Imagine

First Sunday of Christmas, 2024

Imagine

First Sunday of Christmas, 29 December 2024

Peace of Christ Community

Pray with me: Father in heaven, we come into your presence this first Sunday of Christmas to praise you in concert with all of your creation. With the glad heavens and the rejoicing earth, with the roaring seas and all creatures that fill them, with the exultant fields and everything in them, with the trees clapping their hands and singing for joy, with mountains and valleys, with rivers and lakes, with all of these we join in praise for the gift of your son, Jesus. Open our ears and our hearts that we may hear and obey. In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer. Amen.

About five minutes into the movie “Love Actually,” Emma Thompson’s character pauses her Christmas busyness, turns to her young daughter, and asks, “So, what’s this big news?”

“We’ve been given our parts in the Nativity play,” says her daughter, “and I’m the lobster!”

“The lobster?”

“Yeah.”

“In the Nativity play?”

“Yeah. First lobster!”

“There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?”

“Duh.”

I laugh each time I watch that scene. I delight both in the absurdity and in the young actor’s pitch-perfect delivery of “Duh!” Later, near the end of the movie, we arrive at the school Nativity play and find on stage the usual Nativity characters along with a dog, the first, second, and third lobsters, a pair of penguins (I think), an octopus, and a whale. I laugh at this scene, too. But as much as I laugh, I still cringe a bit at the departure from the biblical narrative. I wish I could just roll with it, as Emma Thompson’s character seems to do, but some scandalized, fundamentalist ghost gets his tinsel in a tangle and croaks, “That’s not biblical!” At least I hope it’s a ghost and not me turning into a croaking Christmas curmudgeon. Perhaps it’s the ghost of fundamentalism past, because as William Faulkner warned, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”

This year, however, after I had watched “Love Actually” I was visited on Christmas Eve by a different Ghost. This Ghost whispered: “Ah, Gary, your imagination has withered. Your God is too small and your Nativity stable is too little.Why do you use scripture to limit God and creation rather than allowing scripture to expand your imagination of God’s grandeur? Scripture is the beginning of praise, not the end. Imagine this.” Then she began reciting Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Psalm 148. “Because,” she said, “it’s my favorite.”

Praise God in the highest heavens;

praise him beyond the stars.

Praise him you bodhisattvas,

you angels burning with his love.

Praise him in the depths of matter;

praise him in atomic space.

Praise him, you whirling electrons,

you unimaginable quarks.

Praise him in lifeless galaxies;

praise him from the pit of black holes.

Praise him creatures on all planets,

inconceivable forms of life.

Let them all praise the Unnamable,

for he is their source, their home.

He made them in all their beauty

and the laws by which they exist.

Here the Ghost stopped and said, “Are you with me?”

I said, “Yes, that sounds like Psalm 148. But bodhisattvas, quarks, and black holes? Those aren’t in the Bible.”

“But! But! But!” she said. “Whatever you label them, are all these not part of God’s creation just as much as you? Are not all created things called to praise God just as you are? Imagine joining the chorus of praise rising to God from the ends of the cosmos, from the tiniest, atomic elements of matter and the spaces between them to the utmost heavens beyond the heavens and the waters above even that.”

At this she paused and closed her eyes. She swayed slightly, as if listening to some faint music. Even with my hearing aids I heard nothing other than the static of daily background noise. I must admit it was an awkward moment. Silent ghosts are disconcerting. How should one behave in their presence?

After awhile she opened her eyes, looked at me, and said, “Perhaps I asked too much of your old imagination by beginning with the cosmic scale, with quarks and black holes and such. I’ll bring it down to earth.” Before she resumed her recitation of Psalm 148 I had only a moment to wonder how old one must appear for a ghost to call you old.

Praise God upon the earth,

whales and all creatures of the sea,

fire, hail, snow, frost,

hurricanes fulfilling his command,

mountains and barren hills,

fruit trees and cedar forests,

wild animals and tame,

reptiles, insects, birds,

creatures invisible to the eye

and tiniest one-celled beings,

rich and poor, powerful

and oppressed, dark-skinned and light-skinned,

men and women alike,

old and young together.

Let them praise the Unnamable God,

whose goodness is the breath of life,

who made us in his own image,

the light that fills heaven and earth.

“Now, can you imagine all that?” she said.

“I can,” I said. “I’ve seen movies…”

“Seriously?” she said. “It was your discomfort with a movie scene that brought me here. Listen, I’m trying to get you to imagine the world scripture imagines, not the world Hollywood imagines. The world scripture imagines is not a world of singing lobsters and talking crickets. OK, one talking ass, but that’s an exception.

“Scripture imagines a world in which all of creation praises God by fully being who and what God created it to be in community. There’s a music to creation’s praise beyond the range of human hearing. You hear it more with your heart than with your ears. Definitely no singing meerkats or warthogs.

“Scripture also acknowledges that God’s good creation has been distorted and subjected to futility because of humanity’s unfaithfulness. Even so, as Paul imagined in Romans chapter 8, all creation is standing on tiptoe, craning its neck, squinting its eyes, eagerly waiting and longing and hoping to see you become the children God created you to be so that creation itself can be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. All creation praises Jesus, for their redeemer has come not just to save and deliver you from your sins, but to convert you and transform you into the stewards of God’s creation you were created to be. And that’s good news for all creation. You have a responsibility, and like it or not, your life is not independent from the rest of creation, including penguins, octopuses, lobsters, and whales. I’m trying to get you to imagine that world.

“The world that creation longs for,” she said, “is the world that Isaiah imagined some 2,700 years ago when the Lord gave him a vision of the world Israel’s Messiah would inaugurate and eventually consummate, a vision of the world redeemed.

“The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like an ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

“I want you to imagine that world,” the Ghost said, “the world that scripture imagines. I want you to imagine a world in which Elizabeth, who had been barren all her life, could by God’s grace conceive and bear a child even in her old age. Imagine a world in which a virgin can conceive a child by the Holy Spirit. I want you to imagine the world that Mary imagines, the world in which the Lord ‘has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, he has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.’

“Imagine, as scripture does, that Mary’s boy-child is God’s son, born on Christmas day; that he is Isaiah’s ‘little child that shall lead them’ because he is the Messiah, the Word that was in the beginning with God, the Word through whom all creation came into being, the Word who came into his own creation to redeem it and set it free from sin, death, and the devil because he dearly loves the world. Imagine that he is the one who will restore God’s creation to the way it was meant to be, that he will fulfill all that the scriptures imagine. Imagine that he is the redeemer that creation has been so desperately awaiting and that upon the announcement of his birth, at his Nativity, all creation broke forth in rejoicing and glorious praise as the Psalmist described.

“Can you imagine the Nativity scene that could contain all God’s creation praising and rejoicing together at the birth of the redeemer? If not, your Nativity stable is too little.”

Then she vanished.

I thought about all the Ghost had shown me, especially how I had allowed my imagination to wither and how I had used scripture to limit rather than expand my imagination of the height, depth, and width of God’s grace, love, and mercy, and how my Nativity stable was too little. I really liked what she said about scripture being the beginning of praise and not the end. I resolved to try to imagine the expansive world scripture imagines and, by God’s grace, to live in that imaginary. I need you to join me in that imagining, and I hope you will, because it’s dangerous to do alone. We need to imagine together the world that scripture imagines.

In the end I came to this question: “If all of God’s creation, all of God’s creatures, stand with us in glad praise of Lord Jesus at his birth, then what’s more absurd, Gary, what’s the greater scandal: that the eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us, or that at least two lobsters were present at his birth?”

Though she didn’t show herself, the Ghost whispered, “Duh.”

Then I’m pretty sure I heard her laugh.

I awoke the next morning reminded of this scripture: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26)

Let’s pray together: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on us sinners. Grant us grace and vision to imagine together the world scripture imagines and the love and courage to live it. And send the Holy Ghost when we are being knuckleheaded curmudgeons. In your mercy, Lord, hear our prayer. Amen.