A Failure of Imagination

A Failure of Imagination--February 17, 2017

"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church an in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen" [Ephesians 3:20-21]

"What we've got here," begins the classic line from Cool Hand Luke, "is a failure to communicate." 

Well, that may or may not have been the trouble for Paul Newman, but for us, let me dare to suggest a different diagnosis.  Maybe at the heart of the me-centered, bent-in-on-self ("incurvatus in se," if you want to say it in Latin in Luther's lovely phrasing) mindset with which we all struggle, maybe deep down the root of it all is a failure of imagination.

You may well know that phrase already.  People talk about the lack of planning for all possible outcomes as a "failure of imagination." The idea there is that there are so many dangers out there in the world that you have to be vigilant in thinking of all the possible things that could go wrong, or all the possible threats out there, or else you will be caught off guard in the bliss of ignorance and naivete. 

But allow me to venture the notion that there is another kind of failure of imagination.  What if the reason I am so self-centered, so focused on getting "my way" and "my winning", is that I cannot imagine that there could be another way of living or seeing the world?  What if the root problem is a refusal to practice the imagination of faith that looks for how God might do bigger and bolder things than my tiny little wish-list?  What if, like the vision of the philosopher and mystic of the 16th century Giordano Bruno (who was burned at the stake for his breadth of vision), there is a universe of infinite size and beauty all around me, and I have been trying to coop it all up inside the sphere of what I can see?  What if God has been inviting us all along to see bigger, wider, deeper, and further, but we are, all of us, hung up on our narrow self-interest and tiny little problems?

The letter to the Ephesians suggests something like that--the writer calls God the one who "is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine."  Think about that for a moment. The limitations are not on God--the limitations come from how much my feeble mind can think to ask for! 

So often, our vision of the world, our picture of life, is bounded too narrowly by what we think is "practical" or "reasonable" or "common sense" or even "natural."  So often, our vision of the world is limited by my small-brained thinking that "there is only so much to go around, and therefore, I need to grab all I can for myself and my group."  So often, we say to ourselves, "That Jesus stuff about multiplying loaves and turning cheeks and giving to any who ask of you is nice... but it's just not realistic.  You have to grow up and enter the real world and learn to look out for number-one."  So often, we say, "All that stuff about wolves and lambs lying down in the new creation--that's for after we die when we get to heaven.  But for now, I had better be ready to fight for what I want, or else the boogeyman will take it away from me." 

Ah, but the letter to the Ephesians dares us to take our faith seriously.  Ephesians says, "The problem is not that God cannot preserve you if you dare to love enemies and practice radical generosity.  The problem is that you don't really believe God could or would take care of you, and so you don't dare living out Jesus' teaching because it doesn't sound realistic."  Ephesians is saying the problem is not that God cannot multiply loaves to feed the world if we dare to share our bread--the problem is that we don't really think God is up to the task, and so we hold back our lunch on the hillside, because it looks like there is not enough to go around.  The problem is not God. The problem is not that such faith is unrealistic or silly.  The problem is a failure of imagination.  We dare not really live like God is real and really active in the world, and so we immediately turn back inward to preserve our own interests.

There is a term for that, you know:  practical atheism.  That is to say, we religious folks may say we believe in God, but when it comes to our actions and priorities, we behave as though God is not real and we are on our own to protect ourselves.  We may mouth the words of creeds and dogmas, but when it comes to actually living like the Maker of the universe really has commanded us to "care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger," we invent all sorts of reasons why that doesn't really apply to me... or that is a nice idea, but can't be done in real life. 

I mean, seriously, why is it that we church-goers get devout and misty-eyed all of a sudden when there is an unexpected healing of our loved one in the hospital, and we say proudly to our friends, "It was a miracle!  God really does miracles!" but when it comes to God's vision of a world in which enemies are reconciled, where all are fed, and where "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger" are cared for, all of a sudden our faith in a wonder-working God evaporates, and we say things like, "Well, we just don't live in a world like that..."?  We have a believe in a selectively-powerful deity, it seems---a god (I will not capitalize this fictional deity) who clearly gets the credit for miraculous intervention when it is my need, my illness, my windfall to help me pay the bills, or my troubled times, but who seems strangely uninvolved or uninterested when someone raises the question of daring to live the life Jesus instructed--where enemies are loved, bread is shared, and debts are cancelled?  Why is it that all of those kinds of things seem too much to ask of God to make possible, but the cured case of cancer for which the doctors have no explanation seems perfectly reasonable to believe in?

Maybe the problem is that in my selective imagination, I am great at imagining God doing great stuff and big things for me and people like me (you know, good, upstanding, respectable religious people like me), but I cannot dare to imagine God being equally invested in lifting up the lowly, feeding the hungry, and defending that recurring triad of the marginalized in Scripture: "the widow, the orphan, and the stranger." 

So today, maybe we need to hear these words from Ephesians again, and to hear them both as a corrective and as a word of hope.  We need to hear first, that we are a bunch of hypocrites at some level, happy to think about God caring and intervening in my difficulty, but skeptical when it comes to imagining the same God getting involved in the lives of others whose suffering or heartache is outside my experience. We need to hear first from Ephesians the uncomfortable truth that just because something is not in my experience does not mean it does not matter to God, or that God cannot be passionately, fiercely, lovingly invested in attending to those needs.  In other words, we need to hear Ephesians tell us that we comfortable religious folk have been suffering from a failure of imagination.

And then... then, we can hear the hope on the other side the same coin: just because my mind and my imagination are too small or too self-absorbed to conceive of God big enough to care about all, that doesn't mean God actually is so small.  Just because I may only be able to see a small slice of the night sky through my telescope does not mean the universe really is that small. It just means I need to allow the possibility that the cosmos is bigger than I can take in.  And the same is true of the living God.  Just because I can only conceive of my own limited experience does not mean that God is bound to my narrow set of first-world concerns.  Turns out God is allowed to be bigger than my capacity to grasp.

And wouldn't you know it, but the goodness and mercy of God is even allowed to be bigger than my capacity to imagine it.

Thank God.

Lord Jesus, widen our vision, and pull our heads out from wherever we have buried them, so that we can take in a fuller view of who you are, and what your love will do today.