Edwina Gately offers the following parable in her essay A Prophetic Mission: Sniffing Out the Kingdom.@

A Once upon a time we captured God and we put God in a box and we put a beautiful velvet curtain around the box. We placed candles and flowers around the box and we said to the poor and dispossessed, > Come! Come and see what we have! Come and see God!= And they knelt before the God in the box. One day, very long ago, the Spirit in the box turned the key from inside and she pushed it open. She looked around in the church and saw that there was nobody there! They had all gone. Not a soul was in the place. She said to herself, > I= m getting out!= The Spirit shot out of the box. She escaped and she has been sighted a few times since then. She was last seen with a bag lady in McDonald= s.@

It seems to me this is a description of what happens when our ability to imagine is wounded or diseased.

Psychologist James Hillman writes, A In the beginning is the image: first imagination then perception; first fantasy then reality. Man is primarily an image-maker and our psychic substances consists of images; our being is imaginal being, an existence in imagination. We are, indeed, > such stuff as dreams are made of.= @

Our imaginations, in the church and in society at large, have become wounded and crippled so that we tend not to trust the power of our imagination.

We think of it as a monster lurking in our depths that must be kept in chains. That= s why some fundamentalists want to burn books or ban fantasy. Fantasy is not literally true, such thinking goes, and what isn= t literally true is a lie and should be labeled as such.

Yet the work of imagination is serious business because through it, we build or destroy the world. In fact, it is through the imagination that we most powerfully connect with God. We see this truth expressed in scripture and tradition in the fact that most encounters with the holy divine are recorded as taking place in dreams, or visions.

We have been talking together for several weeks about A Taking Hold of Real Life.@ If we are going to take hold of real life, we need our imaginations. For we need to first imagine A real life@ before we can grasp it. So this summer I want to exercise our imaginations. It is actually easy to do, for the Bible is filled with exercises to help us do exactly that. For the stories in the Bible are important, more than any other reason, because they help us connect with God, with that realm beyond the physical, material world in which we exist, that world that requires our imaginations. One way they do that is by posing the question, A What if...?@ and inviting us to begin to envision our answer to that question.

This passage from Isaiah is a great place to begin. This is a passage to really flex our imagination muscles and begin to stretch them out. What we heard this morning is a vision. No one really imagines that Isaiah actually saw what he describes with his own two eyes. In other words, we do not believe that if he had possessed a video-camera that he could have taped it and broadcast it on the 11 p.m. news.

For one thing, his description breaks the bounds of physical reality. He begins by saying he saw God sitting on a throne high and lofty and the hem of God= s robe filled the temple. The temple was not as large as we think: approximately 90 feet long, 30 feet wide and 45 feet high. It is actually a modest building compared to some large worship centers. Yet Isaiah suggests that the hem of God= s robe filled all that space: just the hem! So, picture this: Isaiah is in the temple worshiping, the upper sections of the building fade away and way up above is the throne of God and the base of the temple is where the hem of God= s robe falls. He A sees@ angels hovering around God singing God= s praises and the sound of their voices rattle the door hinges. The temple is filled with smoke. It is such an awesome, frightening sight that Isaiah fears for his life, for he realizes he is not worthy to be in the actual presence of God. But God takes care of that, removing his sin and guilt by virtual cleansing through a burning coal touching his lips.

None of this works in the physical world. It is a vision, a dream or daydream, a function of his imagination.

Doesn= t make it false. Some things are more true and more real, even if they cannot be measured, replicated, or recorded on tape.

And the message of the vision is at the very end. This Almighty, powerful, exalted God of the Universe issues a call, a request, has a need. A Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?@ God needs a messenger, a representative to speak to the people. Isaiah invites us to imagine A What if God really needs us?@

What would happen if Isaiah stood up in church next Sunday and fired those exact words to us? Well, some of us would probably want to have him arrested for such a blasphemous suggestion, and others of us would probably want to arrange the appropriate mental treatment.

Probably nobody would actually listen to what he had to say.

So, if a contemporary person saying those words would be written off, one way or another, why should we take seriously those same words spoken several thousand years ago? Ah! The difference is that if someone stood on the steps of the church and said this next Sunday, we= d either have to take that person seriously or write him/her off as a nutcase. But such a message from way back when C well, we can let it go bumbling over our heads and we don= t really have to do anything. So, it= s OK, we= re off the hook.

Thank goodness Moses didn= t think he was experiencing dehydration hallucination when he saw that burning bush and ignore the whole episode, or there children of Israel might never have been liberated from Egypt. Thank goodness Peter and the other disciples didn= t write off the resurrection appearances to group indigestion, or there would have been no Christian faith. Thank goodness Francis of Assisi didn= t listen to his friends and family who thought he was crazy because he claimed to have had a vision and heard God calling him to embrace a simple life and rebuild God= s church or there would have been no Franciscans helping the poor all these centuries. Thank goodness Martin Luther didn= t buckle under the pressure of the Roman Catholic Church when he was tried for his faith or there would have been no Protestant Church. Thank goodness that Rosa Parks didn= t move to the back of the bus or that Martin Luther King, Jr., didn= t consider himself stressed out and sleep-deprived when he heard God= s call at midnight in his kitchen to be a drum major for justice, or there would have been no civil rights movement.

Imagine the possibility that in this very year God stands before you somehow, somewhere, in the form of someone familiar or unexpected, and says to you, A Whom shall I send?@ Not, A If you want, if you= re ready, if you have time, if you think about it and decide that following= s not okay for you to do now, but of course you could always do it later...@ but, A Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?@ Imagine what it would mean if God really needs us?

Imagine a world where small children are not being jerked down supermarket aisles in the name of family discipline. Imagine a home where members of the family do not shout at one another or slap one another into subjection or bully one another into compliance, or intimidate one another into domestic slavery.

Imagine what your own life, what our life as a people would really be like if we ourselves forgave, really forgave, our families, our colleagues, our children and our spouses.

Would your one life, my one life, possibly make any difference? Can we really imagine that God needs us?

Well, the rabbis teach that when Moses tapped the shore with his staff, the waters did not roll back. And when he tapped the water with his staff, nothing happened. But when the first Jew walked into the water, then the Red Sea parted and Israel was saved. The miracle of the Red Sea was not the parting of the water,, but that the first Jew walked in. Only then did the others follow.

A Whom shall I send?@ God still says to us.

I truly believe that the A yes@ is within each of us, yearning to break through. I believe that the potential to say yes to God, with passion, with astonishment, with amazement, even with fear, does exist within each one of us.

Let us exercise our imagination and consider that God really does need us, each and every one of us here at Christ Congregational Church. Let us not analyze it to death, but let us respond as we were created to respond: A Here am I, send me.@