I’ve just been listening to a selection of songs on Youtube which included John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. The words of the song make inspiring and uncomfortable listening.

Imagination is a vital human resource. It is creative activity, drawing pictures, playing out scenes in your mind, a drama of the possible. Imagination has more ‘flesh’, more grounding, than mere thoughts. We enter into the situation imagined. It’s like dreaming, but we can shape the dream.

IMAGINATION OFFERS A BETTER PRESENT

Imagination can be ‘workaday’, useful in the present, in our everyday life. It can be a tool to understand why someone has reacted in a way we find inexplicable or difficult. We try to put ourselves in their situation, stand in their shoes, and imagine what could have caused the response we find difficult. Then understanding, empathy even, becomes possible.

We can find ourselves overstretched and struggling with the pressures of life, longing for a bit more space in our week. It’s often helpful to be asked “What would that better week look like?” And then our imagination can get to work. It’s not necessarily an easy question to answer, (and some things we won’t be able to change) but it may be what’s needed to create a better way of living.

Imagination can help us relate to all sorts of situations that are beyond our experience. We might pause and imagine what it is like to be in prison or to be a prison officer when we next read or hear about prisons on the news. Or what it’s like to be a young person struggling with their anger, or powerlessness. Imagination rescues us from rushing to judgement. Judging before we understand is pre-judging – in other words: prejudice. Overcoming our prejudice requires humility, because we have to acknowledge that we don’t yet understand and therefore have no right to judge. Imagination may not be enough on its own, but it’s the place to start. More listening and research will probably be needed.

IMAGINATION OFFERS A BETTER FUTURE

Perhaps a more usual way of thinking about imagination is opening up future possibilities – developing an idea, often about how to do things differently or better in our home or workplace or community.

On a wider front, our national politics for example, maybe our first thought should not be to criticize (a big ask for me!) but to take time (with others) to imagine what could make it better. Imagination allows us to create different scenarios, in our heads and hearts, of what might be possible. Imagination is not limited by reality, and can certainly be unrealistic (“you may say I’m a dreamer”), but dreaming dreams can end up reshaping reality. Keeping our feet on the ground, we ask: how can we begin to get to the place we imagine, the place we want to be? I think that’s the practical implication of Lennon’s “Join us”. He’s not saying ‘join us’ in our utopia but share the dream, let it begin to work its magic and do what we can to journey there together.

Of course, Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ takes us beyond any one nation to the dream: the world will live as one. This outcome seems as far removed as ever in our day, despite the world being so much ‘smaller’ and with such great resources to do good together.

AND NO RELIGION TOO?

To Lennon, as to many, religion is part of the problem, spreading division and hatred. And in his book believing in heaven and hell needs to be rejected.

But there’s another book, at the heart of which is pretty much the same vision as Lennon’s. We know this book as the Bible and the vision contained therein is ‘the kingdom of God’ – what life looks like when God is in control. Such as the prophecy we read at Christmas, with images of the lion lying down with the lamb, and instruments of war (swords) being beaten into farming tools (ploughshares).

For many, this is old news. The Church, which drew together the biblical writings in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries, has had a very chequered history, not least in recent times. In one form or another, it’s regularly been guilty of abuse, professionalising its power-hungry, arrogant sense of entitlement. An all-too-human institution, too often losing connection with its founder, its head and its example – Jesus. There is another side, of course, of countless individuals and communities of faith who have followed in the footsteps of Jesus, radiating the love of God, and giving up their lives to serve and reshape the world around for good.

The Bible is affirming of this world, celebrating the wonder, the beauty and order of the world God has created (and is creating). But from the beginning it is not only very good (all beauty and order), but also bedevilled by chaos and darkness. The basic premise of the Bible is that human beings, left to themselves, cannot bring about a united world and live peaceably together, sharing the good things provided. And herein lies the basic conflict with Lennon’s form of humanism.

John Lennon would have us take God out of the equation. The Judeo-Christian story, Old Testament and New Testament, says that has always been the problem. Far from getting rid of God and faith, as Lennon would have us do, it is only God’s intervention and shaping of history that makes a kingdom of love and justice possible. And every human heart, as well the whole of creation, is the battlefield of good and evil. Humanism says we have the resources to make a better world by ourselves. Faith says God made the world, and us, and we can only hope to do this with God.

For me, the genius of the Bible is that it keeps looking ahead with hope. When everything goes wrong, when what you have trusted fails, a new vision emerges. The message is that often we’re left ‘hanging on by a thread’, but God never lets us go.

PRAYER AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

Imagination is a key part of prayer. Imagining ourselves into the lives of people we pray for. Growing compassion and empathy. Fuelling our contemplation. We open our hearts and minds to allow God to lead our imagination, giving us ideas, visions and prompting us into action.

According to the book of Acts, on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came in power on Jesus’ disciples in Jerusalem. Fulfilling an Old Testament promise that the days will come when men and women will prophesy and see visions and dream dreams. An openness to the Spirit is at the heart of the Christian community, and in my experience imagination is at the heart of how God’s Spirit continues to speak and give visions dreams to his people.

A BAPTISM PRAYER

As a vicar, I loved holding a child I’d just baptised, and praying an awesome prayer for him or her:

May God, who has received you by baptism into his Church,

pour upon you the riches of his grace,

that within the company of Christ’s pilgrim people

you may be daily anointed by his anointing Spirit

and come at last to the inheritance of the saints in glory.

Amen.

I especially love the “..and come at last to the inheritance of the saints in glory (heaven).” Lennon would get rid of heaven. And maybe he has cause to do so. Heaven can be an excuse to avoid challenging injustice here and now. Or an excuse for not looking after creation: “It’ll be alright in the end”. But heaven, like love, is all around. Here and now.  And heaven is also future – we know that only with God’s ‘final’ intervention will the kingdom of the world become the kingdom of God, with no more darkness or chaos.

The prayer for the child, like the baptism, has a whole life context. The vision in my heart as I pray is of the child starting and continuing their life in confident security of human and divine love along the way. And knowing that life is not primarily about what they can fit into it or achieve in it. Not about income or social prestige or a bucket list of must-do things. It is ultimately a journey into divine love, into the kingdom of heaven for all eternity where the things of this age will pale in comparison with what lies ahead.

Living in the security of divine and human love, with forgiveness at the heart of it (because we’re forever getting it wrong!), we know we are valued and ‘worth it’ without the need to prove it by worldly success, status or retail therapy. The way of love is the way of loving service of God, other people and ourselves. Imagine what that looks like.

IMAGINE

Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try:
no hell below us above us, only sky.

Imagine all the people living for today (ah – ah)

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do:
nothing to kill or die for- and no religion, too.

Imagine all the people living life in peace (you – ou)

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one:
I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.

Imagine no possessions – I wonder if you can:
No need for greed or hunger – a brotherhood of man.

Imagine all the people sharing all the world (you – ou)

You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one:
I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.

Lyrics by John Lennon

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