The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness. The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and oldest mainspring of scientific research. My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. ( a quotation from Albert Einstein (1875-1955), as translated by Alan Harris )
A few years ago the inner universe of my mind had a cosmic expansion around my reading and reflection on Colossians 1:15-20, the reality of Jesus and his Kingdom being the New Creation...Now! This reality has obsessed me. I'm consumed by the idea of the redemptive imagination of the Kingdom. It is to look around the broken and cracked fabric of lives, our local communities, the world and to see something else. It is a re-imagining...Jesus speaking creation into existence in the beginning and—and speaking the Kingdom into existence now—and reigning supreme in his Kingdom in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.
This is the practice of resurrection. The Kingdom isn't just about the resurrection of Jesus, a historical event to believe rather than live. The same wind of God, the Spirit that rolled the stone from the mouth of the tomb blows across all creation. Just as the Spirit of God brooded over the embryonic beginnings of Genesis, it overs over the beginnings of a new creation. It broods over the cracks, the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe...people and things, animals and atoms, corrupt and broken political and economic systems, a devastated and abused environment, places of injustice, of poverty. It waits for Kingdom people to sow seeds of redemptive imagination, cultivate, nurture and grow.
Redemptive imagination is the image of a radical scandalous sower. Some might even go as far as calling them crazy. Some might see situations as being utterly hopeless, lost causes...a complete waist of time and effort. But in the crack, they see a glimpse of the absolute profound mystery and truth of the Kingdom, of the broken and dislocated pieces fitting back together in a vibrant harmony. It is creation made new.
These Kingdom people are in a sense gardeners of love. There is a passion and commitment to plant these seeds of radical faith in the cracks and brokenness of life. It is a labor of love. It is to nurture, and cultivate these fragile embryonic seedlings of new life and realize the season to where fruit is seen might be long, very long. Kingdom people are committed to the long haul. It is to realize that weeds will grow with the wheat, and not be eager to pull, but to let them grow together ( Matt 13:24-30). Kingdom people are more concerned with planting, and content with letting Jesus harvest what he wants. In Kingdom people there is an excitement and anticipation about seeing the Kingdom come into being. Kingdom people live in the reality that they are heirs to the Kingdom now. That they can claim there inheritance now, and live in the Kingdom now. While some impatiently wait at bus stops for the mass exodus to heaven when ever that might be. Kingdom people live as if it where now.
While the church prays for revival, Jesus prayed, " Father, may your Kingdom come. On earth as in Heaven. Now!" We can shuffle the deck chairs on the HMCS " MY Church ", inventing programs, tweeking Sunday mornings flowchart...while the band plays on, fighting the turbulent storms of hymns or contemporary worship music. The captain with compass and old maps in hand tells crew and passengers to man the oars and make steady the course. It's but a passing storm, and calm waters lie ahead, while water pours into the baggage department.
Do we have the redemptive imagination to see something else. Do we have the redemptive imagination to practice the reality of the resurrection now. Look around your communities, towns, cities, country, world, nature...all creation. See the cracks, the broken places. Look until you can imagine something different. Look until you see the dazzling profound beauty of the Kingdom. And then be crazy enough to plant a seed, the radical scandlous love and faith of Jesus. Engage others, stir their imagination...and then build.
"We live our lives in the practice of what we do not originate and cannot anticipate. When we practice resurrection, we continuously enter into what is more than we are. When we practice resurrection, we keep company with Jesus, alive and present, who knows where we are going better than we do, which is always "from glory unto glory." ( Practice Resurrection - Eugene H. Peterson )
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