wfn.org | Commentary: Perishing with a vision

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Oct. 20, 1999 News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.    10-71BP{549}

NOTE: A head-and-shoulders photograph is available. 

A UMNS Commentary
By Bishop Dan Solomon*

"Vision-talk" has about gotten me down.  My cup is running over with
"vision" fascination.  I'm not sure I need any more vision.

It's not that I've forgotten Proverbs 29:18: "Where there is no vision, the
people perish" (KJV).  It's just that I still see a lot of perishing in the
midst of vision.

Getting a vision is not what saves us; living a worthy vision with integrity
and hope begins to move us into salvation. To be sure, without a worthy
vision one does not know where and how to commence a saving journey;
however, having the vision is insufficient without the journey.

This past week, I read an article that wonders whether we can articulate a
vision of what it means to be United Methodist. It is the "be" word in the
sentence that bothers me, not because essence and being are not substantive
and formative. In fact they are! However, when it relates to vision, the
"be" word for me is static, not dynamic. Somehow, "becoming" relates more to
vision. It is not enough just to have a vision; we are called to act upon
it, yea even to incarnate it.

Vision is a peculiar visitor. Vision does not necessarily come when summoned
by a committee.  Rarely does vision emerge as the consequence of compromise
and win/lose votes. Rather, vision more frequently startles an unsuspecting
contemplative or fires the passion of an already stressed activist. At any
rate, the appearance, if not experience, of vision is more likely to be
greeted and embraced, initially, by a person or two than a larger crowd.

In fact, vision has an incarnate character about it. Nowhere is this more
profound and instructive than in the life of Jesus. He is the living vision!
He lived the vision! Vision was not something he had so much as who he was.

Seems a little strange, doesn't it, that we wonder whether we can articulate
a vision for Methodism? Hasn't it already been done perfectly in the living
vision -- Jesus? Maybe our need is not nearly so much to "get a vision" as
it is "to get a life." We don't need a vision nearly so much as we need to
get on with living the Jesus vision - with passion, joy, and hope. The fires
of "getting on with it" are going to be far more fueled by the fresh
experience of God's forgiving and empowering grace than they will be by the
triumphant rhetoric, "We now have a vision."

The more crucial role for vision in United Methodism, I believe, is in
behalf of implementation demonstration. Unquestionably, we need strategies
that will maximize our time and our talent.  We need visionary means to
accomplish "Kingdom" ends. If vision becomes the servant of implementation,
then we move from having a vision to living the vision.

So, what does this mean for our life together? It surely means that we will
cease wringing our hands in uncertainty over what God wants us to be about.
We already know that Jesus was the living vision that proclaimed the
wonderful word of forgiveness that cleanses, and that he fed the hungry,
cared for the suffering, attacked injustice and became a living sign of a
new way to order life. Now, knowing that, let our vision seeking really be
strategy discernment for "making plain the vision."
# # #
*Solomon is bishop of the Louisiana Area of the United Methodist Church and
is serving during the 1997-2000 quadrennium as president of the governing
body for the churchwide Board of Global Ministries.

Commentaries provided by United Methodist News Service do not necessarily
represent the opinions or policies of UMNS or the United Methodist Church.

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