Abstract
I recently became a first-time uncle. When a new child arrives two things often happen. First, we’re jolted out of habitual patterns of thinking. We exercise ‘hopeful imagination’. We imagine what the child’s life will be like and we harbour dreams on their behalf. We desire their safety and well-being. We think about the tragedies and the ecstasies that await them. As we pray for the child and baptise the child, we imagine them being grafted into the One who will uphold them in life and death.
Secondly, the arrival of a new-born may also make us aware of the need for repentance –that is –a change of heart and mind that amounts to a deliberate turning away from negative aspects of our past. The new arrival might mean that we embrace a healthier lifestyle or seek the sort of work that will allow us to provide for the child or to spend quality time with them. It may mean that we bury old hurts, so the child has a chance of growing up in a reconciled family. A new birth may be the circuit breaker that motivates us to confront our lesser selves and embrace some positive changes.
Without hopeful imagination everything looks like more of the same: we can become cynical, stagnant and resigned. Imagination allows us to project our thoughts forward to a possible future. It allows us to hope. At the same time, without true repentance we’re never freed from the past and we’re unable to make concrete progress from the present to this hoped-for future. Acts of bold imagination and a serious call to repentance are at the heart of today’s readings.
Take Isaiah in the first instance. The context of this passage is national catastrophe. The superpower of the Ancient Near East had invaded and the people of Israel –already divided among themselves into Northern and Southern Kingdoms –were unable to offer any successful resistance. The northerners had been completely defeated, then divided up and shipped off to exile. Effectively, their kingdom had been wiped off the face of the Earth. The southerners survived, but now lived as a subservient client state; brought to heel in the fear of meeting the same fate. Here in the midst of horrific violence and debilitating uncertainty, the author of Isaiah 11 comes along with a bold vision. Words of hopeful imagination rise from the ashes of history. He dreams big and his vision is for a new type of king that would rule and a peace that would be unlike anything they had ever known.
What the author imagines is fresh green shoot rising up from the stump of a tree that had been hacked down. ‘The root of Jesse’ is mentioned both here and by Paul in Romans as an image of hope. You might remember that Jesse was King David’s father and so the hope is that just as David emerged from obscurity to become a king of renown, so God would raise another leader to herald in a new age. This king would not have the failings of David and his descendents, however. It was, after all, acts of apostasy and poor political judgement from this Royal line that contributed to the present catastrophe. The imagined ruler would be different. One commentator notes that Isaiah ‘envision[s]… a time when the ruler will no longer see himself as privileged but rather as responsible, when he will become one for whom his people’s welfare is uppermost. In a word, the ruler will be the servant, not because he is too weak to dominate, but because he is strong enough not to need to crush. This picture cannot be applied to any merely human king’. (John Oswelt, The Book of Isaiah, 1986, 278.)
What is imagined is God’s anointed one, whose power would always be exercised in the awareness of being answerable to a greater power. This new king will see himself not as dictating the good, but rather serving the good. He will have divinely inspired insight to enable a move beyond appearances in order to make truly impartial judgements. What’s more he will exercise leadership strength but not that of raw violence. Rather than striking down enemies with the sword and relying on fear to cling to power, it’s by the ‘rod of his mouth’ and the ‘breath of his lips’ that his authority will be secured. The king’s wisdom and impressive moral integrity constitutes the force that will undermine enemies and reinforce people’s loyalty.
What then follows from Isaiah is a vision of universal peace; a kind of Sabbath when the brutal striving of power against power, life against life is calmed. Scrapping around for scarce resources in a quest for mere survival is replaced by rest, abundance and peaceful coexistence, not only among humans, but for all of creation.
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam comes to mind at this point, with its famous reference to the person: Who trusted God was love indeed And love Creation’s final law Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek’d against his creed
Nature red in tooth in claw is what we know, and it’s what the author of Isaiah certainly knew. But it’s as if the harshness and violence of the context emboldens him to radical acts of hopeful political imagination and deliberately outlandish visions of peace. These visions could be read as wishful thinking from a delusional religious mind. Such a judgement would be flippant. Yes, there is something wild and idealistic about these words, just as there’s something wild and idealistic about Jesus putting forward the beatitudes and the imitation of his own sacrificial love as a real possibility for us. I think of a mentor of mine who said that ‘the limits of a person’s habits of thought are limits also of what he or she can be expected to try and do’. Wild feats of imagination allow us to break old habits of thinking and raise the expectations of what’s possible. I also think of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr who referred to ‘the relevance of an impossible ethical ideal’ and the need to imagine ‘impossible possibilities’. These imaginative ways of speaking not only inspire us in the midst of present struggles, but they also jolt us out of despair and resignation so as to work toward the future which God longs to give us.
What such hopeful imagination also does is lead us to repentance. When we have an ideal before us; when we have a vision of what the future could be, there’s a corresponding sense of the present being ‘brought up short’. We’re challenged to deep and profound change so as to orient our lives in the direction to which the ideal points. Repentance happens when we are consciously taking steps in the grace of God from immaturity to maturity, from irresponsibility to responsibility, from self-regard to a deeper regard for others, from bearing grudges to offering forgiveness. This is the repentance –a turning back to God –that both John the Baptist and Jesus called for.
In a moment we are going to gather for the Eucharist. In this act our imaginations are stoked into life. We imagine ourselves back at the table with Jesus and also projected forward to the heavenly worship around God’s throne. It’s a place free of rivalry, competition and strife. Here our imaginations are stoked with visions of peace, intimacy and abundance. At the Eucharist we’re also called to deep repentance. We are called to make a decision for God, for life and for love. In this act we open our hearts to the deep transformation of God’s Spirit and we embrace the future that he longs to give us.