Reflection at Evensong Prayer for Peace
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
by Sister Tarianne DeYonker, OP
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Reading adapted from:Field of Compassion by Judy Cannato
“To anyone who would listen, Jesus invited and challenged them to participate in the vision that motivated all he did: ‘I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.’
“Later in his ministry…he sent his disciples out ‘to preach the kingdom of God and to heal.’ This vision was central not only to his own life and ministry, it was the vision that he sought to pass on to those who would carry on his great work.
“It is apparent that the new way of living that Jesus had in mind was a ‘here-now’ rather than a ‘here-after’ vision. Far from being a theoretical ideal or having a far-away location, this was to be a present reality, rooted in earthly space-time. It had to do with real relationships with real people, an inclusivity that disregarded cultural and religious convention and embraced a new way of living in response to the incomprehensible holy mystery Jesus called ‘Abba.’ ”
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When using the “kingdom of God” image, Jesus signaled a new consciousness – a new way of looking at God, ourselves and others. It was a here-and-now reality that Jesus never tired of living and inviting others to enter. The kingdom he preached is God’s kingdom, for sure, but Jesus wanted us to own it.
The Kingdom of God would engage us, require us to think and behave and relate to others in ways that require giving of ourselves. It would involve us consciously choosing to love. And it proposed that the connectedness at the heart of all creation would be lived out tangibly in the here-and-now relationships all around us. The “Kingdom of God” transcends what we can imagine on our own and includes a much wider array than we care to admit!
According to Walter Brueggeman, noted Old Testament scholar, “God’s imagination is pluralistic, conflicted, disturbed, dynamic and underway.” Since we are made in the image of God, our imagination too is quite unsettled and conflicted and pluralistic, dynamic and underway!
Often we’re pretty sure of our plans and all the controls for our lives that we’ve set into place! Our call, however, is to live with openness to God’s not honoring our predictability and our control. God is always doing something new. So, how can we freely create space for God to do something new; something beyond our imaginations and even our inclinations?
Do I have enough freedom to imagine or articulate anything new about peace? About structures and systems that crush and deform people’s lives? About ending wars or even other smaller conflicts? About those enslaved by dominating traffickers? About wealth and how more people could share in it? Or about what a world of right relationships would look like? What is “the new” that God is about?
Our lives unfold in the direction of the vision we hold. We pray “your kingdom come” and we need to be open to the desire to “let come.”
Let come – new ways of being open to others who are different, seeing their beauty and what they contribute to life as creatures of God – even their hope that things can get better, things don’t have to stay like this!
Let come – imaginative ideas that spark actions to challenge people in powerful positions, to tackle those who would betray our trust and trash what we value, to deal with those who perpetrate violence and create havoc, not peace.
Let come – the grace of trusting that when God acts, even the impossible becomes possible because God’s imagination already has communicated, through diversity and by elegant solutions, for eons.
All creative ideas and solutions come from divine imagination. Our capacity to envision that which does not exist and invite it to take form is one of our greatest gifts! Our imagination allows us to give shape to the Spirit’s urgings. We are able to imagine new ways not because we have this great vision. God is the dreamer, and through our imaginations we can see God’s vision.
Let’s be open and attentive to what is emerging and ready to partner with what holy mystery is communicating to us. We are the ones created to make real the “kingdom of God” today.