I get tired of the word vision. Whether it's in a personal development seminar, or a question about the future of the organisation, or the word wheeled out in the church community to help us be more forward, outward, upward and not backward looking - the word wearies me. It seems to suggest that the way things are is never enough. It invites, or rather demands, that I look for ways to make things different, to see things in a new way; it is a word that seems to work best in a place where there is already discontent, where the status quo is not enough.
I know, "Where there is no vision the people perish...." and all that. Leaving aside the risks of simply yanking those words from their biblical context, there is nothing intrinsically good about a vision. It depends on whose vision it is, the content and motivation, the energy and resources, and even the level of achievability implied in the vision statements.
Oh yes we need vision. I'm not weary of those inner longings of the heart, those spiritual flights of imagination that take us to possible new places. I'm not tired of the hard work of thinking, praying, conversing, arguing, planning and formulating new ideas, that push us towards a new way of seeing the world, creating ideas that inspire, energise, and give cohesion to communities hungering and thirsting after righteousness; such hungering and thirsting I take to mean wanting a world made more right, thirsting for an economics made more just, feeling hunger pangs for a community determinedly more porous to others, a view of people of other faiths not as enemies, or rivals, or competitors (the language of combative economics again), but communities whose vision is shaped and expanded, contained and fulfilled in filled-fulness by Jesus who goes before us. I mean giving first place to Jesus in whom the fullness of God dwells, through whom God seeks the reconciliation of all things, whose crucifixion is our call to carry the cross, whose "Follow me" remains our categorical imperative, and whose resurrection bursts the bounds of possibility in all our vision making - He is the One who is ahead of us, who is the fons et origo of every transformative vision we can think of, and the One who urges us beyond every vision statement we can formulate.
It's the devaluing of the word vision I guess that makes me weary. We use the word for the latest good ideas; or the in fashion ways of doing things; or as the word that claims the high ground for our own plans and agendas. And we do this in churches, the very place where Jesus crucified and risen is the Head of all things. Unless our visions aspire towards that great vision of a healed creation, a reconciled universe, a new reality defined by shalom and pervaded by a love deeper than the abysses of our own dreaming and more durable than our own hopes, then they will run out of fuel before they even reach the edges of what we hope for.
Vision is related to a theology of hope. Vision is what happens when we think with God on the horizon. Vision is such impatience with the status quo that nothing less than faith in the One who says "Behold I make all things new", will come within range of our longed for possibilities. For me Gaza has been an exercise in both realism and hopefulness; realism because I've no idea how to prevent that vicious, lethal cycle of hate from exploding again; hopefulness because I refuse, as a Christian steadfastly refuse, to cede the field to the powers that be, whoever they are.
Against the benchmarks of ancient hatred, political determinism, iron-clad vested interests, idolatry of the bomb and the gun and the rocket and the tank, discourse which sanitises evil with the vocabulary of collateral damage, human shields and terrorist madness, against all those as a Christian I do not rail, I pray. And I envision, not within the so limited scale of my own thinking and hoping and longing, but within the great vision of the Gospel of peace and reconciliation. I dare to believe that the Holy Spirit is God's self-gift to the world, moving with renewing and redeeming power within the structures of what we call reality; that Jesus Christ embodies the love and mercy of God taking on the worst the world can do, and emerging through suffering to resurrection which contradicts all that our human worst can do; that God's purposes for his creation are purposes that are ultimately, finally and irrevocably redemptive.
Maybe, just maybe, as well as all the practical things we desperately try to do - from buying Palestinian oil to speaking with our Jewish friends; from gift aid to charities committed to shalom purposes to making sure we are informed enough to take on the nonsense and sometimes dangerous nonsense spoken around us - as well as these, being a faithful follower of the crucified risen Jesus means being realistic about the worlds we live in - a world where crucifixion was not final, and resurrection realised the impossible possibility that death and the dealers of death don;t have the last word.
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