Art of Imagination
A Communion Meditation

by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

I begin this meditation on the Art of Imagination with the confession that I feel unworthy.  I consider myself neither an artist nor particularly imaginative.
 
I feel a bit like Jon Stewart, when he introduced the Kennedy Center’s tribute to Bruce Springsteen last month.  He said, “I’m not a music critic, nor historian, nor archivist.  I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I cannot illuminate the context of his work, or its roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nation.  But I am from New Jersey.”

I may not celebrate my artistry or imagination, but I celebrate that God calls ordinary unworthy, overwhelmed, wounded, working people... like me... like you... like the fisherman Simon.  Because God, the Artist, has quite an imagination! Thanks be to God!
 
This morning I invite you to imagine that you are Simon. Settle in. Close your eyes if it helps.  Imagine you are Simon.  You just worked on the boat all night on the Sea of Galilee and did not catch one fish.
 
You are exhausted. You haven’t slept at all. You poured life’s blood into hard work for long hours all night long and you have come up empty. You wonder what went wrong – all your effort, skill, and knowledge of the Sea of Galilee, all the labor of you and your partners – and nothing. You worry how you will eat.  Dead tired, you sit down and begin to wash your nets to get ready to go out again the next night.
 
Then Jesus, comes to your boat, steps into your boat.  He enters your life, your work, your embarrassingly empty boat.  You hear, see, know that he heals and challenges and changes people.  He asks you to put out a little way from shore so he can teach from your boat.  Then he tells you to go into deeper waters and start to work again.  “We already worked all night and have nothing to show for it! OK, if you say so...” So you set out, reach out and let down your nets.
 
Suddenly you are flooded with fish! You don’t know what to do with them all. Your nets are so full that they are breaking, you call out to your partners. They come to help their boats fill with fish too, so full that all the boats nearly sink!
 
Overwhelmed, amazed, you are astonished by such abundance where moments before there had been only emptiness. You fall on your knees beside Jesus, saying, “Lord, I can’t handle this much blessing! It’s too big. I’m unworthy. You’d better leave me alone.”
 
But Jesus tells you, “This is nothing. The work of your life is so much bigger. Your work is a world of living people.”  Jesus meets us in the midst of failure and frustration and invites us to leave the shallows and to follow him to a work and a world we cannot even imagine!  
 
In the January 12th issue of Christian Century, Anthony Robinson wrote a review of a significant new book, The Missional Church, in which he said,  “A classic 1970s study on the demise of railroads concluded that they went out of business because they thought the business they were in was railroads.  It wasn’t. The business they were in was transportation. Likewise, churches may decline or die when they think the business they are in is church. It isn’t.”

We do not serve the business of church. We are the church and our work is God’s mission in the world! We are called to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world that God so loves.  We are called to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God. We are called to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to heal the sick, to visit the prisoner, to love God with everything we’ve got and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  
 
As we prepare health kits for people in Haiti, let’s imagine a bigger catch.  Let’s imagine that Haiti’s foreign debt was completely cancelled.  Just yesterday, at meetings in Canada, the G7 nations cancelled all Haiti bilateral debt.  Still Haiti’s foreign debt remains at about $US 890 million, owed to the Inter-American Development Bank and to the World Bank.  More than half of this debt comes from loans extended to the brutal father-son dictatorship of Papa Doc and Jean-Claude Duvalier, loans that did not benefit the people of Haiti. Imagine that rather than rebuilding old structures sustainable green development will sustain lives and generations of the Haitian people.  As we fill this barrel, let us imagine, let us listen, and raise our voices.  Old and seemingly intractable problems in our lives and in the world may be transformed by following Christ into the imaginative work of God in deeper waters.
 
There is a Celtic fishermen’s prayer that I pray a lot:  “Dear Lord, be good to me … the sea is so wide and my boat is so small.” Dear Lord, have mercy on me, the sea is so great and my boat is so small.
 
Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund titled her new book with that prayer, The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation.  In the preface she prays, “God, we have pushed so many of our children into the tumultuous sea of life in small and leaky boats without survival gear and compass.  Forgive us and help them to forgive us. Help us now to give all our children the anchors of faith and love, the rudders of purpose and hope, the sails of health and education, and the paddles of family and community to keep them safe and strong when life's sea gets rough.”
 
God calls us, strengthens us, and puts us to work on behalf of others… just imagine!  Our work is to put out a ways that Jesus may teach from our boat, and to go into deeper waters, trusting God’s liveliest catch.
 
I close with a morning offering of the mystic John O Donohue. Imagine the reality of this prayer:

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.
 
May I have the courage today
To live the life I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
And waste my heart on fear no more.                           

Amen … and Amen.