+I wonder if John Lennon, when he wrote his song Imagine, had just heard today’s readings. Taken as a whole, the readings from Acts, Revelation and John’s Gospel appear to mirror what the ex Beatle was saying with the lyrics. Imagine…a world without violence, a world without discrimination, a world without hatred. A world of unity and peace.
Our reading from Acts talks about acceptance and inclusion, with Peter having a vision in which the voice of God tells him, in no uncertain terms, that the dietary restrictions of the old covenant are now obsolete-- that all of God’s creation, including the foods we eat, are good. God tells Peter that even the Gentiles, heretofore thought to be an unclean people, were part of the church of God. In this one vision, God breaks down all the divisions of the past and frees Peter and us to spread the Good News to all.
The love and peace of God available to all who desire it--now that sounds like the world John Lennon imagined.
Our reading from Revelation tells of a world where all things are created new, where the dismay of the old world, the tears and the sadness, the hurt and the pain are washed away. A new World, freed from hatred, released from despair and full of hope and joy and love. A world, which John Lennon dreamed of, an existence that he imagined.
And then our Gospel reading where Jesus provides us with a new commandment; a few simple words summing up the work he would complete with his crucifixion, a few words which tell of God’s desire for us: that we, strengthened by the love of God as given to us in Jesus Christ would, in turn, love one another. That we, simply put, would love one another as Jesus loved us.
This world of Lennon’s imagination, this world of God’s desire, is difficult to achieve. For millennia, humanity has been intolerant, abusive and discriminatory. Throughout human history one group of people have always scapegoated another group of people.
It’s a horrible truth: when faced with people who are different from us, we can become uncomfortable and uneasy. And when uncomfortable and uneasy, we tend to hunker down in what we know--in what is familiar to us--lashing out at those who are different. There’s something in our human nature that makes us flock to those who are like us—the familiar --and to avoid the different. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, to be comfortable with what we know and to be a little uncomfortable with that which we don’t know. We get into trouble, as individuals and as a society when we let our fear of the unknown control us, when we let our discomfort with difference fester into bigotry and discrimination, when we let that which we don’t know become, by virtue of this unfamiliarity, the enemy. When the new becomes bad, when the unknown becomes evil, that’s when we run into trouble.
This misguided distrust, this intolerance, was evident in the young church described in Acts and fear of the other, uneasiness with those we don’t know feeds the ongoing immigration controversy in our country today.
And so it was timely, then and is timely now that we’re given this new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.
There’s no addendum to this there’s no interpretation needed. We are to love one another. Period. We don’t have to like each other; we don’t have to enjoy each other we don’t have to agree with each other. But we do have to love one another. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love love for one another” (John 13:35)
Our identity as faithful Christians is dependent upon having love for one another.
This is so fundamental to our faith that our baptismal covenant; the outline of our belief system makes it very clear. In it we’re asked “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” And if that wasn’t enough, we’re then asked, “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?” (BCP, p 305)
Basically we’re being asked to live as John Lennon Imagined in his song.
It’s a tall order, this loving one another as Christ loved us. It can seem daunting, overwhelming,--impossible even. It can seem like the idealized world of a singer songwriter. Because no matter how hard we try we just don’t seem to be able to accomplish it. Our greed, our pride, our fears and our doubts get in the way and we stop loving, we stop respecting. We stop trying.
And that’s where it can end. We can say, it’s just a Pollyanna view of a world that only exists in the imaginings of poets, impossible to achieve. And it is impossible, if we insist on trying to accomplish it on our own. God has given us a tall order indeed, but God never expects us to do this alone. For the response to each of those Baptismal promises is, “I will, with God’s help.” Nowhere in this new commandment, nowhere in our baptismal covenant nowhere in the Judea Christian faith of the past several millennia have we been asked to do anything by ourselves. For all that we do, all that Christ did, was and always will be done--- with God’s help.
The differences between us, black and white, gay and straight, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, Democrat, Republican, can create chasms which seem too wide and vast to bridge, but, with God’s help, all differences can be conquered, all fears squelched.
John Lennon imagined a world without difference, without conflict without heartache and without hate. Through the new commandment Jesus gave us in today’s Gospel and with God’s Help, that world needn’t be just a wish in a song, but a reality in our lives. +
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