Imagine the Love We Can Be
As I ran across an old seminary text on the history of the
Reformation, I found myself thinking: Was the Reformation really such a good
idea? Before the sixteenth century there were arguably four branches of
Christ’s One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, along with a few movements
that were not really what one thinks of as a denomination, but altogether let’s
say there were fewer than ten organized Chrisitan movements, with the Eastern
Orthodox churches and the Western Roman Catholic Churches being the two best
defined Christian denominations.
Compare that with today, when it is estimated that there are
something like 30,000 – 45,000 Christian denominations worldwide! I often
imagine that a new branch of the Church is born at least once a day, and
perhaps more often than that! As Jesus seeks to comfort the disciples after
announcing that he would be leaving them, he continues to urge them to “love
one another as I have loved you, and as the Father has loved me.” He imagines a
kind of Christian unity, that honestly has not been seen in this world since
the early father of Chrisitan Theology, Tertullian, in the second century
converted to Christianity, leaving a pagan world in which everyone hated
everyone else! It was Tertullian who famously wrote, imagining how the pagan
world viewed Christianity: “Look . . . how they love one another (for they
themselves [pagans] hate one another); and how they are ready to die for each
other (for they [the pagans] themselves are readier to kill each other).”
Alas, even before the Reformation, that sort of Chrisitan
love and hope had been shattered by episodes like the Crusades, when the
Christian Crusaders had slaughtered the Jews and Muslims of Jerusalem, who at
the time were living peaceably with one another, they then turned on the
Christian community in Jerusalem as well. Look, how they love one another,
indeed.
Yet, the earliest Christian texts, such as the First Letter
of Peter, like Jesus in the 14th chapter of John, urges strength and
hope while living in a world that readily persecuted the Church. “Always be
ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the
hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your
conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your
good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for
doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil.” [1
Peter 3:13-22]
Amidst the acrimony and divisiveness of today’s world, one
can hardly imagine defending one’s position, one’s faith, and one’s hope with
“gentleness and reverence” for those who malign you. But this is what the
texts, and what Jesus, repeatedly call Christians to do: imagine a better
world. And to imagine this better world, early Christians, as Tertullian
observed, truly loved one another to the point of laying down their lives for
Christ and for one another. One can only believe that those who truly were attentive
to the directions of the promised Holy Spirit, the Paraclete or Advocate as
Jesus says, would withstand the endless persecutions with “gentleness and
reverence” for the persecutors. “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to
you,” he says in his Farewell Discourse. “In a little while the world will no
longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that
day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who
have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me
will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
There are still those who live among us, Christians and
non-Christians, who can imagine the kind of God’s Spirit of Shalom being
possible in our own time. One such person was a singer song-writer, Ed McCurdy.
After the murder of my two closest colleagues in ministry at St. Peter’s,
Ellicott City, a fellow musician and friend of over half-a-century, sent me a
CD of music meant to heal a truly broken spirit and heart. Among the songs was
McCurdy’s song, Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, as sung and interpreted
by Johnny Cash.
Like Jesus in John, and the 1st Letter of Peter,
the song calls upon us to imagine what could be if, as Jesus commands, we would
truly love one another.
Last night I had the strangest
dream
Last night I had the strangest
dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war
I dreamed I saw a mighty room
The room was filled with men
And the paper they were signing
said
They'd never fight again
And when the papers all were signed
And a million copies made
They all joined hands and bowed
their heads
And grateful prayers were prayed
And the people in the streets below
Were dancing 'round and 'round
And guns, and swords, and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground
Last night I had the strangest
dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war
Songwriter: Ed
Mccurdy
It’s all about hope. Ed McCurdy, Johnny Cash, and recently
Pope Leo XIV, all hope and imagine that one day there can be an end to
humankind’s endless warfare.
The modern theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, in his little book, Experiences
of God, which I picked up for the first time in over a decade, writes this about
Christian hope: “Christ is our hope because Christ is our future. That means we
are waiting and hoping for his second coming, praying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come
to the world, come to us!’ Just as the resurrection faith is hope’s foundation,
so Christ’s second coming defines hope’s horizon. Without the expectation of
Christ’s second coming there is no Christian hope; for without it hope is not
putting its trust in a radical alternative to this world’s present condition…It
is only the person who does not really look for a truly new beginning, or who
thinks that he has no need of it, who can do without the alternative future
offered by the image of the returning Christ. A person like this can do without
this new future. But for the person who commits oneself unreservedly to the new
beginning…Christ’s future is more important than the world’s present.” This is
why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Let thy kingdom come.”
Moltmann goes on to suggest that to refer to Christ’s return
as a “second coming” implies Christ is not here at this moment and must come
again. For that reason Martin Luther and others have urged that we speak
instead of “the future of Jesus Christ” – for his future presupposes his
present and presence in the here and now, most especially in our
weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist, our Holy Communion with Christ who
promises that he is always with us and in us just as he is in the Father, and
the Father in him.
The importance of hope and imagination in the life of faith
cannot be overlooked. Christ’s future is our future – a future that lives out
of love for one another, making our case for Christ’s future to others with
gentleness and reverence, and allowing ourselves to truly commit to the belief
that Christ’s future is more important than the world’s present. Every time we
pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” may we recommit ourselves, as
individuals, but more importantly as a community of those who follow Christ, to
love one another as Christ loves us. Just as Christ has loved us, we also
should love one another. Imagine the Love we can be. We can be The Future of
Christ! May the Spirit of God’s love move us to become the community Christ
imagines and knows we can be. Amen.
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