“Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what’s on the other side?” “What’s so amazing that keeps us star-gazing, and what do you think we might see?”¹ Or, in another voice (one that is not Kermit the Frog), “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 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…”² Or, in another voice (one that isn’t John Lennon), “We will work with each other, we will work side by side, and we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride.”³

Or, in yet another voice, one attributed to God and one that likely formed the basis for the reading from Revelation today, from Isaiah 65:17-19

For 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 for ever in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.

The strange text of Revelation is generally obscure. It was written in code so that if it was found by the wrong people, it wouldn’t be understood. In this case the “wrong people” were those who wanted to destroy the early Christian community. The issue is that we don’t really have the code. However, the last two chapters break out of the clouds a little bit, and it becomes clear that the author is yet another dreamer. Granted, he hasn’t been writing about rainbows, nor star gazing, but by the end he writing about hope, faith, and love as convincingly as third Isaiah. (Which, in case you didn’t know, is as high of a compliment as I can give.)

Our brief passage today is jam packed with imagery. There is a new city, a new Jerusalem. Heaven and earth as we know them have “passed away” and this is the new creation. The sea is no more. That’s significant in two ways. First, in Hebrew lore, the sea was the epitome of chaos, and the fear that comes from it. Secondly, in the ancient world, the sea was what separated people from another. It is as if all the continents came back together again. So the lack of sea means there is nothing to fear and nothing that separates people from each other!

God chooses to live WITH the people. “The home of God is among mortals.”(21:3). That is, there is no separation between God and people either. And, within the vastness of the created universe, this dreamer proposes that there is no where God would rather be than among the people! With God’s presence, there is no death, there is no sadness, there is no pain. And when there is thirst, God’s one self quenches it.

This is really interesting imagery. It isn’t a image of heaven. It could be an image of heaven come to earth, that makes some sense, or they may be combined into one thing. It proposes a sanctity of life itself, of humanity, of earthiness and fleshiness and of cities! (As commentators point out, the Bibles starts in a garden but ends in a city – a really big city, as it turns out.) Much of Christianity has been other-worldly focused, but both the hope-texts in Isaiah and this hope-text part of Revelation suggest that God is at work creating the WORLD as God wants it to be, not just waiting around for us to die in order to give us abundant life.

That’s something that REALLY matters to me. I believe that God is at work in the world, still creating, still moving the world into what it can be, and is now working WITH us on that. I believe that the life of Jesus was part of that creative energy, and the work of his followers is to be attentive to co-creating the world as it can be with God. His message was that this work is POSSIBLE, and that it is NEAR, that we can reach it. I deeply believe that the purpose of life as a follower of Jesus is to help form the world into what it can be. This is one of the most important pieces of my faith.

Another of the most important pieces of my faith is that God loves each and every person AS WE ARE. We are already enough for God. I don’t deny human brokenness, nor the need for healing and change. I simply believe that it is not a barrier to God’s love, and that even in brokenness and sickness God still sees us as enough.  Because I believe God loves ALL of us, I believe how we treat each other matters in the deepest parts of the universe. When we hurt each other, we hurt God. When we exclude each other, we exclude God. When we fail to love each other – or ourselves – we limit our capacity to love God.

My biggest question coming into this sermon was “Why is this commandment to love each other called ‘new’?” You might even have noticed that I put this in the bulletin as my sermon title, but I’ve since gotten over that. My issue is that the commandant is very old. It is in the Torah. It is one of the foundations of the entire YHWH tradition. Every Jewish person ever has known it. Worse yet, this version is a bit tame! While the rest of the Gospels give some version of “love your neighbor as yourself” which reflect the original law, this text says simply to love each other. It is an insider commandment, which is (still difficult but…) way easier!!

I finally found an article by a Jesuit named Jack Mahoney on a website called “Thinking Faith” that did some justice to the question. Father Mahoney points out that, “One of the purposes for which the Gospel of John seems to have been was written was to attempt to resolve painful divisions which existed within the Johannine community (as we see in the First Letter of John). The evangelist therefore may have Jesus here exhorting all his future disciples to mediate his continuing love to one another after he has gone, and so maintain the unity he will pray for earnestly.” That is, this is a pretty practical suggestion! The love ONE ANOTHER bit is being said because they weren’t succeeding at it. It also suggests that the love we show is a partial expression of the holy love that exists for each person. That is, ‘John in his gospel and his letters (as their author or their source) writes so repeatedly of the need for mutual love and unity among the disciples of Jesus, that it seems likely that these virtues were notably lacking in John’s Church”.⁴So, it wasn’t “new” but it needed attention.

If we are meant to love each other – and our neighbors in all places – and if we are meant to co-create the world as it can be with God, that leads us to significant questions about HOW that work is best done. Within communities of faith, there are vast and abundant differences about what that means.

In particular, The United Methodist Church is a broad umbrella, and we have some striking differences of opinion about how God would like the world to look and what love looks like in the world. On May 10^th our every-four-years international gathering, General Conference, starts. It is the only body that can speak for The United Methodist Church and make adaptations to our rules.

There is a fantastic Coalition called the Love Your Neighbor Coalition which is the combined effort of the Methodist Federation for Social Action, 4 groups working on LGBT inclusion, the 5 racial ethnic caucus groups in the United Methodist Church, a new environmental group called “Fossil Free UMC”, UM Association of Ministers with Disabilities, and the Western Methodist Justice Movement. (If you want to know more, grab a copy of my sermon, they’re all listed in the footnotes.)⁵ Although I love the name “Love Your Neighbor” it has also occurred to me that it could be called “The Rainbow Connection.” The views and perspectives are different, but the Coalition works towards inclusion, celebration of diversity, and recognition of the wholeness of humanity of people across many different rainbow spectrums. That’s what they believe love looks like. That’s what they think God’s world is meant to look like.

There is another Coalition. It is the Renewal and Reform Coalition, and it is comprised of Good News, The Confessing Movement, UMAction, and Lifewatch. (Transforming Congregations and the Renew Network are now part of Good News.) If you know what the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) is you might want to take note that UMAction is the UM wing of IRD. If you don’t know, ignorance is bliss. The Renewal and Reform Coalition released their General Conference Agenda last week. As they put it, “The Renewal and Reform Coalition has three major priorities in Portland: 1) uphold biblical teaching on life, marriage, and human sexuality, 2) restore and strengthen the integrity and accountability of our covenant connection as United Methodists, and 3) promote the fair representation and empowerment of our United Methodist brothers and sisters outside the U.S.”⁶

To be more specific, their legislative goals include: to remove The United Methodist Church from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice; to make sure that the church does not “agree to disagree” about the full humanity of LGBT people; to significantly tighten restrictions on clergy preforming same sex marriages (including a mandatory minimum penalty of a one year suspension); “broadening the definition of ‘self-avowed practicing homosexual,’ so that those who are married to a same-sex person or who have publicly acknowledged being a practicing homosexual would no longer be able to serve as clergy”; “adding as a chargeable offense ‘interfering with the General Conference or another United Methodist body or agency’s ability to conduct business,’ in order to counteract the disruption of General Conference and other agencies by activists.”; and much more!

The church that the Love Your Neighbor Coalition dreams of (and believes God to want) and the church that the Renewal and Reform Coalition dreams of (and believes God to want) do not look the same. Unfortunately, the Renewal and Reform Coalition has the voting majority on most (if not all) issues.

There are plenty of reasons to maintain hope. First of all, the existence of this church is proof that God’s love matters in the world, and no legislation from General Conference will ever change that. Secondly, the Love Your Neighbor Coalition (Rainbow Connection) may be prepared to LOSE, but they aren’t going to sit down and take it! There is a significant non-violent resistance strategy. I’m going to a training on it this Saturday. A Bishop and a pastor did a wedding yesterday in NC and got news of it onto CBS! More is coming. The commitment to sharing God’s love in the world is deep and wide. (Fair warning, this resistance may lead to my arrest. I’m not concerned about this, and I hope you won’t worry either. Portland, OR is friendly to protestors.)

God’s dreamers put God’s love into action to create the world as God would have it be. Sometimes it is easy, sometimes it is hard. It doesn’t really matter though, because God’s love is worth it! May the dreamers who seek to welcome all of God’s people into God’s holy church continue to do their work and find their way, so that the rainbows of peoples in the world might know they are worthy of God’s love and they are enough. Kermit sang, “Someday we’ll find it, the Rainbow Connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.”⁷ I think we found it – now we get to use it. Thanks be to God. Amen

1“Rainbow Connection” in The Muppet Movie Original Soundtrack Recording, Kermit, 1979.

2“Imagine” John Lennon, 1971.

3“They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love” Peter Scholtes, 1966.

4 Jack Mahoney SJ, “Why a ‘New’ Commandment?” http: //www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20120713_1.htm Posted on: 13th July 2012, accessed on April 23, 2016.

5Affirmation, Black Methodists for Church Renewal. Fossil Free UMC. Love Prevails.MARCHA: Metodistas Asociados Representando la Causa Hispano-Americanos,Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA), Methodists in New Directions (MIND),National Federation of Asian American United Methodists (NFAAUM), Native American International Caucus (NAIC), Pacific Islanders Caucus of United Methodists (PINCUM),Reconciling Ministries Network, United Methodist Association of Ministers with Disabilities, Western Methodist Justice Movement (WMJM)

6Steve Beard “Renewal Agenda for General Conference”http://goodnewsmag.org/2016/04/renewal-agenda-for-general-conference/ Published April 13, 2016, accessed April 21, 2016.

7“Rainbow Connection” in The Muppet Movie Original Soundtrack Recording, Kermit, 1979.

–
Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady