In Cabeza De Vaca’s account of his journey from Florida to the Pacific, between the years of. 1528 and 1536, he tells how the Indians came to him and his companion asking them to cure their sick. The two white men were themselves half-starved, lost and filled with blank despair. Yet, the Indians felt that they, being white men, had super-human power. De Vaca felt that they had no such power. “But we had to heal them or die,” he wrote. Now listen to De Vaca:
“So we prayed for strength. We prayed on bended knees and in an agony of hunger.” Then they laid their hands on and blessed each ailing Indian and saw that the sick were actually being healed. “Truly it was to our amazement,” he wrote, “the ailing said they were well. Being Europeans, we thought we had given away to doctors and priest our ability to heal. But here it was still in our possession.”
Now listen to De Vaca as he goes on: “It was ours after all; we were more than we thought we were… to be more than I thought I was… a sensation utterly new to me.”
There’s the exciting revelation: “We were more than we thought we were.” Isn’t that a gripping idea: more than we are!
Hear our scripture lesson again, this time from Phillip’s translation:
“Consider the incredible love that the Father has shown us in allowing us to be called “children of God” - and that is not just what we are called, but what we are. Our heredity on the Godward side is no mere figure of speech - which explains why the world will no more receive us than it received Christ. 0 dear children of mind (forgive the affection of an old man!), have you realized it? Here and now we are God’s children. We don’t know what we shall be come in the future. We only that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect His likeness, for we should see Him as He really is!”
What a thrilling word. We are God’s children now - and we shall be even more because of Jesus Christ.
Most of us want to be more than we are, don’t we? It’s true throughout life. Little children dream of the day when they will be youths; youth of the time when they will mature to adulthood; and adults continue to burn with desires, expressed and unexpressed ambitions. From cradle to crematory it’s the same story: we want to be more than we are.
The question is, how can we? In the healthy sense of the word, how can we be more than we are?
IN IMAGINATION IMAGINATION
Imagination will help. It’s amazing what a sanctified imagination can do for us. A person is in bad shape who does not have it, and who does not develop it in its fullest.
Imagination is one of God’s precious gifts. All of us have the basic gift of imagination. This is the reason we see it operative in its most delightful and effective way in children. Children have no problem by a simple act of the will, putting themselves in a completely different world, and casting themselves as completely different characters. Even three year olds, or eight or twelve - they can be doctors, space explorers, actresses, soldiers, preachers, professors, world travelers. What a service to their lives. Tedious and heavy hanging hours are transformed into excitement, laughter and joy. But more, the games of imagination children play contribute significantly to their maturity and shape the persons they become.
The freshness of children is delightful and challenging. They see things and they respond as they see. A mother was trying to awaken her first-grader and to get him off to school. At her third attempt, the fellow stretched, tried to open his eyes widely and in a yawning voice said, “Whoever invented morning sure made it too early.” Have you read Eric Marshall and Stewart Hample’s Collection: Children’s Letters to God?
One little boy wrote, “Dear God, I’m sorry I was late for Sunday School, but I couldn’t find my underwear.” Another said, “Dear God, where does everybody come from? I certainly hope you explain it better than Daddy did.”
Children are fresh and alive in their imagination. Too bad we allow this faculty to die within us as we grow older. How it would serve us in our dark hours, in our loneliness, in our boredom I am not talking about mere fantasy as is so often the case with children in their imagination. This is something that can be sanctified and made holy. It can be a servant assisting in becoming more than we are in a healthy and helpful way. Listen to Mae Riley Smith sing about it.
Beyond a little window
Of my dull house of care
One road is always beckoning
When days are grey and bare;
And when I leave the dusty street
The struggle and the load - I pin my wings upon my feet
And take the tree-top road!
Life’s sweetest joys are hidden
In unsubstantial things;
An April rain, a fragrance,
A vision of blue—wings:
And what are memory and hope
But dreams? And yet the bread
On which these little lives of ours
Are fed and comforted!
Without imagination
The soul becomes a clod,
Missing the trail of beauty,
Losing the way to God.
(Masterpieces of Religious Verse,.p. 300)
Well, you may think that fantasy and to some degree it is. But sanctify it and it becomes a faculty that will transform your day and assist you along the hard road of Cultivate that - imagination. It will make you more than you are.
II
FAITH
Now, let’s move to another level –
A reality, unfortunately not often perceived, is that there is an intimate connection between faith and imagination, and faith makes more than we are. That’s the second thing I want to say: Faith makes us more than we are.
And there is a connection between faith and imagination. The prophet and the dreamer are made of the same stuff. You remember that marvelous word of George Bernard Shaw which Robert Kennedy made popular? “Some men see things as they are and say, why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?” (Back to Methusaleuh, Act I). That’s the marriage of faith and imagination. And that kind of faith makes us more than we are.
Let’s focus now on our text. John is reminding the people of the incredible privilege that is theirs - the privilege of being called children of God. But, he moves further and deeper: we are not merely called the children of God; we are the children of God. Not only the name but the reality, the relationship is ours.
“There is something here which we need to look at carefully. It is by the gift of God that a man becomes a Child of God. By nature man is the creature of God, because God is his creator, but it by grace that man becomes the Child of God. There are two English words which closely connected, but whose meanings are widely different. There is the word paternity and the word fatherhood. Paternity describes a relationship in which a father is responsible for the physical existence of a son, but as far as paternity goes, it can be that the father has never even set eyes on the son, and recognize him, if in later years he met him. But fatherhood is more than paternity, loving, continuous relationship in which father and son grow closer to each other every day.” (Barclay, the Letters of John and Jude, p. 87)
On a trip to Korea some time ago, Jerry and I experienced, what was at once a heart-breaking and heart-lifting experience that sheds light on this matter. On our flights, both from Seoul to Tokyo and later from Tokyo to Chicago, there were batches of Korean babies, being delivered to adoptive parent in the United States. In one instance, two fellows were responsible for five babies. My wife, Jerry, held and cared for one of the babies on the flight from Seoul to Tokyo. I thought I was going to become an adoptive parent before it was over. It was a painful, yet joyful experience. The emotional conflict of it was in the fact that here was a baby, leaving his home country and culture, going to a completely different setting, leaving his natural parents, perhaps, never to see them again. That’s a wrenching thought - that one would never know his or her own parents. Yet, at the other end of the flight, in Pennsylvania, in this instance, there were a man and a woman - their name was on the little band around the baby’s arm - filled with joy and excitement, ready to give their love and care to this little one that they had adopted as their child.
That picture sheds light on our scripture. In the sense of paternity (creation) all people are children of God; but in sense of parenthood, we are children of God only as we respond to God’s gracious love poured out for us in Jesus on the Cross. So, Paul in Romans (8:14-17), (I Cor. 1:9), and (Gal. 3:26-27; 4:6-7) uses the image of adoption, ‘.y a deliberate act of love on the part of God, we are adopted into God’s family. What incredible love! John says - don’t forget it - we are God’s children.
But there’s another matter still to note. This is who we are, John says, God’s children. Then he adds, “we don’t know what we shall become in the future. We only know that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect His likeness, for we should see Him as He really is!”
John is thinking of the second coming of Christ when we shall see, not through a glass dimly, but face to face – when the ceil of sense and time shall be rent into from top to bottom, and we will behold the glory of the Lord, the day.
“When death these mortal eyes shall seal
And still this throbbing heart,
The rending veil shall Thee reveal
All glorious as thou art.”
(Quoted by Barclay, The Letters of John and Jude, page 90)
So, John is climaxing the Christian hope with that vision of the Second Coming of Christ. What a joyous hope! That one day Christ will return and claim us for his own. Whether soon or late, we need to keep that vision alive in our hearts while we must continue to labor – to fight our daily ballets with evil – the victory has already been won! There is something else here. When we talk about faith making us more than we are, we are talking about the energizing power of the Living Christ available every day. We do not wait for His final appearance in “the second coming.” That’s the reason I like Phillips’ translation. He puts it in the present tense: “We only know that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect His likeness, for we should see Him as He really is!”
Faithful imagination and imaginative faith makes Christ’s presence real in the here and now, every day. So our faith makes us more than we are.
Let me illustrate. I thought of this story again when we were traveling recently and visited four of the great universities in Korea and Japan which were established by Christian missionaries. Bishop Lambuth was one of the great personality forces in the Christian missionary cause, but his life, like most of our lives was tied to the consecrated vision of his parents. His mother and father went to a protracted meeting - do you know what a protracted meeting is? That’s a revival. It was a protacted meeting in Pearl River, Mississippi. A great call for the missionary enterprise of the church was made by the visiting evangelist and Mrs. Lambuth pledged $5.00 in money - but on her pledge card she also wrote “And my whole self to be used by God as He pleases.” Her husband, too, responded. They later became the first Christian missionaries to Shanghai. Later, their son, who was to become Bishop Lambuth, started to China himself. A typhoon changed his course. He ended up in Japan and founded what is now one of the great universities in Asia - Kwan Sei in Osaka. From Pearl River Mississippi to Shanghai to Osaka - and all over the world - more than we are by faith.
III
COMMITMENT
And that leads me to the next thing I want to say, as I put all this in even more concrete terms. We are more than we are by the commitments we make.
Nail this down in your mind. When God wants to accomplish something in the world, when He wants to lead humanity around a crucial corner or through a perilous pass in history, He doesn’t perform a miracle and create persons for the doing of the job. He takes ordinary people like us and places the challenge before us. Those who respond to His challenge and make a commitment to Him become more than they are; and we are used in a significant, sometimes earth-shattering way.
Do I hear you say, “I can’t live the Christian life.” You are right! “I can’t meet all the demands of the Gospel.” You are right! “I can’t begin to approach the ethical ideals of the Sermon on the Mount.” You are right! “When I consider Jesus and hear His call to a selfless dedication, I know that it is too much for me. I can’t do it.” You are right! Ah, here is the glory of the gospel: Ordinary persons like you and me can make our commitment to Christ and become extraordinary. We are more than we are by the commitments we make. Let me very specific.
You can make a commitment that your home is going to be a place of Christian nuture and witness, and Christ will give you His presence and power to make it so.
You can make a commitment of your gifts and talents to be used as Christ wills for His glory, and not only will those gifts and talents be used and enhanced; you will be given additional gifts of the Spirit for ministry.
You can commit yourself to be a personal witness for Jesus Christ, and not only will you receive the power to overcome timidity as you boldly seek to witness you will be given words to say, acts to perform, relationships to cultivate, and fruit for your labor that will amaze and inspire you.
You can make the decision to tithe, to commit 10% of your income to Christ and you will discover that what you thought you could never do will be done, and joy and meaning and blessing beyond your imagination will be yours.
You can commit yourself to stand up for righteousness and justice. Discover the power to live as Christ would have us live as serving persons who seek first His Kingdom.
We could go. Our commitments make us more than we are. Not only as individuals but as a church.
As a congregation, we can be more than we are by the commitments we make.
Do we want, as a church, to be a parable of mission and outreach for the entire denomination. Then let’s make the commitment to give 50% of our income in that fashion - let’s sanctify our imagination and discover the crucial needs of our city and respond to those needs in faithful commitment.
Do we want our church to be a place of welcome and hospitality to the hopeless and hurting of our community? Then let’s commit our selves to a ministry that will be so inviting and so resourceful in meeting needs that the lonely and hurting, the lost and needy will come and when they come they will not go away empty handed.