Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's May 1, 2005 Youth Sunday worship service.

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Youth Sunday
May 1, 2005

“Imagine”
By: Justin Murr

Last Wednesday, the band went to Nashville for a competition. While I was enjoying the LONG scenic route there and back, I had a lot of time to think. I thought about Tolerance and Unity and the song “Imagine”. So I curled up in my seat, stuck on my headphones, and began writing my sermon for the 3^rd time. I was having trouble this whole week trying to find the perfect words for the theme of Tolerance and Unity because, let’s face it, how do you tell people about something that they’ve heard their whole lives? “Love your neighbor”, “World Peace”, “Why can’t we all just get along?” etc., etc. I could stand up here all morning and talk your ears off about such phrases. Instead, I’m going to tell you about tolerance from a teenager in 2005’s view point. Tolerance for you probably had a different meaning because you grew up with the racial discrimination issues and we obviously, as a whole, have moved beyond racial issues, for the most part. Instead, we’ve moved into other issues, like religion, sexual preference, and racial profiling. These might be issues that you may not want anything to do with, for whatever reason; however, one problem with tolerance is the inability to accept change. Many people have a problem with anything that is different from what they are used to, and instead of accepting their difference and loving them anyway, like Christ tells us to do, we profile them and judge them and shun them. Whether you see it or not, my generation faces intolerance everywhere. Sometimes we will get made fun of because of what church we go to, who our friends are, or are not, our political preferences, or our clothes, our car, or our morals. It even leads some people to take their own lives in response to this intolerance, such as Clint Jones, who committed suicide last year, due to the people laughing at him. Do you think that is right? Then, at the beginning of the school year, this year, we had that assembly that preached intolerance to the entire high school. Right now, in the world and especially in this town, we are suffering from extreme disunity and prejudice; it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. All of these things are the reason why I feel that the song “Imagine” is the ideal song for the world. Let me read the lyrics to you.

“Imagine there’s no Heaven. It’s easy if you try.”
“No Hell below us, above us, only sky.”
“Imagine all the people living for today.”
“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 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.”
“Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can.”
“No need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.”
“Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”
“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. “

It’s all quite a concept if you truly think about is. Imaging all of the world living in peace and unity, with no hatred, or greed, or even injustice. I mean, imagine if we weren’t in Iraq, and war was not even a possibility. All of our loved ones would be home and hundreds of people would not be dying daily. Imagine if we all just accepted one another for whom ever we are, we overlooked our differences, and just lived our lives without worrying about what our neighbor believes or does. Imagine if it wasn’t a big deal who you voted for, or why. Wouldn’t that be wild? That is what the song “Imagine” is all about. Imagining life as it should be, with no greed, or hatred or any reason to fight. A concept that the world cannot seem to grasp.

The 1^st verse of the song deals with the religion of life. It reads “Imagine there’s no Heaven. It’s easy if you try. No Hell below us. Above us, only sky. Imagine all the people living for today.” Now when it says “imagine there’s no Heaven & Hell”, it isn’t saying “There actually isn’t a Heaven or Hell” What it is telling people to do is to imagine it doesn’t matter. Now before you go off and get all bent out of shape at that, let me explain. What I think John Lennon is trying to say is this. People today spend a lot of time worrying and telling people about how you’ll go to Hell if you do this, or do this and you will go to Heaven. We, as humans, spend a lot of our time judging people and saying to ourselves, “if they keep that up, they’ll never go to Heaven.” So, imagine for a second, if Heaven and Hell wasn’t an issue. Imagine if we didn’t worry about what actions our neighbors took and which place they were going. Imagine if we didn’t judge them based on their beliefs, but simply lived for today. We lived with our neighbors, not against them, like we are living better lives. Imagine if you could do that. Imagine if that guy who told you that because of what you believe, that you were going to Hell, lived that way and didn’t worry about Heaven or Hell, or any of that. Wouldn’t that be nice? Imagine if we just let God worry about who was going to Heaven or Hell, instead of us judging each other.

Now the 2^nd verse deals with countries and war, 2 topics that are big issues today. Even with all of the fighting in Iraq, and the threat of problems with Iran and North Korea, imaging no war is quite easy, I think. If you go back in history and look at all of the wars, you will begin to notice a common thread. They have been either over religion, land (a.k.a. countries), or power and greed. Basically the 2^nd verse is dealing with peace. The lyrics read “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.” Imagine, for a second, if the song were accurate and there were no countries, no different religions, and basically no other reason to kill or die. If you can imagine that, what do you see? Do you see men dying in wars, or being killed in suicide bombings? No, what you probably see is peacefulness. There is no bickering about whose religion is right, or about how this country is better than that one. There’s no WWI or WWII, no Iraq, none of these problems. Now what I am saying is not “Let’s get rid of religions, or country boundary lines.” No, of course not. What I am saying is why does it all matter? God made us all and gave us all we have, yet still we persist in arguing about who is better, and why. We like to feel better than everyone else. Whether it’s “our religion follows the Bible”, or “our country has more oil”, we have this need to be better and to prove it to the world. Why? Why must we go out and put down everyone else? If there were no countries and no religion, we couldn’t do that, could we? All we could do is “live life in peace”, as the song says. “Imagine all the people living life in peace.”

That idea carries over into the 3^rd verse, which begins “Imagine no possessions.” Now, if imaging no wars was easy, imagining no possessions is quite hard, at least for me anyway. No CD player, no computer, no car, no fancy clothes, no jewelry, no palm pilot, no cell phone, no anything. Imagine that. How would you ever make it? But now, look at it this way. Your best friend loses everything and becomes homeless because of a fire. Their clothes burn, their TV, everything they owned is gone. How do you think they are going to feel when they see you the next day with your new shirt and nice watch, driving around in your expensive car? Envious, greed filled, hateful? They’re going to feel pretty bad. But, imagine if we had no possessions. First of all, your friend couldn’t have lost anything anyway, but secondly, and most importantly, you wouldn’t have anything either. You wouldn’t have a better watch or car. You wouldn’t have those nicer clothes. You and your friend would be equal. There would be no greed or envy between you, no hatred or jealousy. Only sympathy and compassion, which, ironically, are two things that Christ taught us to practice. Are you seeing the message yet? This song describes a perfect world. No reason to hate, or fight, or argue, or even kill. No reason at all! As I said at the beginning of this sermon, I could use all kinds of clichés, like “love your neighbor”, but you already know them. You already know that you shouldn’t look down on your neighbor. You know you shouldn’t be greedy, or envious, or prideful. You know you shouldn’t judge people based on their views, preferences, or beliefs. Yet you do it anyway. I do it. We all do it. We see that person with no home and think, “I’m glad I’m not him” and go on. We see that person with the political sign on their car and think “I didn’t vote for him and I don’t like that person in that car.” Or we see the foreigner in a store and think “could they be part of those EVIL people from over there out to get us?” We all do it, everyday, and yet we know it’s wrong. We’ve been taught from childhood not to. So I urge you today as a simple 18 year old, listen to this song again someday and do what it says. Imagine! Imagine no one laughing at you. Imagine no one dying. Imagine your friend happy. I’m sure Clint Jones imagined those things. But sadly, I don’t think anyone around him did. No one stopped to imagine what would be different if they were in his shoes. The world would be a lot different if we were all equal. However, we are not, so it is up to you to make a difference. I close this morning with the final lines of “Imagine” for you to think about…

“You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I am not the only one.”
“I hope someday you will join us, and the world will live as one.”