Imagine

 

Easter 6B -  Imagine

Imagine. Much of the Bible was written in response to a crisis: slavery in Egypt, Exile in Babylon, the destruction of the First and Second Jerusalem Temples. In between there were political and economic scandals, corruption, and occupation by foreign empires. Holy Scripture often attempts to provide a sense of hope and assurance of God’s presence no matter what. The Bible is meant to inspire the imagination not so much to believe in God, but to imagine that there will be a way out of the present difficult circumstances. There is vision. There is reason to hope. There will be joy.

There can be no doubt that Jesus’s familiarity with Isaiah, Amos, Hosea and others of the Hebrew prophets inspired him to teach Peace, Shalom and Love: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete…I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” [John 15:9-17] He imagined that we could do this. He imagined that we can in fact abide in his love and love one another.

Just as Isaiah had imagined there would be a way out of Exile to a new life of freedom and shared resources. “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.” [Isaiah 55:1-2] Isaiah sure had a vivid imagination! Jesus learned from the best. He understood that the holy scriptures inspire us to imagine just what this world can be like so that everyone’s “joy” may be complete, full, full to overflowing! If only we will abide in his love and love one another.

When I got home from church last Sunday when we started this 15^th chapter of John, I listened to the 2021 International Jazz Festival with music from all around the world. The final number was an awe-inspiring performance of about 30 or so musicians and vocalists singing John Lennon’s Imagine. We used to sing this in chapel at St. Timothy’s School for Girls when I was chaplain there. The girls, faculty and staff would sing out loud, with passion, as they sang what a young man from Liverpool imagined the world could be like – all of us living as one, sharing all the world, living life in peace. Why indeed, he seemed to ask, do we spend time and money for that which is not bread and that which cannot possibly satisfy let alone complete and fulfill our joy!

 Once after chapel, a young math teacher asked me why, if I loved Jesus, would I teach the girls a song that imagines a world with “no religion too”? I’m not sure what I said to her then. Maybe I said that Jesus had no intention to start a religion. Paul had no intention to start a new religion. just like the Buddha some six hundred years before Jesus had not wanted to start a religion. They all were opening hearts to a way of life that would end suffering and violence with compassion and love and joy. A world in which one loves one’s self and one’s neighbors equally. Try to imagine this, they all would say, because if we can imagine it, we can be it, we can live it, we can share all the world as one. They lived the very vision they could imagine.

 My first year in Seminary we took field trips. One was to the oldest synagogue in Manhattan. As the rabbi was wrapping things up a classmate said, “We know what priests do (which it turns out we did not!), but what do rabbis do?” Without hesitation the rabbi replied, “A rabbi teaches God’s people with the hope and the goal that one day all the people would become rabbis and there would be no need for there to be rabbis anymore – because everyone would know how to love one another. My role in the community is to put myself out of work!” And that’s what John Lennon imagined as well – a world without countries, a world without possessions, nothing to kill and die for, and no religion too. Imagine living like this!

I remember not so many years ago that Jesus’s imagining that we really could abide in his love and love one another was turned into a counter vision called Left Behind. One could not walk into Barnes and Noble or even Walmart without running into a cardboard kiosk of books about “real Christians” being “raptured” up to heaven and all the rest of us being Left Behind. How on earth does one construe such a perverted view from the life, death and resurrection of a young man who could imagine us all getting along and abiding in his love as he abides in his father’s love? Surely, I would tell myself, Jesus could never imagine God’s love leaving anyone behind. Not the one who spent his life bringing all kinds of people together, sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, rich people, poor people, healthy people, sick, lame and blind people. He was like the US Military who leave “no fallen comrade behind!” If he only had a few loaves of bread, he would give it all away to feed thousands of people at a time! Without money, without price!

Jesus could live the vision because he had read the Hebrew prophets –  like God talking through Isaiah declaring, I don’t care about your liturgies, your sacrifices, your festivals. I care how you treat one another. I want you to care for the widow, the orphan, the resident alien, the stranger, the poor. Let there be justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, cried Amos! You may say that I’m a dreamer, Jesus would say. But I’m not the only one. Listen to Isaiah and Amos and the Buddha and Confucius. Maybe someday you will join us, and the world will live as one. No one will be left behind. Not ever again. If only we allow ourselves to imagine, it will come to pass. Really it will. Just let yourself imagine and there will be no need for religion because we will have become the image of the love of the living God in all that we say, all that we sing, and all that we do. And our lives will overflow with joy!

 I may have said some of all that to that sincere young woman at St. Tim’s. Or, maybe we just sang the song again the next week in chapel. And the next. And the next until all of us can imagine. Until we all can sing it like I heard Al Jerreau and Esperanza Spalding and Annie Lennox and Kurt Elling and Dee Dee Bridgewater and Dianne Reeves and Sting sing it last Sunday afternoon and heard John Lennon’s words as if for the very first time until my joy was so full, so complete, so overflowing, that tears were streaming down my face. Tears of joy, tears of hope and tears of truth. Imagine that. The power of song. The power of inspired imagination.

And we will sing, sing a new song. Until our imaginations inspire us to live into the visions of Isaiah, Amos, Jesus, Mohammed, Gandhi, King, and yes, John Lennon. And all the world will be as One, sharing all the world. Amen.

 Imagine Jazz Day 2021