Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

It’s the Last Sunday of the Church Year and we have just heard the traditional hymn, the last Hymn of the Day for the Church Year that goes with the Gospel reading assigned for this day, “Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying.” There is also a traditional last hymn of the secular year.

 

On New Year’s Eve when the clock strikes midnight and the new year begins there is the traditional singing of “Auld Lang Syne,” and then if you are at Times Square, Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” quickly follows. They are the traditional first songs of the secular New Year. But do you know what has become the traditional last song of the year, played just before the clock strikes midnight?

 

 

Upon its first release in 1971, “Imagine” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono was not the biggest of hit songs. But after the killing of John Lennon in 1980, whose popularity was declining after the breakup of the Beatles, the song had a resurgence. It gained a lot of ground also after the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001; and again after the terrorist attacks in Paris, France in 2015.

 

The song calls upon you to imagine a world of peace, without materialism, without borders separating nations, and without religion. One of the sources behind the song is a prayer book that was given to John Lennon, in which there is a prayer appealing to God to remove the hostilities that exist because of religious and denominational disagreements. Yet when asked if the lyric could be changed from “no religion” to “one religion,” Lennon replied that the whole idea was misunderstood. He was clearly imagining not just the elimination of human disagreements about God, but removing God altogether.

 

Many people claim that the song represents the ideals of socialist communism and many people reject it for that reason. But John Lennon claimed that he didn’t support any political ideology or any political nation or party. Regardless, the producer of the song, Phil Specter, knew from the outset that he was producing more of an international political anthem than a peace ballad, and that John was intent on making a political statement. Lennon himself spoke about the acceptance of the song as “anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalist, but because it is sugar-coated it is accepted.... Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey.”

 

Lennon’s ideology, (John and Vladimir’s) can be heard dripping its honey every year on New Year’s Eve just before the iconic ball drop in Times Square, New York. I suppose the idea is for everyone to imagine what the coming year might be like. Similarly, the song has gained a regular hearing at the ceremonies of the Olympic Games, perhaps as a hope for what the international cooperative nature of the Games might aspire to. The song is, even more alarmingly, a staple of public elementary school choirs and now sung devotedly by people of all ages from all countries of the world.

 

You tell me how widely indoctrinated the world has become, longing for there to be no heaven and no hell, just people living for today? Does this philosophy of no divine judgment or reward lead to an increase in peace and love within the brotherhood of man? If we were to do away with all churches and religious organizations, would there be an end to poverty and hunger, war and oppression?

 

No, indeed. Imagine how the selfish sinfulness of man would run unchecked. Consider how atheistic governments have dealt with their poor and shared their resources? If anthropology doesn’t make it plain, history has given us sufficient proof that man without heaven, hell, religion (that is, without God) makes peace and harmony impossible.

 

Is the solution to have no heaven or hell, and only the fallen creation of this earth as we know it? Or is the solution to have the promised new heavens and new earth with nothing of this fallen world remembered? Do we need more of the same with less limits, or a new transformation to a divinely created earth as this one was before the entrance of sin? The problem is not with heaven, hell, this earth, or the God who created it all. The problem is our sin that has thrown this world into corruption and decay.

 

Is it a problem that we have countries and religion giving us something to fight and die for? If we abolish boundaries under one global nation will there be peace? There is some truth to the adage that good fences make good neighbours. We do need boundaries of responsibility and dominance, otherwise in our sinfulness we will try to dominate what has not been given into our hand. Is there anything to fight for in the war between Russia and Ukraine? Well, admittedly, it gets quite complicated, but the complication is due to the pervasiveness of mankind’s sinfulness.

 

With no borders what is the result? Who repels the evil and keeps the vulnerable safe from those who go mad in their power and strength? As the earthy gardener Samwise Gamgee said when his noble Master Frodo Baggins was ready to give up their mission to destroy the ring of power: “There are some things in this world worth fighting for.” It is the most destructive evidence of mankind’s sinfulness, that it becomes necessary to fight for peace and an end to oppression.

 

Jerusalem (Jeru-shalom), the city of peace, has been a recurring place of hostility and war. Not even during the reign of King David was it a place of enduring peace. David’s own sons sent him fleeing in search of safety from their desire to seize the throne away from their father. Yet the LORD’s lyrics given to us through Isaiah promise that Jerusalem shall be a place of joy and gladness because God Himself will have joy with His people there. He will be happy in their holiness. No imaginative peace-makers have been able to bring that about through their ceasefires and treaties, nor through melodies and songs.

 

While the Lennon’s of the world sing from their yellow submarines of luxury and frivolity about no one having possessions but sharing everything in common, they don’t even see the greed that shuts out from thought the poor beggars at their very gates. Their solution is to do away with those who are most vulnerable so that the few that are left can be happy with the abundance of resources not squandered on the needy.

 

The Darwinian eugenic of killing off the sick and doing away with those who use up the common chest has become commonplace in Canadian thought. Abortions prevent a preponderance of children who would limit the economic reach of the average household. Medical Assistance in Dying keeps end of life care from getting too costly, and if it can be extended to others who are judged to be a burden on society, like the mentally ill, the homeless, and the disabled, then we are getting rid of the big problem of our human existence, are we not?

 

The LORD decides instead to hit the nail on the head. He goes after the problem of death and eliminates it, instead of using death to eliminate life. The great pain and loss of stillbirths and miscarriages He promises to bring to an end. The root cause of premature death will be taken away. By removing all sin and providing a new creation, immersed in His holiness, suffering and death will be the things that are eliminated.

 

All the hostilities of nature will be removed and we will live with the wonder of seeing the most fearsome of God’s creatures setting aside all forms of violence toward one another. As mankind is purged of his animal thirst for blood and wild savagery, even so the lion and wolf will amaze us apart from any danger they now pose.

 

The anthem that the LORD God gives to us through the prophet Isaiah in today’s Old Testament Reading goes a little differently than the one played on the public stage and sung in our schools.

 

 

Now before we go adopting this little ditty as the last hymn on the Last Sunday of the Church Year, we should think about what happens when we want to keep secular song styles and try to baptize them with new words. Will you ever get the old words out of your head and is a tune designed to be a political ballad worthy to carry the words of the LORD God our Creator and Redeemer as delivered to us through His prophets and apostles.

 

We shouldn’t give in to the trite tunes and simple songs that empty our heads and our hearts of the concept of holiness. We are not called to take up songs that are easy to drink to, that make us forget our current state and become content with something less than the LORD has promised to bring about. We are not looking for lullabies to put us and our children to sleep in a culture that invades their dreams and bids them to imagine all sorts of vain philosophies and godless ideologies before being startled awake to find that they have no more of the oil of faith to keep their lamps burning in such times.

 

We are called to keep our lamps trimmed and lit, ready to take up the song of rejoicing at the coming of the bridegroom, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who will inaugurate the new heavens and the new earth, the home of righteousness, and who will fit us for our eternal dwelling with God by purifying even our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body.

 

It is hymns like that of the master Philip Nicolai, “Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying” (which we sang today), and the other great Christian composers, which we must keep on our lips and in our hearts. For they adorn the Word of God with the best of melody and symphony that human hearts can express on this side of heaven.

 

Just wait and see what tune will be stuck in your head throughout this last week of the Church Year and you will know where you need to focus more attention and be diligent about which ear worms need to be extracted and what ointment needs to be applied. We have an abundance of hymns that remind us of the LORD’s promises of what is yet to come, and to prime our voices to join with the heavenly chorus who sing His praise even now in celestial glory.

 

But the major problem with trite summaries of the words of the LORD is being incautious of the words themselves. The word “imagine” is the cheap copy of a vain and hollow worldly philosophy. For God does not ask you as a mop-topped poet to imagine. No, He tells you to look and see. “Behold! I create new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17). He bids you not to imagine it, but to watch Him do it. “For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy!” (65:18). “Thus says the LORD” (65:25).

 

Behold what He is doing for you. It is already in action. The sending of His Son, Jesus Christ, to conquer death in His own death; to do away with the selfish sinful ideologies of this world through His gracious acts of mercy; the banishment of all that is hollow and deceptive leading to eternal torment by giving us the light of His Word to guard and keep us day and night. Behold, how He is even now opening the door for you to enter the eternal feast where vain things are not imagined, but divine blessings are enacted.

 

There are songs that are fit for the gathered people of God to sing on this side of heaven, and there are songs that are not fit to sing even in our secular schools. As we move from the end of this Church Year into the one that is to come, may the songs that we sing direct us to the Coming One and all that He has promised to bring: peace and joy that we cannot image, but that we will behold.

 

 

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.