As a kid at the doctor’s office I always looked for the Highlights Magazine for
Children. Do you remember the magazine? And what I always turned to first was the
Hidden Picture page. What you immediately saw on the page was a picture of kids in a
tree house, or Johnny Appleseed walking across a field sowing apple seeds, or a family
washing their car. That was the picture; something from everyday. Nothing so special.

But hidden in the picture were small things you had to look closely to see. It
took a type of imagination. I would turn the page this way and that to find a paint brush
and a fish and a hockey stick. Imagination wasn’t making something up. Rather it was
the belief that there was something more to see and then looking carefully to see it. And
I did.

The central task of faith and sermon and hymn and sacrament is one of imagination. By that I don’t mean fantasy or make-believe. But rather I mean to envision new realities, good hopes, surprising expectations about ourselves, others, our world, and God. It’s to look beyond the edge of what we are so sure we know to “the hidden pictures” that have always been there. Certainly there is a place to understand our Christian faith with our reason and to experience Christian faith with our emotions. But Christian faith is more than what we think and how we feel. Rather it is learning to see through the story of the Bible…to see as God sees, and live as if God’s reality is the only one that really matters. And it takes some imagination to do that.

When Jesus spoke of the cross and death and resurrection, it was a word of imagination. He looked beyond the edge of what everyone saw and believed through the love and power of God. His imagination did not make sense to his followers; “Resurrection? How could that be? What does that mean?” But later when they looked through the empty tomb and their own experiences with the risen Lord, they imagined a different way of life; one filled with truth and hope and love and resurrection.

“Listen, I will tell you a mystery”…a mystery about death and resurrection. It is
the imagination of Paul looking through death to the last trumpet, our resurrection, and
the victory of God for us promised in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Resurrection
imagination is not fantasy or make-believe. Rather it’s looking carefully through death
to the Easter story and seeing what has always been there: resurrection and new life in
the wonder of God.

“Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in
a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and
the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” (I Corinthians 15:51-52)

Thankful for Imagination to Ponder the Hidden Mysteries of Life and Faith,
Glenn