Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ the promised Messiah, is for me the triumph of prophetic imagination. Prophetic Imagination is a major plank of the Judeo-Christian religion. It is the power and the courage and also the inspiration to dream of, or envision a world that is totally different from the present one that is plagued by corruption, wickedness, social injustice, sickness and disease, violence and war. Prophetic imagination is the spiritual and mental attitude of defying the state of darkness and sin we find ourselves in today, and dreaming the promised future of bliss into the present. Prophets are the visionaries of their time. When all others are blind, prophets are the ones granted to see the light beyond the tunnel. Equipped as they are with superior knowledge and perception, prophets analyse the situation on the ground in the light of God’s ultimate purpose and inscrutable design. Prophets refuse to be defiled by the corruption of the moment. They refuse to be engulfed by the darkness of the surrounding environment. Instead they possess the vision of life as it ought to be, and they hold on tenaciously to this vision, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.
Prophetic imagination is the spiritual defiance of what is, in the name of what God has promised. It visualises an alternative future to the one fated by the momentum of current contradictory forces. It breathes the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of present reality. Prophets who are totally committed to the new inevitability on which they have fixed their imaginations, can decisively affect the shape the future takes. Such prophets or dreamers are the shapers of the future. Prophetic imagination is the spiritual rejection of the present reality is, in favour of what ought to be. It is the rejection of a world dominated by the powers of evil, in favour of the promised world of righteousness and peace which Jesus Christ calls the Kingdom of God.
In an environment of widespread debauchery and at a time of multiple tragedies, when the multitude of people will otherwise succumb to discouragement and to despair, prophetic imagination generates hope in the victims of injustice and in those who genuinely hunger for righteousness. Thus prophets are harbingers of hope and heralds of freedom. Their prophetic imagination energises the poor victims of injustice and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and peace with the powerful message that all is not lost – that soon, very soon, the Lord will intervene to turn things around for good. Thus, it was during the period of the Babylonian captivity, a time of great depression and distress in the history of Israel that Prophet Isaiah addressed the following words to his people: “Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”
At Christmas this year therefore I join the prophets of old in this dreaming exercise. Since the circumstances of our world and of my country are similar to those that inspired these prophets, and since I serve the same God of promise, I am daring to defy the present world with its multiple ills, and to imagine a different world and a different society that is possible by virtue of God’s promise. So I dream of peace for our world and for Nigeria that has gone through a protracted nightmare by way of economic distress, political fragmentation and social decay. Though I have watched with sadness the negative trends in the economy and the sustained tension on the political front in Nigeria and elsewhere, I have not abandoned my dream of peace. In spite of the mess of the moment, I have chosen to hold on to the dream of peace, security and prosperity for our confused world and for my country, the giant of Africa that today lies flat on its belly. I am not entirely distracted by the blood and tears I see. Nor am I overwhelmed by the selfishness, greed, hatred and violence all over the place that today renders global and national peace impossible. I still dream of peace for the world and for Nigeria, for what will life be without a dreams? How could I live without this prophetic imagination?
I recall the prophesy of Zephaniah to the distressed people of Israel at a time when they found themselves in socio-political and economic circumstances similar to our own today. The prophet told them: Shout for joy, daughter of Zion, Israel, shout aloud! Rejoice, exult with all your heart, daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has repealed your sentence; he has driven your enemies away. The Lord, the king of Israel, is in your midst; you have no more evil to fear… The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exalt with joy over you, he will renew you by his love; he will dance with shouts of joy for you as on a day of festival (Zephanaiah 3:14-18).
My prophetic imagination of a time of peace, security and prosperity in the world and in my country is kindled anew as I reflect everyday on Isaiah’s classical celebration of hope in the following prophesy: The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; on the inhabitants of a country in shadow dark as death, light has blazed forth. You have enlarged the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at harvest time, as they exult when they are dividing the spoils. For the yoke that weighed on it, the bar across its shoulders, the rod of its oppressor, these you have broken as on the day of Midian…For a son has been born for us, a son has been given to us, and dominion has been laid on his shoulders; and this is the name he has been given, “Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace” (Isaiah 9:1-6).
At Christmas this year I dream of peace for my troubled motherland, appropriating for the land those gracious promises of the Lord through Prophet Isaiah when he says: I the God of Israel will not abandon them. I will make rivers well up on barren heights, and fountains in the midst of valleys; turn the wilderness into a lake, and dry ground into springs of water (Isaiah 41:17-18). At this time of the year, I dream of peace for the world and for Nigeria because I believe that our all powerful God whose glorious visitation we celebrate at this time, is able to bring about a transformation by which the wolf will live with the lamb, the panther lie down with the kid, calf, lion and fat-stock feast together, with a little boy to lead them. The cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together. The lion will eat hay like the ox. The infant will play over the den of the adder; the baby will put his hand into the viper’s lair. No hurt, no harm will be done on all my holy mountain, for the country will be full of knowledge of Yahweh as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:4-9).
At Christmas 2005 I dream of peace because I take seriously the declaration of Jesus Christ in Luke 4:18 that the spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord. I have celebrated this jubilee declaration all year round, and now is the time I am convinced, to reap the harvest of peace for myself and for my country. I recall too that Jesus says I have come that they may have life and have it to the full (John 10:10). To those who have been humiliated by suffering, he says, Come to me all you who have laboured and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls… (Matthew 11:28-29). Again he says in John 14:27, I leave you peace, my peace I give you. The peace which the world cannot give, is my gift to you.
I take seriously these words of the Lord, and that is why I am celebrating Christmas 2005 with a great deal of optimism. At Christmas, I dream of a new world order of peace and global solidarity, not one of First, Second, Third and Fourth Worlds. At Christmas I dream of a strong, united, peaceful and prosperous Nigeria, one in which the teeming population of young people (who today lack pride in themselves and in their country), shall one day sing their national anthem and recite their national pledge with genuine pride. At Christmas I dream of a transformed Nigerian, one in which everyone will have a place and have a say, one in which everyone will respect everyone else, Igbo or Hausa, Yoruba or Tiv, Ishekiri or Efik, Christian or Muslim, Catholic or Protestant, and affiliates of PDP, AD or ANPP. In spite of our chequered political history in Nigeria and the series of broken dreams and dashed hopes we have witnessed, I continue along the part of prophetic imagination. I continue to dream of freedom, justice, good governance, genuine democracy, the rule of law, mutual acceptance and peaceful co-existence, because I hold on to the promises of God.
Like the prophets of old I am able to imagine a time of peace for the world and for my society because I believe in the mystery of rejuvenation. I believe that out of the rubble of our shattered landscape, a rich, powerful, united people can emerge, if today we begin a serious reflection on the meaning and principle of corporate existence. I am going ahead with my fertile imagination of peace for our land, because I know that peace is possible if today we begin a revolution of hope that will include a genuine commitment to truth, justice and reconciliation. I shall hold on to the dream of peace because I am a believer who knows that with God all things are possible. Did he not create the world out of a formless void? Did he not bring water out of rock? Did he not put back flesh on dry bones? Did he not raise the dead back to life? Is faith in the resurrection not the cardinal point of Christianity?
As I imagine a time of peace and prosperity for the world and for my country at Christmas, I nevertheless acknowledge that peace is not without a cost. I know that peace will not come without some striving on the part of men and women. I know that the peace of my imagination is the fruit of justice; that the peace of my dream does not occur irrespective of the moral disposition of individual human beings that make up the human society. I know that the peace that is the fruit of my prophetic engagement is predicated on a prior commitment to truth, mutual tolerance, equity and justice on the part of those who desire it. I know that a nation without integrity cannot have peace, and that where there is no vision, the people do perish.
As I dream of peace for the world and for my country during this holy season, I acknowledge that there can be no true peace where the greed and profligacy of the privileged few has reduced the multitude of the people to subhuman level of existence, the same greed and profligacy that are responsible in part for the recent plane crashes that claimed many innocent lives and thrown countless people into mourning. I know that where millions of people are starving to death in a land so richly bestowed as ours, peace may remain only a dream. I accept that where millions of people are plagued by the diseases associated with malnutrition, while others are engaged in conspicuous consumption in the same society, peace will be long in coming. I know that with the large army of unemployed youths in present day Nigeria, whose ranks are swelling everyday, peace will be difficult to achieve.
Yet I continue imagining peace for the world and for my country. I continue dreaming of peace, notwithstanding the mitigating circumstances. And today I challenge all those who share this dream with me to dissociate themselves from the prevalent values, habits and orientations that make peace difficult to achieve. As we celebrate Christmas let those who want the prophesies of Isaiah, Zephaniah and John the Baptist to be realised in our day commit themselves to the task of demolishing those structures of sin all over the place that have brought upon us so much misery and agony, and let them be engaged in the urgent task of bringing to reality the fruit of our imagination. On the first Christmas night, the throng of heaven sang the chorus: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to all men of goodwill. Let the men and women of goodwill in the world and in our country put hands together now, and begin to pull down the mountains of corruption, selfishness and social injustice, and fill up the valleys of racial and ethnic prejudice, religious bigotry and social discrimination. This is surely one way of defying the darkness of the moment and making our prophetic imagination become reality.
