"Imagine"

7-19-15

Lexington UMC                                   “Imagine”

Rev. 21: 1-6

I was walking in the front door of an Elementary School one day, and I saw an inspirational quote painted on the wall. It is a quote from William Arthur Ward, and it read:

If you can imagine it you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.

“What a cool quote,” I thought. And for the most part, I agree with it. It’s a good quote for an Elementary School.  I think we should teach our kids to imagine and to dream, don’t you?

But I have to confess something to you this morning. I don’t entirely agree with this quote. Why? If imagination and dreaming always led to achievement and becoming, then as a kid I would have been able to play basketball like Larry Bird and I would have been able to throw a baseball like Nolan Ryan. That’s what I imagined when I was playing in my yard, you see.

I’m not a kid anymore, but I still can close my eyes and imagine the future. When you imagine the future, what does it look like? I want you to hold that question in your mind. We are going to come back to it. When you imagine the future, what does it look like?

This is the third message in the Beatles series, and I hope you are getting something out of them. The first week we looked at “Yesterday” – the past. Then last week we looked at our present – the hand we’ve been dealt today – and we heard the whispered words of wisdom from Jesus’ mother, Mary. “Let it be,” she said. “Let me become what you have called me to be.” Have you prayed that prayer yet today?

So past, present…now it is time to imagine the future. What do you imagine, when you think about the future?

Two weeks ago, when I talked about “Yesterday,” I said that it was natural and normal for us to look at and long for yesterday – especially when our today is painful. Remember that?

1. In the same way, when our today is painful, it is natural and normal for us to look for, and imagine a future…somewhere out there where things are better.

That’s what I think John Lennon was doing when he wrote this song. He was going through a very tumultuous time…personally, professionally, and with the world he saw around him. He was saying – “Imagine with me a future that is better than today.”

And John wanted a better future. His current circumstances were pretty rocky! The year was 1971. The Beatles had broken up. The lawyers were still picking over the remains of his old band like a bunch of vultures. Every day for him was like fighting a battle. John Lennon and his wife, Yoko, were trying to get custody of Yoko’s daughter. Every day for their family was like fighting a battle. On top of that was the war that was going on in Vietnam. Do you remember the war in Vietnam?  I was too young to fight in that war, but I had family that did.  What I remember from that time was that every day my mom and dad would turn on the news, and there would be another report of the battles that were going on, and people being killed.  That’s what John Lennon was watching, too.

In addition to the personal and professional and family turmoil, there was trouble in John’s homeland – England.  There was a period of tremendous violence and fighting between the Catholics in Northern Ireland, and the Protestants. It was a time in history that became known as “The Troubles,” and it lasted from 1969 - 1997. Catholic and Protestants – fighting and killing each other. And John was watching this going on.

Can you see why he sat down at a piano in 1971 and wrote,

“Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace…

You might say, “Well that’s just a bunch of hippy-mamby-pamby-wishful thinking.”

I remember the 60’s and the 70’s…I remember the actual hippies…and I have to tell you – the hippies were not wrong about everything. Personal hygiene? Questionable. Free love? Probably not the best idea. But to dream of a better future? To imagine a better future? We all do that!

Haven’t you longed for a better future? I’ll bet you have. I’ll bet you thought to yourself – sometime when you were a student – “Man, this is hard. I can’t wait until I graduate some day. Won’t that be nice?” No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks… You know?

Or if you ever served in the military – maybe you thought, “If I can just get through boot camp.” If you served in combat – fought in a time of war – you thought, “If I can just live through this – maybe someday I can go back home and we can live at peace.”

Maybe you have suffered physical pain, and you thought, “If I can just get through this surgery,” or “If I can just get through this rehab and get back on my feet.”

The Bible says that all Creation groans and longs for a better future. Did you know that? That is what the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 8…

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. (Rom. 8: 18-19, 22)

“Groaning in labor pains…” You mothers out there are probably thinking, “You think you know something about longing for the future…try being in labor and birthing a baby!”

So we long for a better future… Don’t we? Well I’ve got some good news and some bad news for us this morning. You want to hear the bad news first?

The bad news is – our imagination is too small…too limited.

The good news is –

2. God’s real future for us is better than we can even imagine. Can I quote the Apostle Paul one more time? The King James Version puts it beautifully, I think…

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” (1 Cor. 2: 9)

When you close your eyes and imagine the future – what does it look like?

If the best future we can imagine is one where we graduate from school, then our imagination is much too small.  If the best future we can imagine is one where we get a good job, buy a house, have a family, or take a trip to Hawaii – then our imagination is much too small.  If you think the best thing that could happen to you is to win the lottery, they your imagination is too small!

Even if we get bigger than that…  Even if we imagine a time where there is peace on Earth…  Even if we imagine a time where people are not fighting each other in the name of their religion…a world where there is harmony.  As good as that would be – that’s still way too small compared to the future that John talks about in Revelation 21.

John – and now I’m talking about John the Apostle – not John Lennon…  was having a pretty tough time of it himself.  When it wrote these words, it was about 60 years or so after Jesus died, rose again, and ascended into heaven.  John’s whole world had seemingly fallen apart.  Jerusalem had collapsed, being destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.  The people in Jerusalem were either executed or exiled.

Everywhere you looked, Christians were being arrested and imprisoned or fed to the lions accused of being traitors to the Roman state.  John the Apostle was arrested and sent as a prisoner to a small island called Patmos which was near Greece.  I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard that if you visit the island of Patmos, you can go to the place where John was thought to have been imprisoned and see the cave where he was chained to the wall.

This was the place where John – his whole world torn apart…exiled and imprisoned…chained to a wall, saw a vision of God’s future.  And he wrote this vision down as a letter of encouragement to Christians in Asia Minor who were being persecuted.

·        Just imagine – John says – a future where God wipes every tear from your eyes.  We’ve shed some tears lately as a church family, haven’t we?

·        Just imagine – John says – a future where Death will be no more…no more mourning, crying or pain.  How does that sound to you?

As a pastor, I have to tell you that this is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.  Why?  Because I have to stand beside the grave of the people that I love and the people that you love and offer a word of hope.  And thank God I don’t have to just make something up!  There is a future that is worth imagining!   And it is better than we can even dream of!

But it gets even better.  Really! 

You hear a lot of people talking about us leaving Earth and going to heaven…

·        Just imagine – John says – a future where, in the end, instead of us evacuating Earth and going to heaven…heaven comes to Earth.  God actually makes his dwelling place here!

·        Just imagine – John says – a future where God makes all things new.  Notice I didn’t say where God makes all new things…instead, God makes all things new. God’s good creation is actually a part of God’s good future!

Think of it!  God makes his dwelling place with us!  God makes all things new!  I love the way The Message puts this: 

God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women. (Rev. 21:3)

If we believe John’s vision of the future, then we see that God’s future is a future that involves transformation, not evacuation.  This is very different from a theology that says that it doesn’t matter what we do to this Earth…that it’s going to be destroyed and we’re going to go somewhere else.  I don’t believe that.  I don’t believe that that’s God’s future for Creation.  God’s got something better than that.  He’s going to make all things new.  God is going to move into the neighborhood, and make his home with us.  I believe God wants us to take care of the neighborhood in the meantime.

In the meantime…  That’s where we live now, isn’t it?  And these are “mean” times.  They are times where people get sick and die.  They are times when terrorists open fire and kill innocent people not just overseas, but at home in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the meantime…times are mean.

But imagine God’s future.  I think it is time for God’s people to get their imagination back!  I hear too many of God’s people today moaning and groaning about how bad things are getting.  It’s like we’ve got this persecution complex.  It is the very opposite of what John was saying.  John who really was being persecuted, was imagining God’s future, and saying, “Live hopefully!  In the end, God wins!”

Can you see him in your mind’s eye?  John…chained to the wall of a cave…so full of hope for the future that he encouraged others!

The world is thirsty for that kind of hope.  Christians ought to be the most hope-filled people on the planet when it comes to the future! What if that is what the world heard from Christians instead of the negative, complaining stuff we have been putting out?  If we were filled with that kind of hope for the future, I’ll just bet that a lot of folks would want to join us on the journey to God’s future.  Don’t you?

Some of you here today are thirsty for that kind of hope.  I know it!  So hear the invitation of the One who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.  The Lord says, “To the thirsty, I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”  Come and drink living water today.  Come drink in the hope John writes about, and experience today a foretaste of God’s unimaginably good future.  Then let’s share that hope when we leave this place!