Jeremiah 31:31-34
“Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” - Ephesians 5:19 NKJV
A little over a year after the Beatles broke up, Lennon recorded “Imagine” in a single session at his and Ono’s country estate….lines such as, “Imagine all the people/ sharing all the world,” embodied a radical utopian vision as well as the desire of Lennon and many others for an end to the Vietnam War and a return to the optimistic humanism that had defined much of the previous decade. (History Channel)
Listening to John Lennon’s "Imagine" can be profoundly therapeutic. His gentle voice and simple vocals allow the words to play a very prominent role in this song. Every time I listen to it and I hear that word "imagine," I feel yearning inside for the kind of world he describes.
There are particular phrases that especially stand out:
"All the people living for today…"
"All the people sharing all the world…"
"All the people living life in peace…"
"I hope you join us, and the world will be as one…"
Some of this can be found right here in the city. If you wander through Strawberry Fields, that memorial to John Lennon in Central Park, you’ll come across one word: "Imagine." And it’s easy to imagine the world Lennon is singing about as being something real, because when you’re there in Central Park, it’s all coming true. You can see what Lennon is singing about.
People living for today. They are enjoying picnics, they’re doing karate lessons, they’re playing basketball, they’re having family gatherings, and children are being entertained in a circle by folk singers. And people are running. In Central Park, the folks running are world-class athletes clicking off multiple six-mile laps like it’s a stroll in the park, as well as schmucks like me huffing and puffing with every step. And it doesn’t matter—it’s not a competition.
Central Park is a remarkable place because, unlike other places in the city, I rarely hear people yelling! The sense of sharing the world and being one that Lennon sang about is truly happening there.
But, of course, we don’t live in Central Park, and when we step outside of it, we can see some of the devastating, debilitating, and depressing problems that the world faces.
What spurred Lennon to imagine a certain kind of world was the reality that, most of the time, the one in which we live is anything but what he sings about.
“On December 5, 1980, John Lennon gave his final interview. Looking back on his seminal song, he said: “We’re not the first to say ‘Imagine no countries’ or ‘Give peace a chance,’ but we’re carrying that torch, like the Olympic torch, passing it hand to hand, to each other, to each country, to each generation… We should be talking about violence in society.””
And he is right. We should be talking about violence in society, especially followers of Jesus, since we know it is utterly antithetical to His will.
According to the United Nations, 52 lives are violently taken every hour of every day—that means almost 500,000 lives were stolen last year. This doesn’t even count those lost in war. But it is so commonplace that we are inured to the horrific reality of just how far this planet is from what God envisioned when it was created. It was an Eden, a paradise. It is hard to think about. It is hard to watch the news. It is hard to keep our hearts open to those feeling the excruciating pain of those whose loved ones’ lives have tragically been cut short.
Lennon’s song offers one solution:
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too.
As you can imagine, I take exception to these particular lines. Whereas Lennon expresses, poignantly and powerfully, a deep-seated hope, ultimately it is a naïve solution, perhaps one crafted by a child’s mind. Now, I don't believe that Lennon was naïve or childish, at least no more than the rest of us. He’s pointing out very real issues that arise from government and religion. They can become idols. And when they do, the results can be catastrophic. Over the course of history, sadly, there are far too many examples: the empire of Rome from so long ago and Nazi Germany just a few decades past.
The ideal government is by the people and for the people. And the idea of religion is similar. Perhaps Jesus and Lennon would have agreed on some of the problems of religion. One of the primary reasons Jesus was crucified was because of His mission to rehabilitate the distortions that happened with the faithful people in His time. He fought back against the purity codes and the religious structures that enforced them. We see this most clearly when He healed somebody on the Sabbath, and He got in trouble from the religious authorities. His pointed retort is most illuminating: “Was humanity made for the Sabbath or the Sabbath made for humanity?!”
And the tragic truth is that both Jesus and Lennon were killed because of religion. Lennon’s hope for a world without religion made sense from his perspective. His killer, Mark Chapman, in part gunned him down in cold blood because he was "angry at (Lennon) for saying (in the song 'God') that he didn't believe in God, that he just believed in him and Yoko, and that he didn't believe in the Beatles." (Source: The Vibes)
On the next lyric, “Nothing to kill or die for,” Jesus would stand in greater opposition.
At first, Lennon’s notion sounds appealing. It would mean no more murders, no more violent deaths. But it also means the abandonment of purpose. Certainly, Lennon’s tragic murder underscores his wisdom in wanting nothing to kill or die for, but for Jesus, it was his plan. It began with an utter commitment to achieving peace through peaceful means.
Jesus, who not only preached peace but told Peter to put away the sword at His arrest.Jesus, who refused to return violence with violence.Jesus, who commanded us to turn the other cheek when struck.
It is what sets Jesus apart. He didn’t simply imagine a better world; He gave his life for it. And it was His very willingness to die for this that has offered us all hope ever since.
That ancient theologian Tertullian captured the power of Jesus’ sacrifice when he wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” And ever since, people’s willingness to give everything has given people hope that true peace will someday come.
There is a remarkable tribute to modern martyrs above the entrance to Westminster Abbey at the Great West Door. On a trip, my son Matthew and I were captivated by the façade, into which are carved ten statues of those who gave their lives for the cause of Christ. Listen to a few:
Wang Zhiming, Christian pastor and martyr to the Cultural Revolution in China. Wang Zhiming was executed on December 29, 1973, at a mass rally of more than 10,000 people.
Between 1966 and 1976, the Cultural Revolution brought an onslaught against all that was ancient or venerated in Chinese life. The young Red Guards who led the campaign sought to break free of the past and to create a revolutionary society that was utterly new. Religion must be destroyed. Churches were closed, and Christians were forced to meet secretly. (Source: Westminster Abbey)
An eerie echo to Lennon’s plan, and it shows the naïveté of just such a hope. Imaginingno religion very quickly and violently becomes “Religion must be destroyed.”
“There has never been a time in Christian history when someone, somewhere, has not died rather than compromise with the powers of oppression, tyranny, and unbelief,” the Rev. Dr. Anthony Harvey, sub-dean of Westminster.
Because Lennon didn’t believe in God, he didn’t believe in religion. But it is precisely because we believe in God that we need religion.
Religion serves to offer us structure, connects us to people of the past, and places us in a community that both supports and challenges us. The religious community helps us confront our own biases and self-rationalizations. Religion reminds us that we are not the center of the world, that we’re not the wisest people on the planet, and that we need others to help us understand the truth.
But most of all, ultimately, religion enables us to experience the presence of God more powerfully through being connected to other people.
This is what Lennon missed—the goal isn’t religion; it is a means to connect to the source of all things. It isn’t so much about belief and doctrines but about encountering the Holy.
New York Times columnist David Brooks discovered just that.
At a younger age, as an agnostic, he thought religion was all about belief and so sought to determine whether or not certain religious claims were true. But later, certain transcendent moments lit up his soul. He wrote:
"When faith finally tiptoed into my life, it didn’t come through information or persuasion but, at least at first, through numinous experiences. These are the scattered moments of awe and wonder that wash over most of us unexpectedly from time to time.
Looking back over the decades, I remember rare transcendent moments—at the foot of a mountain in New England at dawn, at Chartres Cathedral in France, looking at images of the distant universe or of a baby in the womb. In those moments, you have a sense that you are in the presence of something overwhelming, mysterious. Time is suspended, or at least blurs. One is enveloped by an enormous bliss."
It is for this that Jesus and Wang Zhiming died. Not only for us to imagine such bliss but for it to be our destiny.
So, though I don’t agree with Lennon on everything, I do think he had tapped into something core to the human experience. It is the closing lines of Lennon’s song that I think are the most compelling:
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 live as one.
May we all dream, imagine, hope, and sacrifice when necessary to create a world of peace. Amen.
"Imagine: John Lennon Shot on His Doorstep 40 Years Ago." The Vibes, December 8, 2020. Accessed February 5, 2025.
Westminster Abbey: "Wang Zhiming." Accessed February 5, 2025.
댓글