On we go with this walk through some material dealing with Spirit-Led Imagination from "Mandate to Difference by Walter Brueggemann. Here I simply add to the quote from yesterday:
Having said that worship features our humanly constructed acts of imagination designed to advocate a perspective, we inescapably must ask if it is all "made up," for the term "imagination" is a tricky one. But of course in the community of faith, to "imagine" does not mean to "make up." It means, rather, to receive, entertain, and host images of reality that are outside the accepted given. If, however, we say "receive" images, then we may ask, "receive from whom?" Or "receive for whom?" The answer we give is that what the Psalmists and liturgists imagine and shape and offer is given by God's spirit, for it is the spirit who bears witness. It is the spirit that has given Israel freedom to recognize and acknowledge YHWH as savior from slavery. It is the spirit that gives us eyes to see and selves to notice the recurring and constant fidelity of God. It is the spirit that cries out with us that lets us cry out and receive God's rescue. It is the spirit that moves in the faith of the community and in the artistry of the poet to give voice to the odd truth of our common life.
This spirit will take us wherever the spirit will take us. Often we resist and want to settle for what we have and what we think we have been able to master. But the spirit - the breath - the wind, keeps blowing on us in an attempt to have us look down a different path or stumble over and view the world from a perspective we may have never let ourselves enter. The imagination of the community at worship is something empowered by more than the "plan" of how things will go...and yet, it very much tied into all the parts as they come together in and around a community coming to life in worship. I often find myself simply listening to the lesson or a hymn and watching our ASL interpreter move to the beat of the words and make the gestures that spell out the vision that is a part of the spoken word. This interpretation is something we planned to be a part of the liturgy, but it is also a moment that disarms me. I may be going in one direction with my thoughts and wanderings...but then watching the word made flesh in that interpretation simply knocks me over and helps me breath a sign of hopefulness and thanksgiving. This spirit gives us all a new way to see what is so ordinary and routine and simply a part of what we have seen as the pattern of things as they are.
Connection: The expectation among us is that the spirit will whip through our lives. That means today! But how...when?!? Well, let's take a look and see.
Spirit of the Living Lord, mix us up and fix our eyes on the Reign of God that is unfolding all around us. Shake us and turn us as we stumble through what we expect the day to be so that we are awakened by how your gracious Reign brings new expectations and a grand imagination to your people. Amen.
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