Sermons

FILTER BY:

← back to list

    Dec 24, 2015

    Imagine!

    Imagine!

    Passage: Luke 2:1-20

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    Series: Imagine

    Category: Christmas Eve

    Keywords: hope, joy, love, malaria, peace

    As we are made in the image of God, we have the capacity to share in God's imagination. Imagine how Christians could change the lives of those who live with illness and poverty!

    I was called in by a pastor to do a consultation on their Sunday School.  He was obviously frustrated, and I was flabbergasted.  Every picture in the children’s classrooms was from when I was a child.  The cars, the clothing – even the dogs – looked old.  I mean, how many mothers wore gloves to church in 1996?  Not too many!

    So, as I got ready to preach for tonight, why in the world was that event on my mind?  God – the God who sent a tiny baby to live our life and who imagined this – well, to us, anyway – unimaginable way to show Divine love for all of God’s children – is a God of huge imagination!  God planted within us an imagination that can meet the challenges of our daily lives, the challenges that face every one of God’s children.  It seems to me that we can’t let our imagination get stuck in the 1960’s. 

     

    If human imagination can build a new, more powerful, more creative iPhone every few months – what could happen if that God-instilled imagination were turned loose in our Sunday School classrooms, in our worship, in the work God calls us to do in the world?  What if we truly tapped into God’s image – imagining a better world for God’s beloved – instead of holding on to the past?  God is a God who makes all things new – not a God who is stuck!

    Imagine.  The birth of Jesus was astounding.  Shepherds – rough-talking, low class workmen – were entrusted with the Good News.  Wise Men from the East – not learned rabbis or priest or prophets, but strangers who studied the stars instead of the ancient scriptures recognized the Child as a gift from God.  Angels sang.  A bright light guided the travelers.  A teenaged girl was entrusted to be the mother of the Son of God.  The Holy Child was laid in a feeding trough.  Out of the ordinary.  New!  Unheard of!  Imagine!  

    Imagine what God can do!  Throughout Advent, we have been imagining what is possible as the people of God work together to eradicate malaria on the continent of Africa.  Now that is a dream worthy of God’s people – a dream that took imagination!  Imagine what we can do for God – what gift we could give God – if our imagination is big enough to address this highly treatable disease on a continent where parents can’t imagine that their children will grow up.

    Imagine No Malaria!  Imagine the Christ Child visiting a village in Sierra Leone.  Perhaps that’s just what it felt like when a group of Imagine No Malaria staff visited Sierra Leone last summer for a bed net distribution. At one of their meetings with villagers, a man named Christopher Johnbull pushed through the crowd.

    “Please. My wife is pregnant and very sick,” he said, reaching for their hands. “Can you help?”

    They followed him back to his house to meet his wife Adama, who was nine months pregnant. It was obvious that her baby would come soon, but she was in no condition for delivery. Her feet were very swollen, she had a fever, and she was very weak. She was not strong enough to make the trip to nearby Mercy Hospital on foot. 

    The team was able to escort Christopher and his wife Adama to Mercy Hospital in their vehicles, since the family had no money to hire a cab. This United Methodist health center specializes in maternal and child health care.

     

    Immediately, a nurse named Comfort Beah took Adama under her wing. Adama was diagnosed with malaria, severe anemia, and preeclampsia. Any one of those conditions can be life threatening. All three of them together meant that Adama was unlikely to survive labor without swift medical attention.

    With help from Comfort and other staff at Mercy Hospital, Adama received treatment and began to regain her strength. A few days later, she delivered a healthy baby girl. Adama and Christopher named their child Jan, after one of the Imagine No Malaria staff people. Today, their little family is thriving.

    Imagine.  Perhaps it should be no surprise that a church with enough imagination to share its Christmas Eve offering with the people of the Sudan in 2004 would be a growing, lively congregation.  That’s exactly what Ginghamsburg UMC did when they declared a Miracle Offering that year.  Moved by the plight of the people in the Darfur region of Sudan, the congregation in Tipp City, Ohio, gave away their offering – all of it – on Christmas Eve. 

    Our congregation has been raising a special offering for the last 4 Sundays, and many are bringing an additional special offering this evening.  We would like to invite you to imagine with us what might happen if we all Imagine No Malaria.  Tonight we will take an offering as usual.  But this offering will be sent to the Imagine No Malaria campaign of the United Methodist Church. 

    John Bell writes beautiful inspirational music.  His hymns are written primarily for the Christian community at Iona Scotland.  His Carol of the Epiphany imagines where we might find Jesus:

    I sought him dressed in finest clothes,
    where money talks and status grows;
    but power and wealth he never chose:
    it seemed he lived in poverty.
     
    I sought him in the safest place,
    remote from crime or cheap disgrace;
    but safety never knew his face:
    it seemed he lived in jeopardy.
     
    I sought him where the spotlights glare,
    where crowds collect and critics stare;
    but no one knew his presence there:
    it seemed he lived in obscurity.
     
    Then, in the streets, we heard the word
    which seemed, for all the world, absurd:
    that those who could no gifts afford
    were entertaining Christ the Lord.
     
    And so, distinct from all we'd planned,
    among the poorest of the land,
    we did what few might understand:
    we touched God in a baby’s hand.

    Imagine!