Imagination Training

A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California.

In her book titled, My Body is Not a Prayer Request, Dr. Amy Kenny, a scholar, writer, and advocate, describes a common encounter she has as a disabled person who uses mobility devices.

It goes like this: a stranger approaches her and says something like: “God told me to pray for you. God wants to heal you.” So … before the likely well-meaning stranger has even spoken to her, they have made several assumptions about her.

Kenny writes that when she responds with something like, “oh thanks but I am quite happy with who I am in my body, made in God’s image” — the message often doesn’t get through. The person cannot believe that could possibly be the case.

Because ideology is a powerful drug.

Many of us have been formed in an ideology that tells us all disabled people need to be fixed. Need our pity. Maybe even our fear. Must want to be changed.

And so, today’s (long!) reading from John’s Gospel is close to Amy Kenny’s heart, because the story is familiar to her. Here, the disciples encounter a man who has been born with a disability, and, without talking to him, begin making assumptions about him.

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” they ask. And Jesus responds by dismantling the ideology that grounds the question itself.“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus says. And then. Instead of explaining this man’s life for him, Jesus tends and talks to him. And it is by this he is healed.

But … the message doesn’t get through. Witnesses cannot believe this could possibly be the case; cannot make this divine encounter fit with a belief system that insists sin is present there. Neighbors and religious authorities question one another, question the man’s parents. Demand that he give them an explanation that fits the distorted filter through which they unknowingly see the world.

And the man finally responds with these words: “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” I detect a wryness in the blind man’s tone. He’s saying, “Listen, I know you’re still somehow unable to see the truth right in front of you, but one thing I know – I was blind and now I see. Better than you, I might add.”

Because the real problem being addressed here was never physical blindness. The real problem was that people refuse to believe what they see when it challenges what they already think they know. And that kind of blindness is not limited to the first century.

Not all ideologies are bad. Every one of us carries ideas and frameworks about how the world works. That’s just a part of being human, I suspect. But history — and today’s front page news — shows us how powerful and damaging those ideas and frameworks can become. Powerful enough to make us unable to perceive what is right in front of us. Hard facts, direct testimony, video evidence — ideologies can block all of these from revealing something as important as the true belovedness and humanity of another person. Or another people.

Ideologies can prevent relationship. Stop us from simply speaking to one another. And at their worst, spark violence. Spark war. And retaliation for that war. And retaliation for that retaliation. As ideologies strengthen and feed on one another and stereotypes fester and grow. And cycles of violence continue.

The people who approach Amy Kenny, as she uses her mobility device, cannot imagine that she might be proud of her body just as it is. Even when she tells them she is.

The disciples cannot imagine that the man’s blindness is not the result of sin.

The religious authorities cannot imagine that God might work outside the rules they know.

Again and again, confronted with plain reality. And again and again the struggle to imagine that reality might be different from what they expected. Might disrupt their ideology. They can’t imagine.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if we could describe this time we are living through as an era of imagination collapse.

So divided and categorized, and isolated from one another, sometimes it feels like all we have are the markers of shared or unshared ideology when encountering the world around us. A hand knit red hat. A red baseball hat. A pride flag lapel pin. An American flag lapel pin. An Episcopal shield on a bumper sticker … a cross on a bumper sticker.

I will admit, encountering someone with every one of those markers kicks my ideological framework into gear, and threatens to stuff my imagination deep inside, if I let it. And every time that happens, there is a good possibility I have been wrong. There is a good possibility I have made assumptions about a human being, made in God’s image.

It can feel so hard to imagine that the person standing in front of us might be more complex than the category we have placed them in. How can I – how can we — imagine something better? For ourselves. For our world.

Writer and religious ethicist Dr. Liz Bucar suggests we start…  right here. In church.

In a piece published last month that Tina Popenuck sent along to me (thank you!), Bucar wrote that religious traditions train our imagination. They teach us how to look at the world as it is and, at the same time, hold in our minds what it could become. Not through fantasy, as some assume. Not through denial. But through what she calls a “disciplined attention to what reality itself suggests is possible.” In other words, faith trains us to let go of those distorted filters we might see the world through.

Jesus of Nazareth was trying to teach us about imagination. Even when encountering an imperial tax collector or soldier. A woman. A Samaritan. A so-called sinner. He taught us to imagine that what we are so sure we see, might not be the case. Or might not be the case forever.

So. you heard it here first: we are officially in training. Church is a place where our imagination does push-ups and laps. Where it gets stronger. Here, we listen to stories that challenge our assumptions. Here, we practice seeing human beings before we see categories. Here, bread becomes body and wine becomes blood. Here peace is passed like a gift we can hold onto. Here, we pay attention to moments of hope, name them, and share them. Here, we remember that every person we encounter is made in the image of God, and to approach each one with holy imagination.

And, more than anything, here we practice imagining a whole world made new. A world that is still coming, but also already visible in glimpses – in reality. If we’ll let ourselves see the evidence beyond our filters. In acts of kindness and care and sacrifice and joy and connection. In community. In changed minds. In new friendships.

Even at the foot of the cross, where we will soon spend time in Holy Week, even and especially there in the center of the storm of human violence, Christians train themselves to imagine that something else is true. Standing right in front of us: God is alive.

And in that work of imagination, something else is happening too: we are healing, and we are being healed. Restored to a way of seeing the world and seeing one another. Real, holy and unfiltered; as God sees us.