† “Use your imagination, Peter!”
The 1991 movie “Hook” starred Dustin Hoffman as the eponymous captain and our beloved fellow-Episcopalian Robin Williams, of blessed † memory, as the grown-up and buttoned-down Peter Pan, who returns to Neverland to retrieve his children that Captain Hook kidnapped.
The adult Peter had long forgotten his Pan past, and it showed when he sat at the table with the Lost Boys for their raucous evening meal.
The Lost Boys took the lids off the steaming pots and pans and filled their tin plates with all kinds of fabulous food and started gobbling it up, as most boys do, with gusto.
Peter was stymied. He didn’t see any food at all. All his adult eyes could see was thin air.
One of his table-mates leaned over to him and said, “Use your imagination, Peter!”
As the tightly-wound Peter allowed himself to unravel, he found the feast, that was there all along, right in front of him. Peter, rediscovering and reclaiming his Pan-past, started eating, too, and the meal devolved into a grand and glorious food-fight.
“There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish,” Andrew, the brother of another Peter, reported to Jesus. “But what are they among so many people?”
Five loaves and two fish might as well be thin air for a hungry crowd of five thousand.
The feeding of the multitudes is one of the handful of stories that shows up in all four gospels, but it is only Saint John’s account that tells us that a boy brought the meager provisions.
Why does John add that detail?
Why the boy? Why a child?
In John’s Gospel, Jesus often is at odds with tightly-wound people of little imagination, who fail to see what is right in front of them.
The teacher and leader Nicodemus cannot imagine what it is to be born again. The sighted scribes and pharisees, contesting the testimony of the now-cured man born blind, are the ones without the imagination to see.
The truth? Pontius Pilate can’t handle the truth! – to borrow Jack Nicholson’s famous line from another movie – much less imagine the truth.
And Philip and Andrew and, even Peter – Simon, not Pan – can’t imagine and can’t see what, to Jesus and the boy, is the abundance of food right in front of them, waiting to be gobbled up.
In the now-familiar Eucharistic action, Jesus takes what the boy brings forward, blesses it, breaks it, and distributes it to the people – and they eat, as much as they wanted.
I wonder how long it took for the tightly-wound twelve to begin to see what was there all along?
When did incredulity turn to giddiness?
John’s Jesus asks a lot up us today and over the next four weeks when as we listen to the Sixth Chapter of his gospel.
It’s a complex, repetitive chapter, typical of the Johannine writings.
Jesus will ask us to imagine things about himself that our grown-up eyes may find hard to swallow. The chapter will end with many walking away, shaking their heads in disbelief.
Peter – Simon, not Pan – with the new-found imagination of a Lost Boy, will speak for the twelve and follow Jesus.
I find it providential that today, for the first time in weeks, we have an unobstructed view of the newly-restored rose window of Jesus and the children.
It should inspire us to approach the sacred mysteries of Holy Communion with the robust and holy imaginations of the Lost Boys of Neverland.
Soon one of you will bring forward bits of bread. Another will follow with a flagon of wine. We will rehearse what Jesus did on that grassy plain, and later in the Last Supper room.
Simple elements – a slip of wafer and a sip of wine – that, with God’s robust and holy imagination becomes the reality of the Body and Blood of Jesus, the Lost Boy of Heaven-land: fabulous food for us to gobble up with gusto.
To be sure, it is God’s imagination and God’s power that makes this meal sacred and true; and it is God’s power at work within us that opens our eyes to imagine what seems unimaginable.
The bread and wine given back to us is the Body and Blood of Jesus, whether we see it or not. This is a gift from God. This is a sacred mystery.
And our sacred and holy imagination – our ability, like Peter Pan, to join the Lost Boys in the feast – which, in our case isn’t something make-believe, but rather real and true, this sacred and holy imagination is also a gift from God.
If you struggle at times, frustrated like the grown-up and tightly-wound Peter, to unravel that sacred mystery don’t give up and go away hungry.
Listen! – the Holy Spirit and our beatifically-imaginative tablemates in the Communion of Saints are leaning over to us right now, saying, “Use your imagination, child!” †
Fr. Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP
10th after Pentecost, Proper 12 – July 28, 2024
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco
“The Eucharistic Imagination of a Child"
Comments