit out of reach.
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We who call ourselves Christians face the same kind of dilemma. Like Prince Charles, we live in a kind of limbo – a kind of in-between state. We are not waiting to become the King or Queen of England, but, having tasted of God’s grace and having received the promises of God, like Prince Charles, we wait for the fulfillment of that has been promised. We live having been saved from the consequences of sin, but we are still not free from it – we are heaven bound, but not quite there, we are citizens of the realm of Heaven and still subject to the kings of the earth - and it is just this between-ness – this not quite there-ness - that John addresses in this morning’s epistle text.
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At the time John wrote the epistle of 1 John, he 1st century Christians were being attacked on every side. From outside the church, they were persecuted by the Romans. From inside the church, they were challenged by a heretical group called the Gnostics. The Gnostics were those who wanted to treat Christianity like just another philosophy, who denied that Jesus came in the flesh and so he could have never died on the cross. They wanted a nice neat philosophy about the spiritual Jesus, without the messiness of the humanity of Jesus, the mercy of Jesus or the commands of Jesus – sort of like 21st century people who think of themselves as spiritual, but not religious, the ones who say they can have faith without ever going to church and who can worship God while mowing their yard, tending their livestock or fishing in their pond.
The 1st century Gnostics, like their 21st century counterparts practiced a religion that was powerless, that saw things as they were and said, ‘Oh my! God is too far away and too busy to be concerned with us and there is nothing we can do to make things better ourselves.’
They had lost their vision – and they had lost their hope.
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And so in the first verse of this morning’s epistle lesson, John calls for them – for us – to wake up to a renewed reality of the power – and the love – that is ours through the cross of Christ. ‘See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called the children of God (1 John 3:1, NRSV)’.
What love the Father has already given – not what love God will give, or might give or is in the middle of giving now – but has already given. When Jesus became flesh and lived among us, it was not to condemn us, it was to teach us, to show us the way to eternal life, to show us the way to live with one another – and most of all it was for love – that we could be called children of God – not servants, not slaves, not worthless sinners, but so we could be beloved children of the creator of the universe.
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And as we read further in this morning’s lesson, John assures us ‘that is what we are… Beloved, we are God’s children now’. We are God’s children now – today. Not just at some future time when we get our act together. Not at some future time when we can become perfect or when we have done enough penance, but right now in this moment and in this place we already have reality of God’s love and the assurance that we are now God’s children.
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If this were the end of the message from John, this would already be wonderful news. But there is more. The writer continues: ‘What we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him’
What we will be has not yet been revealed. God is not done with us yet. We are still on the road to becoming like Jesus and looking at myself, I can tell that there is plenty more to do.
But if there were ever a hope not just for the future, but for the present, this is it. What we will be has not yet been revealed. What we are now is not the end of our experience. Who we are now is not the end all or the best that we can be. Where we are now is not the end of where we will be.
God is still at work. We are all living in a spiritual construction zone. We all still live with the expectant hope and the holy assurance that this is not all there is.
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But it is not always easy to take hold of this hope. It is not always easy to let go of what we know and of those things with which we are comfortable. It is easy to look around at the world and believe that things are only getting worse, to look at ourselves and believe that the best is behind us and the future holds only steady decline or at best more of the same.
But this is not what the Christian life is all about. The Christian can agree with the English poet, Robert Browning wrote: ‘Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.’
What we will be, not just in heaven, but here and now has not yet been revealed to us, we are still becoming Christ-like, we are still becoming the person God intended us to be before the ravages of the world got to us – and we dishonor God when we cling to the past or use the past as a crutch or a shield against the future.
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What we need is imagination. What we need is to open ourselves up to the gift of life and the gift of creativity that God gave to each of us and to use it to become more Christ-like.
Can we imagine what eternity will be like? Can we imagine ourselves re-formed into the image of a loving, caring and merciful God? Can we imagine ourselves changing every day, bit by bit, into the person God intended for us to be?
Can we catch the vision for Christ at work in our hearts? Lloyd John Ogilvie writes, ‘The Christian life begins when we imagine ourselves loved and forgiven, accepted and affirmed, released and empowered.’[1]
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Christianity is not a life where every day is more of the same from yesterday, it is an exciting roller coaster ride guided by the Holy Spirit, with exciting twists and turns that will keep us energized and expectant every second of the ride.
The question is, can we imagine what it will be like? Can we imagine what we will be like? Can we imagine the joys, the adventures, the challenges we will encounter? We had better because we become what we imagine ourselves to be.
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It is said that creativity is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, but this morning let us say that it is 1% imagination and 99% perspiration. However we see it, most people look at that figure and think that it takes a lot of hard work to accomplish anything, but another way to look at this is that the 99% of perspiration is of no use without that little 1% of imagination. Without that little spark, that small, God-given seed of imagination, that itty-bitty bit of creativity, the 99% would be pointless and directionless. We would be all dressed up with no place to go, we might have a lot of time, energy and interest, and nothing to do - that is of course, if we could be motivated at all.
With imagination comes motivation and motivation is an amazing thing. With it, we can accomplish almost anything, without it, we get stuck in the quagmire of monotony. Without motivation, we face lives of the same-old, same-old where every day that looks just like the day before it and holds no hope that tomorrow will be any different.
For us, our imagining, our inspiration, our hope is to become like Christ in the future. Our challenge is to become Christ-like now. To stop saying we are Christians and to start becoming Christ-like – to not just say, but do.
And this doing is not about how carefully we can manage our lives. It is not about how many rules we can keep or about how holy we can look to others – or even to ourselves. This doing is about receiving the love of God that makes us children of the holy and then allowing that love to spark our hope, our imagination of what is to come.
This doing is about opening our hearts to what can be, to fulfilling what God intended for us from the creation of time, to imagine what all that means and to strive for it with all that we are now.
‘What we will be has not yet been revealed’, but it exists in the imagination and the eternal knowledge of God, and if we can open ourselves to the voice of God, to the leading of God, we can begin to imagine the same thing and we can begin to become the fulfillment of that imagination.
Boundless hope in Christ, certain futures with the Holy Spirit, eternal joy in presence of our holy parent.
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Can you imagine? Amen.
