To Really See
Sometimes to see a thing as it really is requires some imagination. I am not talking about the kind of imagination that makes up pink elephants or little green aliens. No I am talking about the kind of vision that pushes beyond what we can see with our physical eyes and aided by God’s revelation, sees more clearly. Brian Walsh in an essay entitled Subversive Preaching in a Postmodern World says this about the pastoral task, “(it) is fundamentally about shaping the imagination of the Christian community. ... We need preaching that will set the captives free, especially when they have become comfortable in captivity.” He builds off from Walter Bruggemann who observes, “The key pathology of our time, which seduces us all, is the reduction of the imagination so that we are too numbed, satiated and co-opted to do serious imaginative work.” … “It is the preacher’s primal responsibility to invite and empower and equip the community to reimagine the world as though Yahweh were a key and decisive player.” (Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope).
It occurs to me that empowering the imagination is exactly what God was up to in the construction of the tabernacle. It is a little weird isn’t it that almost immediately after getting Israel out of the slave clutches of the Egyptians, God invites the people to take up a collection from their hearts and to build an elaborate, mobil dwelling place in the midst of the wilderness (cf. Ex. 25). What is God’s play here? As we will see Sunday there is a lot going on, but a big part is that God desires his people to really see the universe. He wants them to understand that he is the key and decisive player in the world. He wants them to know his holiness, mercy and glory and weave it into their everyday lives. As we take a deeper dive into these tabernacle building instructions the next few weeks, our prayer is that the Spirit will be at work liberating our co-opted imaginations for His glory!
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash