Stretching the Imagination

With my friend, Chris Owen and my
step-father, Marty Cox at Ein Karem, 2010

I wrote this post for yesterday, May 31, but then forgot to publish it. So a day late and a few edits to correct my timing...

Today marks the beginning of my seventh year doing the work of a Canon to the Ordinary. I love this ministry and feel called to the opportunities and challenges it represents. But when I am asked what I miss the most about being a parish priest the answer always comes easily to me: baptisms and funerals. The work at the beginning and end of life mark the breadth and depth and intimacy of the work of a parish priest. Diocesan ministry includes a lot more vestry meetings, and almost no baptisms or funerals.

That is always my answer. But there is another thing I sometimes miss, and that is the rhythm of marking the saints days at weekday Eucharists. I am in congregations across our diocese almost every Sunday, so I get plenty of opportunities to preach and enough opportunities to preside throughout the seasons of the liturgical year. But the Episcopal Church has a rhythm of what, when I was first ordained, were called "lesser feasts and fasts" and then came to be called "holy women, holy men." It is now called "a great cloud of witnesses," but by whatever name, these midweek commemorations offer opportunities to bear witness to those who have been faithful in their generations. One recent week alone included opportunities to remember saints like the Venerable Bede from the eighth century, Copernicus and Kepler and Calvin from the sixteenth, and Jackson Kemper from the nineteenth. 

Yesterday, we remembered The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which you can read about in the first chapter of Luke's Gospel. You can also visit the traditional site of the visitation at Ein Karem, which I have had the opportunity to do twice previously, although not on my most recent visit to the Holy Land.

In a sermon he preached fifteen years ago on this topic, Brother Curtis Almquist, SSJE, began like this:

In the calendar of the church we remember today an unlikely visitation of two women: Mary and Elizabeth. The mere fact that they are visiting one another is not unlikely. To the contrary. They are relatives, and they live within a long walk between each others’ homes. The “unlikely” element is the reason that occasions this particular visit, and that is, they are both pregnant. Within months they will bear sons who will ultimately usher in enormous changes, both theological and sociological changes. Elizabeth bearing a son John, whom we will call “John the Baptist”: he would prepare the way (the way, at least for some people) to recognize his cousin, Jesus, reportedly the long-awaited Messiah. And Jesus would be born of Mary. These two pregnancies more than stretch the imagination. (Emphasis mine; to read the full sermon, check it out here.) 

That phrase about "stretching the imagination" is a helpful one to me. So, too, the Magnificat (which is set in this same context and can be found in Luke 1:46-55.) Mary sings that her soul magnifies the Lord, and her spirit rejoices in God, her savior. She sings what her son, Jesus, will one day preach - that the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. Now if that doesn't "stretch the imagination!"

I read two posts recently on this topic, in addition to Curtis' sermon, that also stretched my own imagination. One is by one of my favorite Biblical scholars, Ched Myers. It can be found here. And then I read Heidi Neumark's reflection in The Christian Century. Extraordinarily good. I commend them all to you.

The visitation matters for many reasons, but perhaps in some small measure it is a kind of "case study" for why Scripture needs to be read, learned, marked, and inwardly digested. Slowly. It's not ultimately a primer for doctrine, but a way to cultivate theological imagination, and then to stretch that theological imagination as we turn the story over and over again and find ourselves in the midst of it.

It may also remind us that the "visitations" of our own lives - those intimate encounters with others - are both life-changing and life-giving.