St Luke’s, Havelock North – Advent 3, 2007 – Sermon
“The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news
brought to them.”
On this third Sunday of Advent we find ourselves presented with
a set of readings that feature both similarities and contrasts and we’re
challenged to bring them together and wrestle with them and somehow draw some
sense from them.
On the one hand our gospel reading suggests we should engage our
senses – what we see and hear and experience – while on the other both Isaiah
and even more so Mary invite us to engage our imaginations.
I think I’ve mentioned before Peter Gomes’ description of the
Bible as a ‘book of the imagination’. Gomes encourages us to get away from
seeing scripture in terms of facts and figures, or historical account, or
how-to manual, and instead to embrace the sense of imagination it can engender.
Certainly I believe that when we do that, when we suspend our attempts to make
too much logical sense out of what we’re reading or hearing, we begin to see
books like Isaiah and the Song of Mary in a whole new light.
Today’s Isaiah passage really just continues the theme of the
past two weeks. Once again we have Isaiah holding up a vision of hope in a new
world to come, although, also once again, we only get half the story. As with
other similar accounts in Isaiah, if we look at the wider context we find this
one is the flip side to the previous chapter which balances a hope in the world
to come with a harsh judgement of the world as it is,
and the Song of Mary, the magnificent Magnicat, takes
that theme and expands it even further.
Mary’s song of rejoicing is well known and rightfully well loved
as a beautiful and moving canticle of the Church, but beyond all that it
remains a truly radical and revolutionary piece of prose. Mary, having shared with
But maybe that’s the point. While Peter Gomes encourages seeing
the Bible as a book of the imagination, theologian James Whitehead goes a step
further and describes imagination as the very fabric of faith. “Faith,” he
writes, “is the enduring ability to imagine life in a certain way.” “To imagine
life in a certain way,” doesn’t that start to ring true when we think of the
world Isaiah and Mary envision?
I don’t think it’s that easy for us though. I think many of us
aren’t actually very good at imagining, we’ve more or less had it bred out of
us in many cases. We’ve been taught to focus on logic and facts and the
realities of life, and told not to waste out time daydreaming or exercising our
imaginations. That’s why children often get more out of this time of year than
adults do – they still have the ability to suspend what we see as reality and
imagine things in a whole new way. Like the kid who needs nothing more than an
empty cardboard box to be a famous racing driver or a tea towel and sheet to be
a shepherd or Joseph.
But if we take what James Whitehead says seriously, if we begin
to see faith itself as an exercise of imagination, maybe we too can begin to
see reality through a different lens. That’s certainly what Jesus invited the
disciples of John the Baptist to do.
Much has been written about the relationship of Jesus and John
and much of it is somewhat unfair. There’s little to suggest an enduring
rivalry or dispute, although it’s clear that there did end up being two
different and possibly rival groups of disciples, and it was certainly in the
interests of the early Christians and gospel writers to ensure that John’s
ministry got downplayed while Jesus’ was highlighted, that aside though, it’s
clear Jesus didn’t exactly resemble the messiah John had expected and
announced.
“Are you the one who is to come?” There’s something almost
haunting about John’s question, asked from a jail cell he knows he’ll probably
never leave – has my mission been a success? Or has it all been in vain? Jesus
being Jesus can’t send back a simply yes or no with the disciples who pass the
question along, instead he tells them to tell John what they have heard and
seen – sight and hearing restored, disease healed, the dead raised and good
news brought to the poor. All of this, Jesus infers if seen through the right
eyes, perhaps with just the right amount of imagination, provides the answer
John is looking for.
I wonder if we can see through those eyes?
There’s no question that trying to see as a reality for us what Isaiah and Mary
imagined is a huge challenge, especially when we’re more in the camp of the
powerful than the lowly and the rich than the hungry.
I talked about this last week and I’ve touched on it before, the
reality for us is that just as it was for the Sadducees and the Pharisees in
Jesus’ time and the royal households of Isaiah’s, so these visions of hope
carry little that’s immediately positive for us. Isaiah’s prophecies and Mary’s
song make it clear that the lowly will be lifted up, but only at the expense of
the powerful, and the hungry will be fed, but only if the rich get less. It’s a
song well sung in the slums of
I don’t want to spend time trying to find ways around these
challenges and tensions for us because I think the effort would be wasted.
Instead I want us to consider that perhaps an invitation of Advent is for us to
stretch our imaginations somewhat, to see things through different eyes than
perhaps we normally might and imagine Mary’s song is our song too, that her
rejoicing is our rejoicing.
So how do we do that? How do we sing a song that will quite
likely stick in our throats sometimes? How do we rejoice in a vision that will,
if it ever comes to pass, cost us and those like us dearly? We just do. We
imagine it as being so and keep imagining it until, one day, our imagining and
our reality meet up. We keep singing that song loud enough and long enough
until Mary’s song becomes our own and we begin to realize that every other song
of the future apart from hers is simply off key.
May God and we
make it so. Amen.