There is a fantastic scene from Quintin Tarantino’s film, Pulp Fiction, where the character of Mia Wallace, played by Uma Thurman, says to Vincent Vega, played by John Travolta:
There are only two kinds of people in the world, Beatles people and Elvis people. Now Beatles people can like Elvis and Elvis people can like the Beatles, but nobody likes them both equally. Somewhere you have to make a choice. And that choice, tells you who you are.
I am most definitely a Beatles people. I remember back to a beautiful summer afternoon in 1995, skipping classes at Mercer University to hike High Falls state park with some friends. We had brought with us an old boom box with a tape player (remember those), and we had only one tape, The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Now it might sound strange to you, but that summer day, twenty five years ago, changed my life. You might even say it was like a pre-spiritual awakening to becoming a Christian, for this was three years before I became a follower of Jesus.
And what was it I awakened to? The universal proclamation of what I like to call Cosmic ONENESS: the idea that all creation is interconnected, bound by some unmovable mover called LOVE. Before that day I just called it, The Force, like from Star Wars.
In fact, Beatlemania is a lot like the Star Wars franchise. Both have succeeded in developing their own universes made up of millions of cult crazed fans that stretch across seven decades. Both are cultural phenomena that capture the thin space of cosmic ONENESS. And both tell a particular story.
While Star Wars seems to tell a story with an emphasis on choosing the right path in life (the Dark-side vs. the light side of the Force), the Beatles seemed more content with telling their simple story of love.
Not a watered down sentimental type of love (although their early songs are loaded with heartbreak), but rather a transformative love that binds and unifies the cosmos.
As John and Paul sing it on their song, The Word (from their masterpiece 1965 album, Rubber Soul, which sold 1.2 million copies in a week)
Give the word a chance to say
That the word is just the way
It's the word I'm thinking of
And the only word is love
(it’s so fine, it’s sunshine)
Perhaps these four lads from Liverpool were onto something using their musical expressions to peel back the layers of reality tapping into something bigger than themselves.
Perhaps they were tapping into the Divine Word, the Supreme LOGOS, tapping into the word LOVE Himself, the Alpha and the Omega, the A to Z.
In fact, the word love can be found a whopping 613 times throughout the Beatles Canon. Whereas the Bible only mentions the word love 541 times.
But the word love is mentioned five times in today’s short Gospel text. When we see repetitions in scripture, I think it means God wants to get our attention. He has something important to say, so like my dad, he says it five times. Love. The Word Love. We need to get love.
Or as the Beatles proclaimed boldly in the summer of 1967, All You Need Is Love. (All you need is love, love… love is all you need)
Simple to sing, yet challenging to live.
Well, I hate to tell you that Jesus is going to complicate the matter further by teaching us today the mystical, paradoxical expression of his cosmic love through what sounds like strange riddles.
In what some scholars call the Lord’s True Prayer here in John 17, there is a shift in His great priestly prayer from Jesus praying for the disciples with him in the upper room, to Jesus praying for us here today, saying,
21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
Now it’s funny to me Jesus uses this language because John Lennon used a similar style of lyrical riddle on the Beatle’s song, I Am The Walrus.
Listen to the uncanny similarities:
I am he as you are he as you are me And we are all together - The Beatles, I Am the Walrus.
And now Jesus from today’s Gospel lesson,
I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one (together).
But I digress… (I’m sorry but I got the Beatles on my brain)
This idea of ONENESS is the very definition of Shalom that Father Jim was talking about last Sunday.
Shalom means peace, but it goes beyond the surface definition of just peace as the absence of war and conflict.
True biblical shalom means an inward sense of completeness or wholeness, and a majority of biblical references refer to shalom as an inner completeness and tranquility.
21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
This picture of shalom is the very essence of our union in Christ and our relationship with God. The early Christians had a word for their communion in Jesus and within one another. They understood themselves to be one body with many different parts.
They called it perichoresis, which means a mutual indwelling without the loss of individual identity.
The idea was that when one neighbor laughs, the other feels her joy, or if one weeps, others taste the salt.
I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one (together)
Jesus is actually giving us here the theology of Trinity Sunday, which we celebrate in just two weeks, the Sunday after Pentecost.
Here is a funny story about Trinity Sunday:
Being the youth director at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Darien, Georgia, I was usually assigned to preach on Trinity Sunday, so that Father Ted Clarkson could begin his summer vacation and avoid having to commit biblical heresy.
I say biblical heresy because the mystery of the Holy Trinity is just that, a mystery, one that cannot be rationally explained in words.
So, over the years I’ve adopted my own unique word picture to help me understand this, I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one (together)
Allow me to introduce my Beatle themed Russian Nesting Dolls. Now I know Russia is not the most popular topic of conversation, but they are the Beatles: John, Paul, George, and Ringo. (Give it up for them)
Now the immortal, invisible, God Only Wise sent the eternal Word made flesh (and the Word is Love) God’s only begotten Son, Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit.
So, George the Son (I know how blasphemous this sounds but just hang with me a moment longer this morning) filled with the Spirit of Ringo Star, the rhythmic glue that held the Beatles together.
Now filled with the Ringo Star Spirit of grace and truth, George the son comes to us, the human race.
We are represented of course by Sir Paul McCartney, the cute one. And so again the Son, George, filled with the Ringo Star Spirit of grace and truth, comes to us, every-man Paul, to show us, to reveal to us, to teach us in the way of the Father’s LOVE.
But it was not enough to just point us in the direction of his Father’s LOVE, the Son George, by his death and resurrection, includes us, Paul McCartney, into his resurrection, and fills us with his life, that we may even be called children of God.
And so now, Christ in us, George, filled with the spirit of Ringo, brings us into face to face intimacy with the Father, represented by none other than the late great John Lennon.
I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one (together)
So, there you have it, not quite a magic trick, not quite blasphemous, I guess that’s what I call a sermon.
One God expressed in the love of three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And today, if we believe this stuff to be true, then we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of all that love. Mutual indwelling without loss of individual identity.
One may even argue that the more we dwell in Christ and Christ in us, the more we become our true selves, the life that is hidden in God selves.
As it says in Colossians, For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Jesus goes on to pray, the glory that you have given me, I have given them (us), so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me that they may be completely one together.
I believe that the glory Jesus is speaking of in this passage is the very Spirit of Adoption, the Holy Spirit, that binds us into the loving cords of the Father/Son dynamic.
CS Lewis writes about this God glory in his book the Weight of Glory,
We do not want merely to see beauty (glory). We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
And this seems precisely what God has done for us in Christ - we have passed into God, we have received God into ourselves, and he has received us in him, we are bathed in his glory, and are made One is his body.
This is shalom, an inner completeness and tranquility. This is the good news.
For at the end of the day, are we not all like John, Paul, George, and Ringo, just a bunch of lonely old broken hearts searching for a club, searching for a song, searching for the Word, love?
And so, we find ourselves today being called to live out our Christ given identities together, broken hearts living in healing community, living together in the Unmovable Mover of Love. All because of grace, all because of Jesus.
All this LOVE, all this UNITY, this Shalom, this perichoresis, this GLORY is pointing and empowering us to love God and to love our neighbors.
It is good news for all people, not just us. For this idea of us dwelling together in unity is for them… those who do not yet know of his love
The application therefore is that we share this Good News with everyone we know. Let us then with all power, joy, and grace proclaim in both word and deed the universal invitation to those who do not yet know Jesus.
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.
Everyone come! Everyone…
In My Father’s house are many rooms; if that were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you.
My dear friends in Christ, I say to you with all hope and joy this morning, no matter who you are, or where you are, no matter what you are going through, no matter what you have left done or undone, Jesus is the answer, Let it Be. Amen.
References
1. THE BEATLES Trademark of APPLE CORPS LIMITED
2. Lewis, CS, The Weight of Glory, Harper Collins, 1980.
3. STAR WARS Trademark of Lucas Film Ltd.
4. Tarantino, Quentin. PULP FICTION, A Band Apart Production, 1994.