Tuesday 24 July 2007

This week we will walk through some material dealing with Spirit-Led Imagination from "Mandate to Difference by Walter Brueggemann.



After working through several biblical texts that show this grand sense of poetic imagination he writes:

I have deliberately used the term "imagination" because I want to insist that such stylized narrative account is indeed a human construction. The poets put the words together in this particular way. The poets utilized this pattern of worship in order to reiterate and reenact this advocacy. It happens over and over; every time a pastor and a choir director get together to pick hymns, the work is one of constructive imagination designed to lead the congregation in turn to imagine the world in a certain way. Much worship is informed by tradition and conventional practice, but those who construct such worship must each time commit an act of imagination in order to determine what is to be accented and to adapt the advocacy to the specificity of context.

I sent this piece out to our worship committee. For us to begin to look at worship as an act of imagination takes us out of the arena of merely dealing with nuts and bolts within worship. Now, we are actually invited to do something with those nuts and bolts that will take the whole community at worship into a whole new way of approaching our everyday world. For example, I am always amazed at the little things that are thrown into the music of the church. I've been to places in which the small accents to hymns - the additional sounds and voices with the music - the simplicity of continuous chant during the distribution of Holy Communion, have all taken me beyond myself and added a open doorway into a vision of what the "whole" church is all about in the world. At Redeemer we have been trying to pull the whole year together under the banner of a unifying theme. I have found that it can be limiting. I have also found that having a vision that gives just a bit of direction for the year forces me to let myself go beyond a week to week "got to get it done." In some ways, the planning pulls me out to become more inventive and take a few more chances with what might go this week...or that week.

Connection: Each day is lived under the grand banner of God's love for us...all of us. So, under such a banner, imagine what kind of day this can be for us all.

Lord God, you promise to take us beyond ourselves and introduce us to the grand vision of your eternal Reign. When we worship encourage us to let go and become lost in the many ways your Word invites us to envision the newness of your life. Amen.