March 1st, 2026 - "Wilderness Survival Guide: Ignatian Imagination" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

If you have questions related to what you hear today or just want to find

out more about the ministries at First United Methodist Church, please visit us

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Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Amen.

Amen!

Praise the Lord.

It is a joy to welcome you here in worship at First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

My name is Michelle Morris, and I'm the lead pastor here.

So, so happy to get to worship with you.

We are in this series called Wilderness Survival Guide, in which we're learning

different spiritual practices, and today we will be doing Ignatian

Imagination, which will be a space in which we will dance in scripture.

So to invite ourselves into that place, we're going to invite ourselves to just

kind of turn ourselves over to God.

So with that in mind, hear these words from Psalm 63 God, my God, it's you.

I search for you.

My whole being thirsts for you.

My body desires you in a dry and tired land, no water anywhere.

Yes, I've seen you in the sanctuary.

I've seen your powers and glory.

My lips praise you because your faithful love is better than life itself, so I

will bless you as long as I'm alive.

I will lift up my hands in your name.

I'm fully satisfied, as with a rich dinner.

My mouth speaks praise with joy on my lips.

Whenever I ponder you from my bed, whenever I meditate on you in the

middle of the night, because you've been a help to me, and I shout

for joy in the protection of your wings, my whole being clings to you.

Your strong hand upholds me.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray.

Amen.

I actually really love to read wilderness survival guides.

They're things that I tend to collect, and I love to read through them, and

there's all kinds of different wilderness survival guides that are out there.

There's the standard ones.

This one's a complete wilderness training manual.

Very handy for life in an RV, right?

Can identify, uh, you know, how to light a fire and what kind of poisonous plants

are around there and how to make a stove or a oven out in the wilderness, right?

Um, handy, uh, information to have.

Then there are other wilderness survival guides that I think

are just fascinating to read.

My… The first one that I sort of fell in love with was The Worst-Case Scenario

Survival Handbook, which I could not find in preparing for this sermon, which

is kind of the worst-case scenario.

Um, uh, but I have other ones that are in similar vein.

Like, I was recently given How to Survive a Freakin' Bear Attack

and 127 Other Survival Hacks You'll Hopefully Never Need.

And it's just great to read through.

Like, I know, you know, if I get bit by a, a shark, I should punch them in the nose.

You know, go for their eyes.

Those sorts of things.

And that's the thing about wilderness survival guides is they're useful

if you can take the information and put it immediately step by step

into practice, but some of these things are preparation for things

that we do hope will never happen.

So the only way to prepare for those is to imagine that they're happening, right?

To imagine what would I do in case of a bear attack?

What would I do in case of a snake bite?

To imagine those things and take that time to do the preparation.

The Bible is our wilderness survival guide.

It is what helps us get through those wilderness days.

We have to read it.

We need to read it in order to allow it to help us prepare for those things.

But then because, especially since it's of a distant time and different

place, we also have to unleash our imaginations and invite ourselves maybe

into an ancient time that then tells us something about our current time.

Because as ancient as the setting of the Bible is, it tells us so much about

humanity, and humanity, for better or worse, seems to not change a whole lot.

And so entering into scripture allows us to imagine scenarios and prepare

us for the reality of being a disciple or prepare us for how we might manage

any number of life crises Now, one way to unleash our imagination is

to practice Ignatian imagination.

Ignatian imagination is a spiritual practice brought to us by St.

Ignatius of Loyola.

He lived about 500 years ago, and what he thought was powerful about scripture

is reading it and imagining ourselves within it, and imagining how we would

react, what we would see, what we would smell, what we would hear, how we

would encounter Christ in that moment.

And what it would do then is, as I mentioned, prepare us to be disciples or

give us the strength to manage crises.

Let me give you a couple of examples from my own experience

with Ignatian imagination.

So probably the first time I used Ignatian imagination was in Disciple

Bible study, and it was a little more directed than the average Ignatian

imagination approach is, but we were reading about the Transfiguration,

and if you don't remember or you're unfamiliar with the Transfiguration,

what happens is that Peter, James, and John go up on a mountain with Jesus,

and while they're up there, Jesus glows all white and gets transfigured, and

then is joined by Moses and Elijah.

And so this revelation of Jesus' divine status to these three disciples.

Incredibly powerful moment and experience.

So we were invited to listen to that story and receive it, and then

we were invited to hear it again, and this time to imagine ourselves

as either Peter or James or John.

And if we imagined ourselves as James or John, how would

we react to what Peter says?

Now, as soon as we were given that instruction, I started laughing

because I imagine myself as James or John, and what Peter says, in the

midst of this grandiose, incredible, divine moment, Peter says, "Hey, how

about we pitch some tents and we'll just hang out for a while?" What?

It was so absurd to me.

It was so ridiculous sounding that I laughed so hard I had to

put my head down on the table.

However, there was someone else in the group that said, "Well, wait a minute,

I'm Peter, and it absolutely makes sense to me why he said what he said, because

these are my guests, and of course I would want to make space for them." And

it was powerful to have that interplay between my reaction and her reaction

and what it told us about that moment So that taught me a lot about discipleship.

But I've also found that it helped me navigate crisis.

I've shared before that there was a time in my life when my son was on a path

that was not going to end well, and I had tried everything I could to get him on

a better path, and nothing was working.

During that time, I went on a retreat where someone led us

through Ignatian imagination using Lazarus coming out of the tomb.

And when we reached the point where we were invited to see ourselves in

the scene, I knew exactly who I was.

I knew I was Lazarus' mother.

Now, Lazarus' mother is never mentioned in scripture, but in that

moment, I knew that's who I was.

And so as we heard that passage again, I could see myself beating on the

rock of the tomb so hard that my arms were bloodied, because all I wanted

was my son to come back to life.

In the midst of that, Jesus walks up to the tomb and sees me

and says, "Woman, hush." Which I did not take very kindly to.

But as I turned to Jesus to let him have it, I saw the peace on his face.

And instead, I just stepped to the side and let him go, let Jesus

ask for the stone to be rolled away and to call Lazarus out.

And as Jesus called Lazarus out, it was my son who came out of the tomb, and

right behind him, I came out of the tomb

Because we were both in desperate need of Jesus' salvation, and

it was extended to us both.

And what I took from that experience was it's time that I trusted Christ

with this, that I let go of trying to control and fight my way into

that tomb, and instead to be called out as my son would be called out.

So we're gonna practice Ignatian imagination right now, and I will tell you

that I don't know what it will do for you.

There are no predefined results.

It may be a powerful experience for you.

It may just be an interesting experiment.

It may cause you to deeply reflect.

It may just cause you to see scripture in a new way, and

all of those are good things.

If it does cause a moment in which you think you need to come see your

pastor, please come see me or Ray, 'cause that can sometimes happen, too.

So we're going to practice this, and Emily Douglas chose our passage for us.

I went over to her and asked her to pick a color, and the color is with

a particular scriptural passage.

So thank you, Emily, for choosing this passage for us today.

So get comfortable.

Sit easily in your seat.

If it helps you to use your imagination and close your eyes, close your eyes.

If you wanna leave your eyes open, that's fine.

Just however is comfortable for you.

And I'm just gonna read through this passage one time.

Then I'm gonna read through it again after giving some instruction.

So hear now this word

Right then, Jesus made his disciples get into a boat and go ahead to

the other side of the lake toward Bethsaida while he dismissed the crowd.

After saying goodbye to them, Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray.

Evening came, and the boat was in the middle of the lake,

but he was alone on the land.

He saw his disciples struggling.

They were trying to row forward, but the wind was blowing against them.

Very early in the morning, he came to them walking on the lake.

He intended to pass by them.

When they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was

a ghost, and they screamed.

Seeing him was terrifying to all of them.

Just then he spoke to them, "Be encouraged. It's me. Don't be

afraid." He got into the boat, and the wind settled down.

His disciples were so baffled.

They were beside themselves.

Now I'm gonna read it again.

This time I want you to imagine you are in it

You can be one of the people mentioned, including Jesus

You can be someone that's not mentioned in scripture at all

You can be an element like the wind or an object like the boat

Go into this passage and see what resonates with you.

What do you see, hear, smell, feel?

Hear the words.

Right then, Jesus made his disciples get into a boat and go ahead to

the other side of the lake toward Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.

After saying goodbye to them, Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray.

Evening came, and the boat was in the middle of the lake,

but he was alone on the land.

He saw his disciples struggling.

They were trying to row forward, but the wind was blowing against them.

Very early in the morning, he came to them walking on the lake.

He intended to pass by them.

When they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was

a ghost, and they screamed.

Seeing him was terrifying to all of them.

Just then he spoke to them, "Be encouraged. It's me. Don't be

afraid." He got into the boat, and the wind settled down.

His disciples were so baffled they were beside themselves

Now, sometimes it helps to process this with someone else.

Sometimes it's just yours and you want to keep it to yourself, that's fine.

But I'm going to give some time if you want to share with the people

around you what you experienced, then take a few moments here to share.

Same for you choir.

If anybody wants to share what you experienced with someone around

you, then feel free to share

Okay.

I'm gonna read through one more time, and this time, see if you can determine

what you think God is trying to tell you through this experience, to hold onto that

Right then Jesus made his disciples get into a boat and go ahead to

the other side of the lake, toward Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.

After saying goodbye to them, Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray.

Evening came, and the boat was in the middle of the lake,

but he was alone on the land.

He saw his disciples struggling.

They were trying to row forward, but the wind was blowing against them.

Very early in the morning, he came to them, walking on the lake.

He intended to pass by them.

When they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was

a ghost and they screamed.

Seeing him was terrifying to all of them.

Just then he spoke to them, "Be encouraged! It's me. Don't

be afraid." He got into the boat and the wind settled down.

His disciples were so baffled they were beside themselves.

Just like last week, we have given you a how-to to do this, and on

the back are some places where you can write some reflections.

There are also some other passages you might use through this week.

If you want to try this out through the week, you have some suggestions there.

They tend to use gospel passages just because those are very deeply tied

to our understanding of Jesus, but you can use any passage in the Bible,

including the psalm that I just read.

This is part of our journey.

This is part of learning how to navigate the wilderness by imagining ourselves

in this space and understanding how we might react, how we might respond,

and how we might draw close to Christ.

Thanks be to God.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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Grace and peace.