October 8, 2004
Imagination
Pentecost 19/23C
In a Doonesbury comic strip a while back, Mike is on a jet to New York, nervous, praying to “get a grip on himself.” A part of his uneasiness comes from the fact that his seat mate is dark, wears a turban, has a mustache, needs a shave, and is talking on the phone about cash, a rental car, and a motel.
Overhearing all this, Mike panics, confronts the man, and says in uncontrolled frustration, “Okay, look! I’m trying not to profile here.” The man, interrupted, says into the phone, “Hold on a moment, will ya, mom?”
As different as we think we are (and we can come up with some doozies), we have a lot more in common with one another than we have in uncommon. The DNA people say now there’s no such thing as race.
The story about Ruth and Naomi we’ve just now heard in today’s propers is about families, families not all that unlike our own. It is one of the better known and more heartwarming stories in all the Bible saga of our spiritual genealogy. Even though Naomi is a mother-in-law, she mothers her sons’ wives no less, even all the more. To read once again this poignant tale of tragedy, love, and loyalty can be a comfort in our own time of fear and anxiety, anger, and vengeance (Ruth 1.8-19a).
The confusing and tormenting events of these times drive deep down within us and test the spiritual bedrock common to all human beings, challenging us to be present to and to listen to others. We’ll need to share again and again our continuing consciousness about 9/11 and our more recent reactions to war’s escalation. Change has perhaps never been so dominant and demanding. In this season of terror, our family and community saga is even more important as it risks getting lost in the maelstrom and downplayed as unimportant.
The gospel story tells of lepers, people who were accustomed to being rejected. These had heard of Jesus and rightly suspected that he’d treat them differently. So they cried out, moving in closer than the safe distance required by the law. Jesus heard them and responded with healing words and with his usual drawing near and touching (Lk 17.11-19).
We consider well his and Naomi’s examples of warmth and reception, listening and healing. For of all times, this is not a time for keeping a safe distance from other people. It is a time to draw near, to listen, to touch, to offer an embrace.
This spirituality we all share in God’s creative imagining of us, in whatever form or shape, makes of us a common family. It calls forth from us our imaginations and reaches in to our own loneliness, pain, and grief. It can enrich our faith and become the key to discovering and appreciating the grace that today’s collect reminds us “precedes and follows, making us continually given to all good works” (Proper 23, BCP p 183).
Imagination, after all, is one of the most important ways that our faith is implemented and made incarnate. Can we not imagine, then, the healing bond that faith complimented when Ruth said to Naomi, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God… ” (Ruth 1.16b) and when Jesus said to the leper, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well” (Lk 17.19b).
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