Seeing What We Hear: Insight into the Mystery of God

Transcript (edited for readability).

Gracious Heavenly Father, our bountiful and merciful God, give us your Holy Spirit, and the mind of Christ through your Holy Spirit, so that we may see and receive those things which no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard, no human heart has ever imagined — the things that you prepare for those who love you. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Seeing what we hear: insight into the mystery of Christ.

Now, let me warn you right from the start that this is probably, at least as far as I can see, going to be the most difficult of all the four talks that I'm giving to you. So if you tune out somewhere along the way, don't worry — it's because it is quite a difficult subject. But I hope to make it as clear as possible, and to leave time at the end for questions.

Now, since I'm talking about imagination and the importance of the sanctified imagination, I want to begin with two illustrations.

First of all, let's say you loved ants, and you wanted to get to know a colony of ants — you wanted to communicate with the ants. How would you communicate with them? Well, there are two things that would have to happen. It wouldn't be enough for you to stand over the ant colony and say, "Hi, down there, I love you, how are things?" The ants would be terrified, and they'd do one of two things: either they'd go scurrying back into the anthole, or they'd attack you and sting you to try to get you as far away as possible. Why? Because you'd be speaking to them in human language, in human terms, not in ant terms. So what would have to happen for you to communicate with the ants? Well, two things. First of all, you would have to become an ant, and you'd need to live an ant life, become part of the colony, and speak to them in ant language — you'd have to learn ant language and then say what you wanted to say in ant terms. But even then, you might get to know them, but they would not get to know you. You'd have to do a second thing, which is even more remarkable: you'd have to, if that were possible — and I assume that it is possible, for the sake of the illustration — give the ants a human mind, a human spirit, so that they could think and feel and imagine just as human beings do. So you'd have to give the ants a human mentality for them to appreciate you, your love, your concern for them, and your gifts to them. Two things: you'd have to become an ant, and you'd have to give the ants a human mentality. That's the first illustration — just keep that in mind. In a sense, that sums up everything I want to say in this session, so you can leave now. That's the problem with illustrations, isn't it — people remember them, but they don't remember what they're supposed to illustrate.

Secondly, I still remember what it was like when we got our first television set, in the old days. These days television sets are already tuned, so you don't have to tune them once you buy them — you just switch them on and everything appears on the screen. But in the old days, you had to tune the set. The first thing that came out was the sound — you'd hear the sound, but all that would appear on the screen was snow, or stuff flickering, going up and down. You had to tune the set — first of all, the set had to be tuned into the audio part; that was not so difficult. And then you'd have to tune in the verticals and horizontals, and then the light and darkness, and if it continued to the present day, you'd have to tune in the color. Before a television set can receive the transmission that is sent to it, it has to be tuned in, audio to the audio part and the video to the video part. Now, the most difficult part of that is getting the video tuning right — the tuning has to be right before the reception occurs.

Now, it's something like this with us human beings. What God does through his Holy Spirit, that comes to us through his word, is switch on the audio part, so that we hear what he's saying, but also the video part, so that we see what he's saying. And the two need to be in sync — you can't have the audio saying one thing and the video saying another thing. The tune needs to be in tune.

Well, what kind of seeing do we have as disciples of Christ? What kind of seeing comes from hearing the word of God? What kind of seeing? Let me begin with a remarkable saying of Jesus. The context is this: Jesus has sent seventy-two evangelists out to preach the kingdom of God. They represent him, they do his work, he works through them. And they come back surprised, overjoyed, ecstatic at their apparent success — actually it's not their success, it's Jesus' success — but they are overjoyed, and they're overjoyed that even the demons submit to them in Jesus' name. And Jesus then says, "Yes, that's good, but a far greater thing than this is that your names are written in heaven." And then he prays a most remarkable prayer. The prayer goes like this: "At that same hour, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. And no one knows the Son except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.'"

And then Jesus says these words, which we have here at the top of your handout — then Jesus turned to his disciples and said privately (notice this is not public teaching, this is private teaching, it applies only to those who are disciples), "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you, many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."

What are these things? These things are, first, Jesus, his teaching, his activity, but they include what happens when those seventy-two evangelists go out and do the work of the Lord — it includes their power, their defeat of Satan and all the powers of darkness through the preaching of the gospel. They are given to see that.

Now, I want to explore that connection between hearing and seeing. Notice here Jesus puts seeing first and hearing second, because that's his focus here. God's word and the Holy Spirit are given to us so that we not only hear the voice of God, but that we see what God says to us in his word. And because that's the case, imagery — and I'm going to explain what imagery is, picture language — is very, very important in the Bible. And, very often, particularly modern translations of the Bible miss out on what I consider one of the most important things: they dumb it down. They turn vivid pictures into vague general abstractions.

So just have a look at the difference between three passages — I won't tell you which translations are which. Let's take the wonderful passage from Psalm 34:8: "Find out for yourself how good the Lord is." Is that true? Yes. Is it right? No — because the original words are "taste and see that the Lord is good." Two senses, tasting and seeing, that the Lord is good.

Second one — this reflects the American Puritan tradition: "How happy is the woman who bore you and nursed you." Jesus, however, says, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breast that you sucked."

Or 1 Peter 4:10: "Each of you has been blessed with one of God's many wonderful gifts" — there, I can see Bev there — as good stewards of "God's many-colored grace." As good stewards of God's many-colored grace.

But what's the difference between them? Well, the first set of translations reduces the imagery, the picture language, to the minimum. The second lot of translations is true to the use of imagery, picture language, and it appeals to your imagination. "Taste and see that the Lord is good." "Wombs," "breast" — all of us relate immediately, emotionally, and imaginatively to those pictures. "Many-colored grace" — wonderful picture.

Well, in Scripture we have speech that doesn't just appeal to our intellect. It does that, but it appeals, I'd say first and foremost, to our imagination. It addresses our imagination, it appeals to our imagination. You see, there's a very close connection between hearing and seeing. Do you realize you don't actually hear with your ears? You don't actually see with your eyes — you hear and see with your mind. And if you hear rightly, you see what the person says. You say, "Aha — what do you say? Oh, I get it, that's right, I see it."

Now, let me define three very important words, so that there's no fuzz in my television set, in your television set, in our communication.

First of all, what's the imagination? The word there is "image," "picture." Now, the human imagination is the capacity to form a mental picture, a mental image. The imagination is the ability to see what's there, to see what's said. Now, there are two kinds of imagination. There is what some commentators and philosophers call inventive imagination, which is fantasy — to invent, to see something that's not real. And we have a lot of fantasy, you know, in television and in literature — it's very popular at the moment, and it's interesting for us to reflect on why fantasy is so popular. So you have fantasy, to imagine what isn't. But the kind of imagination I'm talking about is what philosophers call the perceptive imagination, which is seeing what is — not seeing what isn't there, what is unreal, but seeing what actually is there for us, in the past, in the present, and in the future. There's a close connection, you see, between memory and imagination. There's a close connection between seeing what's going on now and imagination. And imagination also gives us a preview of what still is to come, the outcome of what's going on now. For example, when I read the program for this conference, I imagine, I preview what's going to happen after this session — this afternoon, this evening, tomorrow, and so on. So it's the perceptive imagination that I'm talking about.

And now, a very key term: the word "imagery." When I speak about imagery, what do I mean? Well, it's the use of words as pictures for what is perceived with all five senses, not just the sense of sight. This is where I've done a lot of teaching, and this is where students have great difficulty — they only restrict imagery to the visual side of it. But imagery is language that appeals to all five senses — the sense of sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching — all of those are important, and for good communication you need to communicate to all five senses. Language appeals to all five senses by the use of imagery.

Let me just give you a very simple example. We talk about a "thunderclap." What kind of imagery do we have there? Well, first of all it appeals to the imagery of sound — "clap," like that. But it also appeals to the sense of sight, because you're not only hearing that clap, you see somebody clapping, right? So it appeals to two senses there, all at once.

Now, we use imagery most commonly in language to show what is said, so that people will see what is said. We use imagery to show people what we are saying so that they will see what we are saying. Jesus uses imagery to show people what he's saying so that they see what he's saying. Take, for example, the story of the prodigal father that we heard about this morning, and the wonderful sermon we heard from Lucas, who painted a picture before us — not just a single still, but a whole little movie, done for us vocally, verbally.

Now, in case you don't know, in intellectual circles there's been a great deal of reflection by philosophers and linguists and others, not just on the nature of language, but on the nature of imagination and the importance of the imagination. I won't give you any of the technical stuff — you can find it yourself. But one of the most interesting features of linguistics is the recognition, by people who study language, that we use language basically metaphorically or analogically — language doesn't so much communicate concepts as pictures to us. So the most basic form of language is simple naming and classification, but at that most basic level it operates by means of the imagination — it operates analogically.

Take, for example, if I see something out there and I call it a tree. What I'm saying is, this particular thing looks like these other things, and I compare them — they are different, each one's different, but what they have that is similar and common is that they are trees. Or take, for example, if I call something a home — I'm comparing this particular building to all other buildings. It's not like a gas station or a shop, it's not like a warehouse, it's not like a church, but it's like any other place where human beings live and sleep, where families live. So what's helpful is the understanding — the modern understanding — that we use language not just to identify things, but to compare one thing with another. So when we are using language we are always making comparisons, noting some similarities. That's the basic way language works, and that's the basic way our minds work.

Now, this is particularly important for the Bible, because the Bible doesn't just speak about visible things, seen things, but it shows us the unseen things of God. It shows us what is otherwise unseen. And the only way it can do that adequately is not in terms of vague, abstract philosophical categories, but in terms of human pictures — parabolic, analogical, or metaphorical language. And it does so that we can see what God says to us in his word. The Bible is meant to give us a vision of God, a vision of ourselves in relationship to God, a vision of God in his relationship with us and his relationship with the world around us. So the purpose of God's word, and the use of imagery in God's word, is to give us a vision of God — not with our physical eyes, but with our mental eyes, if you like.

That's, in fact, one of the reasons why God sent his Son to live a human life here on earth. The incarnation of our Lord was so that he could communicate to us in physical terms, in terms of the five senses that we have, in human terms. Just listen to what Luther has to say about the incarnation of God's Son as his presentation to us in all our five senses. He says: "God in his divine wisdom arranges to manifest himself to human beings by some definite and visible form, which can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands — in short, within the scope of the five senses." So God comes to us, he communicates himself to us in human terms, in a human body, with its five senses, to relate to us, human beings with our bodies, in our five senses.

Now there's an ancient teaching — I haven't had time to trace it back and find out how far back it goes — about three kinds of God-given senses, or sensibilities. The first you're all familiar with: the five physical senses, our physical perception. How do we get to know the world? Well, we get to know the world through the sense of hearing, the sense of sight, the sense of smell — very important — the sense of taste, and the sense of touch. Now, as you all know, we don't actually perceive with any of those five senses — we actually perceive with our mind, our brain. So you have the second kind of perception, which is mental or intellectual perception. We need to understand what we hear, we need to have insight into what we see, we need to have discrimination in our sense of smell — something stinks, something smells good — we need to have the ability to discriminate and to enjoy what we taste — I like this, I don't like that. And, very, very importantly, we have the sense of feeling, which comes from the sense of touch. I don't know whether you realize there's a very close connection between feeling, which we see purely in emotional terms, and our physical, tactile sense.

Then there's the third kind of sense. Now, this is very important in classical Christian teaching and in Lutheran orthodoxy: corresponding to those five physical and mental senses, we have five spiritual senses that are part of our created makeup. God hasn't just given us physical senses and mental senses, but he's also given us spiritual senses. The letter to the Hebrews speaks about this, in chapter 5, verse 14: the mature have their senses of discernment, their senses of perception, their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice — or better, by their habitual disposition — to distinguish good from evil. So those people who are spiritually mature have been trained by practice, and by the habitual disposition that comes from practice, to distinguish what is spiritually good from what is spiritually evil.

So then we have five spiritual senses — if I can use "spiritual" here; there are problems with that word, "spiritual," but I'll leave it for the time being. We don't just have physical hearing — the noise that comes to our ears — and mental hearing, but we have spiritual hearing. Hence the Scriptures talk about a "hearing heart" — that's what Solomon prayed for — or the "hearing of faith," says Paul. There's a particular kind of hearing that comes through faith in Jesus. We have spiritual sight — Paul, in Ephesians 1, talks about "the eyes of our heart" being enlightened by the Holy Spirit. You're probably fairly familiar with that, but the next three are also very important and under-emphasized.

We have spiritual smell — put that in inverted commas, because it's so odd for us. Paul talks about the "life-giving fragrance" of God's grace that comes to us through the proclamation of the gospel. So wherever the gospel comes, it doesn't just sound good, it smells good. Hence, by the way, the importance of incense in the Christian tradition, and in the Jewish tradition, in the Old Testament tradition.

Number four, we have spiritual taste. Psalm 34 says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good" — taste and see that the Lord is good. So Hebrews talks about "tasting the heavenly gift" — tasting it. The heavenly gift — what's that? It's both the body of Jesus and the Holy Spirit that comes to us through the body of Jesus. So the heavenly gift, we taste it — referring to Holy Communion. Tasting the goodness of God's word — we don't just hear God's word, we eat God's word, we taste it, it's good to our palate. We taste the powers of the age to come — all the powers that belong to the heavenly realm, the kingdom of God, we taste them. We don't just see them or hear about them, we actually taste those powers.

And then, lastly, you have spiritual touch. In some ways, on the most literal level — I'm speaking to you now, and there are vibrations through the air, and my voice touches you, physically, it's a physical, tactile thing. So spoken language is not just heard, but you are touched whenever a person speaks to you, and it's various kinds of touch. So the prophet Ezekiel speaks about the fact that, in the age to come, when the Messiah comes, in the new age, God will give his people a heart transplant — he'll take out the heart of stone, the insensitive heart, that's not sensitive to touch, and he'll give people a heart of flesh. You can touch a stone and it doesn't respond, but if you touch flesh, it responds — a wonderful picture, by the way. So Luther, for example, talks in quite a number of places about "the most sweet and tender touch" of Christ through his word. I don't know whether you've noticed how often, in the New Testament, Christ touches people. Luther reflects on that — how does that happen now, how does Christ touch us now? And he says he touches us by speaking to us through his word.

So then, when we listen to God's word, when we attend to God's word, we hear what it says to us. That's very often where we stop, and so we miss out on the fullness that it offers. We hear what it says, we see what it offers to us, we sense — we smell its fragrance, we taste its goodness, and we feel it, as we are touched by it.

Just a little aside — I was speaking to Brian Wolfmueller, who's been reading a book on poetry, about how you understand poetry. Now, you need to get the imagery, but most importantly, poetry is physical — it moves you, it touches you, it has a rhythm. And the words — you don't just see what the words say, you don't just hear what they say, but you actually feel what it does to you. You feel it with your body — it's very, very physical, if you're going to have access to it.

Likewise, just take the sermon this morning — it didn't just touch your hearing or your seeing, it smelled good, it tasted good, and I don't know about you, but I was touched by it, in a very — not just abstract way, but in a very physical, concrete way. That's the importance of preaching — that physical contact that comes through the word, the fact that we are touched by a person, with a human body, relating to us as human bodies.

Now, what God does for us, by giving us his Holy Spirit, is that he takes our imagination, which has been perverted and corrupted, desensitized, and he renews our imagination. He retunes our imagination, he sensitizes our imagination, he purifies our imagination, he sanctifies our imagination with his Holy Spirit, so that it is in tune with Christ, and with what he says and what he gives to us.

Just listen to how Luther begins his explanation of the Third Article. He says: "I believe that I cannot, by my own reason or strength, by my natural powers, believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith." The key word there is "enlightened me with his gifts" — enlightened me. I've been in darkness, my mind's been in darkness, my imagination is clouded in darkness, and now comes the Holy Spirit and switches on the light — in my whole person, in my heart. And once the light's on, I begin to see.

Now, when Luther talks about "reason" here — "I cannot by my own reason or strength" — he's not using "reason" in the narrow modern sense of intellect or abstract reason, but in the sense of understanding, the ability to understand what's perceived by my senses. Now, our problem is this: that even though God has given us five physical senses, five mental senses, and five spiritual senses, those senses have been damaged by sin, and they need to be healed. They need to be enlightened — they are in darkness and they need to be enlightened. And part of that enlightenment is the restoration of our imagination, so that we understand imaginatively — we have our imagination restored.

Now, time's going. I'm going to place before you a rather large passage, and I need to go through all of it, because I can't extract just the central part that I'm most interested in — it's part of a complex passage from Paul. Now, I don't expect you to take all this in, but give it a go. Let me just give you a summary.

Paul begins with the fact that God's glory — and our glory, notice those two things — God's glory and our glory is hidden. You can't see it, with our sinful selves and our corrupted minds — you can't see it, it's hidden from us, not only Christ's glory but our glory. And it's hidden from us in a special way in the body of Jesus, in his humanity — the most unlikely place for God to show his glory, in a human body exactly the same as our bodies. Now, that hidden glory of God, and our hidden glory, is revealed to us by God's word and his Holy Spirit, and it is recognized by us as we receive the mind of Christ. So what the Holy Spirit does is not only reveal God's gifts to us, our glory, but transform us, transform our spirits, our hearts, so that we have the mind of Christ and can receive Christ's gifts.

Let me read this lengthy passage, and see if you can follow it with me. Paul says: "We" — that's we ministers — "speak God's wisdom in mystery, his hidden wisdom, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age recognized. But as it is written: 'What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, what has not dawned upon the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him' — God has disclosed to us through his Spirit." So what no eye has seen, no ear has heard, what nobody has imagined, the things that God has prepared for you and me who love him — that's what God reveals to us through his Holy Spirit.

Now, how does this happen? "For the Spirit searches out everything, even the deep things of God. And who knows what is in a person except the person's spirit which is in him? Likewise also, no one recognizes the things of God but the Spirit of God. Now, we ourselves did not receive the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may know the things that have been graciously given to us by God. We also speak of these things with words taught by the Spirit rather than words taught by human wisdom, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. But the unspiritual person does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Neither can he — indeed he cannot — know them, because they are spiritually discerned; they are discerned by the Holy Spirit. But the spiritual person" — that's the person who has the Holy Spirit — "discerns everything, while he himself is discerned by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to advise him? We, however, have the mind of Christ." The mind of Christ.

Let me just summarize what's said here in diagrammatic form, and then I want to unpack it. So God gives his Holy Spirit and his gifts to us through Christ and his word. All the good things that God has prepared for those who love him, all the heavenly gifts, are given to us here on earth through Jesus and his words. And the Holy Spirit then gives us the mind of Christ — enlightens us, attunes our mind to Christ's mind, so that we have the mind of Christ.

And then, the second thing — what does the Holy Spirit do that's given to us through Jesus the man, and through his physical words? The Holy Spirit searches out and recognizes and knows the deep things of God. Everything that God is, is known by the Holy Spirit. Everything that God gives, that God wants to give, is recognized, known, accessible to the Holy Spirit. And what the Holy Spirit then does, to those who have heard Jesus' words, is disclose, through the words, the gifts of God through Jesus — the gifts, all the good things that God has prepared for those who love him, given by the Spirit — so that Christians can recognize Jesus, so that they can recognize the gifts that God gives them, so that they can see the glory of God, and, most importantly, here and now, they can see their own glory as children of God, so that they can know God, so that they can fully receive all the gifts of God.

Remember the television set? You have transmission, but you also need to have reception. So we receive the heavenly transmission, and we then can discern what belongs to God and the Holy Spirit and what doesn't belong to God and the Holy Spirit. And we can do this because we have been enlightened — we have the mind of Christ. We have the mind of Christ.

Now, your mind is your mental capacity to perceive, receive, and understand what's presented to your five senses. But your human imagination is limited, because it's limited to what is available to those five senses. It's one of the big problems of philosophy — the limitation of our mind to our senses, our five physical senses. Now, the problem then is: if our mind, if our imagination, is limited to the things of this world, accessible to our five senses, how can we know the things of God? How can we know God, and see what God gives to us? How can we see the good things that God has not only prepared for us, but already gives to us, in a hidden way, in the Divine Service?

Okay, the answer is — Paul uses a simple analogy. He says: just as you are the only one who really knows you — you don't understand the workings of a human mind unless you have human consciousness, a human spirit — so we don't know God unless we have God's Spirit. A human mind, a human self, can only be known by that person, and a human being is disclosed, revealed to others, through speech. I spoke about that yesterday — if you want to know what I'm like, what I think, what I feel, how I imagine, what I desire, the story of my life, the only way you can get to know that is if I tell you, through human words. So it's disclosed to others through speech. And, more importantly than that, it's understood only by people who have a similar mentality to me. There's the ancient saying that "like knows like." So let's say you're a very emotional person, and you commune, try to communicate emotionally — other people won't get to know your emotions, and get to know you, unless they themselves have an emotional mentality. Like knows like. What we are like is hidden from people with dissimilar minds. So, for example, speaking about emotions to an autistic person, or speaking about color to a colorblind person, or speaking about music to someone who's tone-deaf — don't you need to have a similar mentality to receive what is being said?

So the basic issue that Paul touches on here is: how does God disclose himself and his invisible gifts to us? How does he disclose all the things that he graciously gives to us? Well, go back to the analogy I started with — how do you communicate with ants? You would become an ant, learn their language, and speak to the ants in ant terms, and you would give them a human mind, with human feelings and human imagination.

Now, Paul says that he preaches Christ crucified and glorified in order to deliver the Holy Spirit and God's gifts to his hearers, and he does that in two ways — through words that are taught and inspired by the Holy Spirit, and secondly by the Holy Spirit, who is given through the word, and who discloses what God is giving through his word.

Many of you are preachers — well, what's the purpose of preaching? The purpose of preaching is to show God's glory. How do you do that? By preaching God's word, which brings the Holy Spirit, which enlightens people's hearts, minds, and spirits, so that they have the mind of Christ. And the more they have the mind of Christ, the more they have the capacity to receive everything that belongs to Christ — like receives like. So the more you are like Christ, the more you receive Christ's gifts. So the aim of preaching is to produce the mind of Christ — the mind of Christ, which feels as Christ feels, which thinks as he thinks, which desires what he desires, which sees as he sees. I'll leave it there for that part.

Now, I want to talk briefly about the exercise of imagination, first of all in meditation — meditating on God's word — and then in exegesis, the interpretation of the Scriptures. For me, when I come to a text, so that I approach it with my imagination rather than just with my intellect, I ask this simple — no, this complex — question. I ask myself: who or what is compared with whom or what, how and why, in this text, in this story? Now, that sounds rather complex, but it's really quite simple, and we do it quite naturally.

Luther has a wonderful little tract entitled "How to Read the Gospels," and he gives there a very simple method of meditating on Gospel stories, the stories of the Gospels. Okay, let's say you have a story — let's say it's the story of the woman with the uncontrolled menstrual bleeding who comes to Jesus. Okay. The first thing you do is picture what that story tells you, in your imagination, and you use all your five senses. You see what is being said, you hear what's being said, you smell what's going on there if there's something there, you taste what's there, and you look at the physical interactions, the touch. So you picture, you paint the story in your imagination — you rebuild, if you like, or recreate, the story in your mental television set. And then, secondly, you note the interaction of Jesus with the people in the story — what does Jesus do or say to the various people in the story?

And then, thirdly, comes the most important part of all. Up to this point the picture is out there — it's somebody else's story. But then you make it your own story, by identifying yourself with one or more persons in the story. You imagine that story as happening to you — you imagine yourself as the person in the story.

So what do I do when I meditate on the story of the woman with the menstrual bleeding? I do something which is very hard — I put myself in the shoes of that woman, and I imagine what it is like for her, in her society, to have that incessant bleeding. I do it not just intellectually, but emotionally. What does it feel like? How does it smell? What's the tactile part of all that? So I put myself in her shoes, and I imagine that what she does, I do. I imagine what people say around her, they say to me. And I imagine myself coming to Jesus — I'm filled with shame, an outcast, nobody's ever touched me, for how many years I can't tell, most people avoid me because I'm unclean, and I would love somebody to touch me, but I daren't touch Jesus — that's what I'd really like to do. I'd just like to reach out and say, "Jesus, help me," but instead I just reach out and touch the hem of Jesus' robe. And then I imagine what Jesus says and does to her, he says and does to me. Imagine that Jesus turns around, looks, and I'm trying to hide in the crowd. I imagine Jesus saying to me, "Who touched me?" Imagine how I feel when Jesus says that — what I think about it, how I feel — so small that I'd like to shrink myself out of existence, in shame, I'd like to hide. But then Jesus comes face to face with me and says, "Daughter, you are healed, you're made whole." Now, nobody has called me "daughter" for years — the only person who's done that is my father, and he's long dead, or maybe he won't have anything to do with me because my life's in such a mess.

So I identify myself with that person imaginatively. And then, Luther says, comes the important thing: then I, in faith, believe, trust, that what Jesus says to that woman he says to me, what Jesus gives to that woman he gives to me. And then I receive from Jesus the thing that he gives and says to that woman, and by believing it — Luther says — you have it, you receive it. Okay — that's the exercise of the imagination in our meditation.

The second example I want to give is the imagery connected with justification. Now, when I went to seminary, the professors used to talk about "the concept of justification," "the idea of it," "the doctrine of justification." It's only many years later that I realized that behind the teaching on justification you have a very graphic picture — something that appeals to the imagination. Now, I don't have time to deal with this fully, so I'll just run quickly through it — you can work it out in great detail.

Now, what's the basic picture you need to have in your mind when you hear the teaching and preaching on justification by grace through faith? Well, the picture is to see myself as part of a trial in God's court — that I am in the dock before God, I am on trial. And the picture works as follows. The supreme court that I stand before is not just a local court, but the final court, the Supreme Court of Law — God's judgment, now in secret, and openly at the end of the world. And the judge is God the Father, the heavenly king. The legal basis for the trial is God's law, as summarized in the Decalogue, and I am in the dock. I am accused, I stand there together with every other human descendant of Adam — we're all on the same ground. And the charge against me is a very grave charge — it's the charge of rebellion against the heavenly king, by transgressing the First Commandment. And the mandatory sentence, as you all know, for rebellion — at least it was in the ancient world, until modern times — is the death sentence.

Now, there are two possible ways to proceed in that court of law — two ways that I can plead in response to the charges put against me. On the one hand, I can say, when the judge says, "How do you plead?" — I can say, "I'm innocent, I'm not guilty." And the reason I give is my self-confidence, based on the conviction of my innocence — of course, not my absolute innocence, but my relative innocence, my self-righteousness. And then, to help me in the trial, I have the counsel for the prosecution, which is my conscience, as prompted by God's law, and my conscience is backed up by all the people that I've sinned against and the people whom I have abused. On the other hand, I have my advocate, the counsel for my defense, my excusing conscience, that is prompted by Satan the deceiver. If I plead not guilty, then Satan defends me. Now, what's the verdict that I will receive from God if I go down that road? It will be "guilty as charged," and the sentence is condemnation to eternal death. And the present result of that, until the final day, is that I have to live with a bad conscience, with fear of exposure and condemnation and death, that eventually people will get to hear about it, and I'll be rejected.

On the other hand, I can go down the alternate route — I can plead guilty. And I can plead guilty because of my faith in Jesus, based on the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit convicts me of sin, points me to Christ's righteousness, and therefore I say, "I am guilty, yes." And in that case, the counsel for the prosecution changes — it's Satan, who is my adversary, my accuser, in God's court. But in that case I have the best advocate of all, the risen Lord Jesus, who comes to my defense and pleads for me. And the verdict that I have received — because this is my situation — is "guilty as charged." Now take notice: it doesn't say — God doesn't say "not guilty," he says "guilty as charged." But then my advocate steps in and appeals to God the heavenly king for his mercy, which is his prerogative. And God the Father then sentences me to life rather than death — he pardons me, for eternal life with God. And the present result of that is that I can live with a good conscience before God. I have access to his grace, without fear, with freedom from condemnation by God.

So I say to you: if you want to get your head around the teaching on justification by grace, use your imagination — your sanctified imagination, as taught by God's word — and see yourself as pardoned in that heavenly court, and everything that involves.

Now, in conclusion, very practically — what's my basic aim? Now, at this point in my life — it hasn't always been my aim — what's my basic aim when I read God's word, when I meditate on God's word? Well, my basic aim is to see what God says and gives to me in that particular word. And that involves the use of the sanctified imagination. And the more I do that, the more my imagination is refined, and purified, and sanctified, by the word and the Holy Spirit. The more I see, the more I see — or put it better — the more I look, the more I see. My prayer is Psalm 119: "Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things" — usually translated "from your law," Hebrew torah, which is better translated "from your instruction," your teaching, your doctrine — open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things from your instruction.

Thank you. Now, time for questions.

Question: Not sure how to ask this particular question, but — the discerning of the Spirit. Some Christians — I don't want to sound pharisaical — seem content to dabble in or partake of things that are evil. How do we address that? For example, I've been told by some members, "Oh, pastor, you shouldn't speak so much about rock and roll music, it's really quite harmless, I want to keep listening to it." And I've tried to warn against that. How do we address things like that? They're not discerning the evil in it, they're not discerning evil in other things.

Answer: Very, very important question, and I think we very often go the wrong way. We think we can deal with the evils — let's just say — of rock music, or sexuality, or homosexuality, by attacking it, by showing that it's wrong. Now, there is a place for that, but no matter how much we go down that particular route, I think you'll find you won't deal with the problem, you'll just limit it, you'll curb it, but you won't change the minds of people, you won't change their hearts. Hence it's important to preach God's word, and through the preaching of the word give people the Holy Spirit, and teach people the Spirit. So the more that their minds are enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the more that their way of thinking and feeling and seeing is in tune with Jesus, the more they will come to discern good and evil. And it won't happen all in one step — that's a lifelong process. And as pastors, and as Christians, we need to be gentle with people, and lead them just to the next step. We don't deal with darkness by cursing the darkness, but by lighting a candle in their hearts. And that is the most difficult thing of all — it takes time, it takes patience, great patience, and you need to do it over and over again. Preach God's word, and through God's word, the Holy Spirit. What's the only thing that can change people? It's the word of God, and the Spirit that works through the word of God — nothing else does that. And by that I mean we need to preach both law and gospel, because unless you preach both, the heart, the conscience, the mind, won't be rightly enlightened. The result of preaching law and gospel is not just faith in Christ and love for the neighbor, but also our enlightenment — the enlightened conscience, the enlightened heart, the mind of Christ. And so, as a result of that, the more those people come to have the mind of Christ, the more uneasy they will be about the negative effects of, let's just say, rock music.

Question: After your presentation, it seems like a good time to ask the question I — yes, just repeat that — a question was raised in a Bible study recently at my congregation concerning the Lord's Supper, because in it we believe and teach that Christ is physically present. The question raised was, what happens in heaven, then, at that — what we are experiencing now as a foretaste of the feast to come? And since you touched on the sensory aspect before, could you go a little further with that, in terms of — I realize it's a mystery, but I don't know that we've fully plumbed that mystery of what happens in the eternal realm, at that heavenly banquet that takes place?

Answer: Yes — wonderful question. In the sacrament we have a foretaste of the things to come. We don't have the full reception of it, we have a foretaste. It's a bit like being engaged and being married. Being engaged is a foretaste of marriage, and yet, as you all know, marriage itself is completely and utterly different — you can't imagine what it's like just by being engaged. And yet it's the same thing — what you have there is already what you will have later. But instead of becoming more and more, if you like, spiritual, what happens in marriage is that you become, paradoxically, more and more physical with each other. Or put it a different way — you have a deeper intimacy, because it involves physical intimacy and total intimacy, not just verbal intimacy, personal intimacy, but total intimacy.

Now, when Jesus speaks about Holy Communion as a foretaste of the heavenly feast, he's saying, yes, it's like the heavenly feast in some ways, but it's unlike the heavenly feast in other ways. So we have to say, in what ways is it the same, in what ways is it different — that's always with the use of imagination. Well, what will be different? Well, number one, we won't be eating Christ's body and drinking his blood any longer, but we will be doing eucharist — thanksgiving. Our thanksgiving here on earth is a foretaste of the heavenly thanksgiving, so it will be a thanksgiving meal.

Oh — what, in fact, is the best part of a good dinner, a good meal? Now I'm inclined to say, okay, it's the wine, it's the wonderful food that my wife cooks — and I pay tribute to her, because she excels in hospitality and in putting on a good show for our guests — the food is important. But actually the food is only the instrument for something that's more important and wonderful, which is the personal interaction — to sit around the table and see people face to face, so that the meal becomes the occasion, the instrument, for that easy, happy, joyful celebration. And the most wonderful thing possible in human interaction is for us not to enjoy something that somebody else gives to us, but to enjoy them — I enjoy people. And the best enjoyment that comes from that meal is enjoying the company of those whom we love, or those whom we host as our guests.

So how do I enjoy my marriage best of all? Well, I won't talk completely about that — but better, how do I enjoy my family, and what that involves? I enjoy the company of my children and grandchildren most fully, best of all, around the table. And it happens at so many different levels — it's just being there with them, that's the best part. It's the conversation that takes place, and that can be rather noisy and intimidating for any guests at our table, but most of all it's the joy — the joy that I have from that face-to-face interaction.

So what we will have in heaven is that face — we will see Jesus face to face, but it's not just Jesus and me, we'll sit around a huge table with all the people that we can enjoy. So what do we have? We enjoy Jesus, we enjoy all the people we've ever got to know here on earth, and we enjoy so many more people. One of the great things of coming to a gathering like this is getting to know many people and enjoying people. But you can only do that for a little while. One of the problems about family meals is that they're over as quickly as they begin. But here you have a meal that never ends — a meal of joy, rejoicing, seeing God and others face to face, and just being there.