11 December 2005

Rev. Dr. Duncan D. Newcomer

Church of the Redeemer

New Haven, Conn.

Scripture: Psalm 126

A Child’s Christmas in Connecticut:

Innocence and Forgiveness

Psalm 126 is a song of innocence. People in the midst of a harvest of joy. They sing of themselves: “we are like people who dream.” In the film version wouldn’t this be a lovely scene? Perhaps some in slow motion. Maybe picture something Amish. Maybe Breughel. I would have the sound track be by Johannes Brahms. Indeed, once in a Bible study group I led we all stood in a circle and sang and hummed Brahms’ Lullaby. We swayed, together, and our mouths were filled with laughter at the end, sweet joy at how ironic and innocent it all was—a bunch of adults singing a prayerful children’s lullaby to each other on a Sunday morning! We had been studying Brahms’ “A German Requiem,” speaking of death and how Brahms himself chose some of his words from Psalm 126: “May those who sow in tears, reap with shouts of joy” (vs. 5). An innocent imperative.

And so I preach to you this morning of innocence—a Christian character trait earned through a life practice of sanctification and given through the grace of faith, justification; which we claim in the assurance of pardon, the forgiveness of sin.

Those are a mouthful of Christian words. But it has been through my marriage with Nancy that I have come to experience and to love again innocence, purity of heart, and its delicate, necessary, gift to life.

Innocence and imagination are brothers and sisters in the childhood village of our souls. Having lifted up the spiritual value of imagination in last week’s service and sermon, it cannot go unnoticed that this past week was the 25^th anniversary of the murder of the Beatle, John Lennon. Who can hear the word “imagine” without hearing his plaintive, suggestive, persistent, call: imagine. Imagine all the people living life in peace. Our second Advent candle. Peace. Strawberry fields forever.

Imagination. The life blood of our besieged souls. I don’t think it is heresy to say that Jesus had an inspired imagination: seeing himself mirrored in the great claims of scripture, seeing the images of his identity in Isaiah—“The spirit of the Lord is upon me.” Have you ever seen that greeting card with a little tabby cat seated in front of a large oval mirror in which one sees a lion? [MSOffice1] Aslan. A way to imagine Emmanuel, God with us.

So now, if achieving, or better said, re-achieving, a state of child-like innocence—what we can call purity of heart—is a desirable thing (and I believe it is), something does have to be done about the past, our pasts, because we cannot go forward “as if” innocent having been so much less than innocent in the past. In other words, without forgiveness we have not a prayer of acting with innocence, with purity. Frankly, none of us has been innocent or pure of heart for long times at a stretch.

If we fail to keep that real sad truth in mind, many of our friends and all of our enemies have, do, and will.

I am enthusiastic having begun this sermon series, “A Child’s Christmas in Connecticut,” enthusiastic about the power of imagination to defend our souls from a cold cruel world. Imagination, the “biochemistry” of our soul, is a most useful gift of the spirit. C.S. Lewis said that his conversion to faith came when he saw the great myths, the imagination, of the human race becoming fact in Jesus Christ.

But the unique adventure that Jesus had in life tells us that this is not a story-line for childhood and youth only. In fact in the story in Luke 4, where Jesus claims to be the anointed one of God found in Chapter 61 of Isaiah, the local village people, friends of his from childhood, were so upset with the claim of his imagination that they rioted and took him to the edge of a local cliff to throw him off. They mocked and ridiculed his childish pretensions. “We knew you as a boy! Who do you think you are?”

We know this voice. It’s in our own heads. It keeps us from loving ourselves the way Jesus says God loves us, and it keeps us from letting God’s light shine within us—and for the world, as if “who do we think we are!?”

So this imaginative journey is dangerous and difficult. Bill Coffin once said, alluding to G.K. Chesterton, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It’s been tried and found difficult.” And knowing the story of Jesus, it is dangerous and difficult.

Further, imagination itself can be dangerous. Evil can make use of imagination, and evil people can be somewhat imaginative. I say “somewhat” because I love the observation of old Jonathan Edwards that the devil is prosaic. Not a lot of poetry to him! Imagination by itself can be soulless. It’s only a way to the soul. And evil has gotten more imaginative since Edwards’ day, “protracted by science” Churchill said.

Imagination may be the life-blood of the soul but it is not the heart of Christian faith. We are not aesthetes. The knight of faith, said Kierkegaard, cannot be just an artist. Our Bible says that when people are following “the imagination of their hearts,” they are up to no good. What Jesus did was to follow the imagination of God’s heart.

But even without the dangers of evil and the bad prose of the devil, we are afraid to be imaginative, too imaginative. We don’t want to belong to “the Dead Poets’ Society” because we don’t want to look stupid. Imagination: we hope to put it aside with other childhood childish ignorances.

We don’t want to seem innocent, unknowing. And so innocence is the next casualty of childhood. After imagination gets replaced by reason and vigilance, innocence gets replaced with a hard, cynical, scared heart. Almost impossible to reclaim. Almost.

So in our theme, A Child’s Christmas in Connecticut, we are in difficult and dangerous territory: imagination and innocence.

Remember the birth of Jesus so panicked King Herod that he ordered the massacre of the innocents and Joseph and Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt.

It takes nerve to preach imagination; it is almost criminal to preach innocence. And I wouldn’t do it if we did not keep seeing innocence in Jesus all along his way!

The innocence of Jesus, what we could call Christian innocence, or second innocence, is—while difficult and dangerous—truly the way of our salvation.

It’s not that Jesus didn’t know what was going on in the world and what evil lurks in the human heart. It’s just that he wouldn’t fight evil with evil. Jesus was without guile. No strategy. No tricks. No deceit. No cunning. No duplicity. And without guile, there is no guilt. Nothing to ever be ashamed of. He was the soul of trust, of trustworthiness. He knew the world but he only imagined the goodness of God, that was all that was worth living for. Dying for. And being resurrected by.

When C. S. Lewis was a little boy he read fairy stories. But at age 10 he read them secretly. He didn’t want to be shamed by others who would call him childish and stupid. He was ashamed that someone, or everyone, would say: “those fairy stories are not true. Not true. And things don’t turn out good—“happily ever after.” Childhood imagination and childhood innocence were clearly dangerous and difficult. And he knew it. But in Christian faith we all do live happily ever after. And so he stuck with that, eventually. Even though reality does break our hearts and open our eyes. We just don’t have to stay there in the tragic cynical place.

C.S. Lewis said that at the age of 50 he read fairy stories openly. Without shame. He said, turning St. Paul on his head, “when I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness, and the desire to be very grown up.” [MSOffice2]

Not being afraid to appear childish is the first sign of a Christian. And not being ultimately afraid of evil is the second sign.

Jesus did not avoid the murder of the innocents. Evil caught up with him at the cross. But on the cross we can see how evil ends in Jesus. He neither gave up his sacred imagination, his belief in God—nor his innocence. He did not become cynical, despairing nor defeated. How foolish! How wonderful! How wonderful for us.

Amen.