Advent 3, Year B,      December 10, 2005
Isaiah 65:17-25       

Imagine: A New Heaven and A New Earth 

The Rev. Jonathan Hutchison – Vicar, St. David's, Bean Blossom, Indiana

         

Twenty-five years ago this week, John Lennon died in New York City. You can say what you want about the man. He was no saint, but then, he never claimed to be. Lennon had a nose for controversy. At the height of “Beatlemania”, he observed that the group meant more to young people of that time than did Jesus Christ. On the basis of the evidence, he was probably right about that. You didn’t see teenage girls screaming and fainting in church services; you didn’t see legions of teenage boys taking up preaching like they took up the guitar. But reactionary Christians, rather than ask why this might be so (and what to do about it), decided that Lennon thought the Beatles were more important than Jesus, thereby giving themselves an excuse for a good old-fashioned record burning.

Lennon was no shrinking violet when it came to politics, either…as an outspoken critic of American policy in Vietnam, he ended up on Richard Nixon’s infamous “enemies list”.  In his personal life, Lennon could be self-absorbed and self-destructive. But for all his faults, he could also be a visionary – who knows, perhaps someday he may be seen as something of a prophet. As millions of fans marked the anniversary of Lennon’s death on Thursday, one of the things they remembered most fondly (and longingly) was his musical vision of a world just out of reach, yet still within our grasp.

Imagine - he sang - imagine a world full of people who are fully alive in the present moment, obsessed with neither heaven nor hell. Imagine our kinship with one another transcending the arbitrary constructs of national borders or religious systems.  Imagine people living out their full spans of life unmolested by violence. Imagine freedom from the desire for wealth and possessions. “No need for greed or hunger” – “imagine all the people sharing all the world”.

I read a tribute to Lennon last week, which dismissed this particular song as “hippy hokum”, its vision hopelessly unattainable. John himself clearly understood that not all people were ready to imagine such a world along with him, as his refrain attests;
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

No, John, you’re not the only one. Thanks to you, in part, millions still imagine such a world, despite all evidence to the contrary. And, many, I suspect, pray that you now reside in a place like this, resting in the peace you dreamed of and sang about, but which eluded you in this life.

“The World will be as one.” Hippy hokum. Hopelessly unattainable. The naïve pipedream of a pampered rock-star and spiritual dilettante who never quite got over his sojourn with that cute little Maharishi. So easy to dismiss such a vision as utopian, foolish, impossible in light of the cold, brutal reality of this world of obscene wealth and abject poverty, where lives are cut short as religion descends to barbarism and national boundaries are not transcended but transgressed.  


But Lennon is not the only dreamer. There is another dreamer, older, deeper, wiser…no drug addled hippy, this one. In an earlier time, the ancient dreamer looks upon a fallen world, its people awash in every kind of depravity, deceit and destruction, its temples profaned, its leaders corrupted, its laws unjust, polluted in its very essence. And the dreamer speaks;

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight…no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity… Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox…They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain…”.  Imagine that!

Wild beasts transformed in their very nature, from predators and prey to companions. A renewal of the human community with a purified and renewed faith at the center. An end to human suffering, wrought by war and injustice, so that people may plant their vineyards with confidence in the harvest and build houses without fear of jackboots in the night. Infant mortality a distant bad dream, the promise of long, fruitful life ahead. Communion here and now, not deferred to some sweet by-and-by; a people so renewed in spirit, their wills so in accord with God’s, that their prayers are heard and answered before they are offered.

Oh, there must have been scoffers then, too, when Isaiah shared this great Dream of God, those mired in despair, unable to imagine that the Creator might actually remake creation. It was the scoffers and skeptics who probably failed to see it unfolding right before their eyes, as the people returned from exile, as the Temple was rebuilt and the cult renewed and prosperity restored. It was the nay-sayers, the realists, who impeded Israel’s destiny to be a light to the nations, who let slip the opportunity for ongoing transformation of the people, who prevented the ethics of sharing and justice and community from putting down the deepest possible roots in human history. It was the rationalists, the non-dreamers, who in time led Israel out of this amazing renaissance, back down the road to disunity, false religion, social disparity and political tyranny.

And yet, God kept on singing;
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

We know that God’s imagination was not thwarted by the absence of our own. In this season, we remember the great, wild, impossible leap of divine imagination that we call the Incarnation. The coming of the Christ, the Prince of Peace. Our world was forever changed, recreated yet again, set on a path toward that peaceable kingdom of Isaiah’s prophecy. Oh yes, some called him a dreamer, too. And so the dream is still unfinished. In every generation, those whose lives have been touched by Jesus are called to imagine his own dreams into being. If we love him, how can we refuse?  As we wait expectantly for his return, let us exercise our own holy imagination and assume the arduous, risky and glorious work of preparing the way for him in the wilderness.  AMEN.