Strength and Hope for the Imagination


Sermon for Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Isaiah 62:1-5

In 1963 a quarter million people gathered for the March on Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  The speech closed with an improvised litany of his dreams of equality.  It was a speech of hopefulness and strength in a time of despair.  I want to say that again – it was a speech of hopefulness and strength in a time of despair.  This matters because too often I hear people say that it’s easy to preach hope when things are going well. It’s easy to be strong when there are no adversaries to face.  Yes, of course.  But the time when a people need hope and strength are not in those times but instead in times where more than 420,000 federal employees are being told to report to work even though they are not being paid.  The time when people need hope and strength are when more than 380,000 federal employees are furloughed.  The time when people need hope and strength are when the tensions between the Republicans and the Democrats are so high that conversation has stopped.  The time when a people need hope and strength are when 54 people have been shot in the City of Chicago in the first 20 days of 2019.  The time when a people need hope and strength are when elementary school children of color in the City of Evanston are being called racial slurs.  It’s 2019, my friends, and we are a people who need strength and hope.
It’s somewhere between 520 and 515 BCE and a people have just returned to Jerusalem after a long captivity in Babylon.  They come home to a temple destroyed, a city laid waste and are faced with the seemingly unsurmountable task of rebuilding everything from the foundation on up.  To add to the challenge, there was a remnant of people who had not been part of the exile and for several generations had continued to live in Jerusalem. There was tension between these groups of Jews. Moroever, the neighbors to the north – the Samaritans, a group of Jews who had intermarried with Assyrians who had settled in their land – offer to help the returning exiles rebuild but when their help was rejected, political tensions mounted. Here were a people in need of a word of strength and hope:
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
   and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
   and her salvation like a burning torch . . .
You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
   and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,
   and your land Married;
for the LORD delights in you,
   and your land shall be married.”[1]
Like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, these words from the prophet Isaiah breath hope and strength into a people who have all but given up, a people who have been pushed down, pushed out, pushed aside for centuries.
In our day and age, when our imaginations fall short of finding solutions to our common problems, we need this language, we need a prophetic word, we need to hear that someone has a dream. UCC pastor and theologian Bruce Epperly writes:
“Unemployment, illness, injustice, and poverty can constrict our vision, imprisoning us in the pain of the present moment, unable to look beyond our own personal misfortunes.  . . . At such times, we lose our dreams, mistaking realism for reality. Our goal is merely to survive, when our destiny is to thrive. It takes all the energy we have to look beyond our misfortunes and failures, but this larger vision – the power of the holy imagination, the lure of an alternative reality – has always been the inspiration for the prophet and spiritual guide. The dream reminds us that within what we perceive as limitations are possibilities for adventure and growth.”[2]
We are a people in need, a nation in need of a new dream of strength and hope. 
Last Sunday evening, Andrea and I went to a Kathy Mattea concert at Old Town School of Folk Music.  She performed a song that night that was new to me.  It’s called “Holy Now,” written by Peter Mayer. Perhaps some of you know it:
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle.
. . .
Wine from water is not so small
But an even bigger magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
I used to see a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now.
. . .
Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
. . .
‘Cause everything is holy now[3]
We are a people, a nation in need of strength and hope, in need of a reawakened holy imagination that can see the Good News in a child’s face, a sacrament in the breaking of a new day, and the revelation of God among us in the song of a red-winged bird.  God does not keep silent in dark times.  God does not vanish in times of terror or distress.  God does not turn God’s back in times of conflict, unrest and injustice.  No.  God will not keep silent.  For our sake, God will not rest.  We shall no more be termed Forsaken and our land shall no more be termed Desolate; but we shall be called My Delight Is in Her . . . for the LORD delights in us.  This is the promise of our God.  This is the hope and strength for our imaginations.  Believe the Good News!


[1] Isaiah 62:1,4.
[2] Bruce Epperly, “In the Spirit of Martin Luther King: Cultivating a Holy Imagination,” Patheos, January 14, 2011, www.patheos.com/resources/additional-resources/2011/01/spirit-of-martin-luther-king-cultivating-a-holy-imagination-bruce-epperly-01-14-2011, accessed January 17, 2019.
[3] Peter Mayer, “Holy Now,” Million Year Mind, Blue Boat Records, 1999.

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