y mother used to have a little vacation house on Lake Lanier in Georgia.  In the main bedroom there was a framed picture of Jesus hanging on the wall.  Once my mother allowed my sister Shannon to live in the house for a few months.  When mom went to visit Shannon she was surprised to see that the framed picture of Jesus had been taken down and replaced with a picture of John Lennon, who was my sister’s favorite Beatle.

            Obviously, my sister and my mother had differences of opinion about theology and interior decorating.  Of course, this theological and aesthetic controversy was not just a dilemma for my family.  There was similar conflict that raged through American culture in the year 1966.

            It was in this year that John Lennon made a comment that got him into hot soup. Lennon was talking to journalist, Maureen Cleeve, about the decline of the Anglican Church in England.  He said, “Christianity will go.  It will vanish and shrink.  I needn’t argue about that.  I’m right and I will be proved right.  We’re more popular than Jesus now.  I don’t know which will go first – rock n’ roll or Christianity.  Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary.  It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

            Needless to say many religious leaders were upset by the suggestion that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus.  There wasn’t as much uproar in England.  There the interview was seen in the context of a larger debate of the recognized decline of the Anglican Church; a staid liturgical religious tradition that was generating little of the enthusiasm among youth that seemed evident at your average Beatles’ concert.  

            In America Lennon’s comment made some people very angry.  Some radio stations banned the Beatles from their play list.  A few vocal preachers and religious broadcasters began to sponsor Beatle’s record burnings.  At such gatherings protesters might hold up signs that said things like; “Jesus Died For You; John Lennon.”  Ironically, the KKK marched outside of some the band’s American concerts to protest the Beatles’ “unchristian message.”

            Under these hostile conditions John Lennon issued an apology and tried to set his remarks in their context.  However, John’s apology probably could not be heard by those he had angered.  John’s religious thinking colored too far outside the lines of conventional orthodoxy.  Lennon said, “I believe Jesus was right, Buddha was right and all those people are right.  They’re all saying the same thing – and I believe it.  I believe what Jesus actually said – the basic things he laid down about love and goodness – and not what people said he said.”  “The church is in your head.”  “Christ said, “the kingdom of God is within you” and the Indians say that and the Zen people say that…We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of heaven is…within us and if you look hard enough you will see it.”

Many church leaders felt threatened by the Beatles before John Lennon made his comment.  And it is not hard to see why.  The screaming crowds at the concerts did seem like a religious revival gone way out of control.  People were crying and fainting in the aisles.  Ringo Starr once commented that some fans seem to expect the band members to possess some kind of divine healing powers.  He said that crippled and injured people were constantly being brought back stage to be touched by a Beatle as if some miracle might occur.  There were misguided fans that assigned miraculous Jesus-like powers to these four young musicians from Liverpool, England; powers that the Beatles never claimed to have themselves.  When asked to explain the phenomena of Beatlemania George Harrison replied, “The world used us as an excuse to go mad.”

If the Beatles were bigger than Jesus in some people’s minds it may be because Jesus never set his teachings to music.  A big part of the attraction to the Beatles was the music.  The music remains popular today.  When I was an exchange student in England I made my obligatory pilgrimage to Liverpool and climbed down the stairs into the Cavern, the nightclub where the Beatles go their start.

My children enjoy the Beatles as much as people of my generation. “Twist and Shout” is the first song my daughter learned to play on guitar.  The local Oldies radio station has a Beatles brunch every Saturday morning in which they play an hour of Beatles music.  The music of the Beatles continues to inspire today’s young people.  Even though surviving members of the band have grown old enough to be their grandparents.

This point wasn’t lost on the Beatles themselves.  Paul McCartney had observed that part of the decline of the Church of England had to do with its unwillingness to experiment with new kinds of music that might draw younger people into the church.  In fact, if love was a central message of Jesus and the church it was also a central message of the Beatles.  For instance, George Harrison once called the song “All You Need is Love” ‘a subtle bit of PR for God’ echoing the words of St John, “God is love, and those who abide in love, abide in God and God abides in them.”  Beatles songs have been played in churches.  In fact, the song  “All You Need is Love” was played as the recessional for the wedding for Al and Tipper Gore.  (Sing)

Of course, the Beatles were not very conventional in their own religious beliefs.  Paul McCartney once told a reporter, “I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit.  I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good’s become God with the ‘o’ out, and evils become Devil with a ‘d’ added.  That’s my theory of religion.”

Of course, the religious ideas of the Beatles were not uniform.  At one end of the spectrum there was John Lennon with his individualistic stream of consciousness philosophy.  He told one reporter, “You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway.  You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple.  Its all down to you mate.”

On the other side of the spectrum there was George Harrison who had a serious interest in the teachings and practices of Eastern religion.  This interest in the East was evident in the Beatles music when Harrison began blending the music of Indian sitars with electric guitars.  Harrison began practicing yoga because of the pain he felt sitting cross-legged while learning to play the sitar.  This began a life-long interest in meditation.

Harrison was raised in the Catholic tradition but he did not like the approach of the teachers who said,  “believe this because we say so.”  He did not appreciate the authority of the church being elevated above the authority of ones own personal experience.  He said that the message of the church to the individual seemed to be, “You don’t know anything about Christ and God because we are the ones who own the franchise.”  He began to gravitate toward the teachings of the Hindu mystics who honored personal experience and would say things like, “No, you can’t believe anything until you have a direct experience of it.”

Harrison had first sought a direct experience of enlightenment through the drug culture and even made a pilgrimage to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco.  But he was disillusioned by his experience.  He told one reporter, “I went there expecting it to be a brilliant place, with groovy gypsy people making works of art and paintings and carvings in little workshops.  But it was full of horrible spotty drop out kids on drugs and it turned me off the whole scene…It wasn’t what I thought – spiritual awakenings and being artistic – it was like alcoholism, or any addiction…It made me realize, “This is not it.”  And that is when I went for the meditation.”

It was George Harrison who encouraged the other members of the Beatles to attend a teaching session with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Wales on the subject of transcendental meditation.  In 1968 John, Paul, George and Ringo took a pilgrimage to Rishikesh, India to study meditation with Maharishi.  When John Lennon was asked why the Beatles were going to India he replied, “The youth of today are really looking for some answers – for proper answers that the established church can’t give them, their parents can’t give them, material things can’t give them.”

Maharishi taught meditation. Paul McCartney reported Maharishi as saying, “This is only a system of meditation.  I’m not asking you to believe in any great God or any great myth.  It is simply a system to help you to be calmer in your own life.” Maharishi wanted to encourage people all over the world to practice twenty minutes of meditation in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening.  The meditation was to help people improve their quality of life and help them to come closer to discovering the meaning of existence.

If love was a central theme in the ministry of Jesus and in the Beatles songs then it was also a central theme for the teachings of Maharishi.  The guru once said, “Love is the sweet expression of life.  It is the supreme content of life.  Love is the force of life, powerful and sublime.  The flower of life blooms in love and radiates love all around.”  If you were to takes the sentiment of this statement and condense it to a single sentence it might be the words, “All You Need is Love.” (Sing)

When John Lennon was asked to describe the teachings of Maharishi he said, “What he says about life and the universe is the same message that Jesus, Buddha and Krishna and all the big boys were putting over.  If you ask Maharishi for a few laws for living by; they’d be the same thing as Christianity.  Christianity is the answer as well; it’s the same thing.  All the religions are all the same, it’s just a matter of people opening their minds up.”  George Harrison chimed in “From the Hindu perspective all the religions are branches of one big tree.”

Most of the Beatles stayed in India about a month. Ringo left early because of food allergies.  George Harrison seemed to get the most out of the experience and he maintained a lifelong interest in Eastern religions.  However, John, Paul and Ringo were less enchanted with Maharishi.  Rumors spread that the guru made passes at some of the female students.  There were also accusations that the guru was materialistic and more interested in fame and wealth than spiritual growth.  George defended Maharishi from what he felt were false charges.  John was very disenchanted and wrote the song “Sexy Sadie” to denounce what he saw as the guru’s inappropriate conduct.  Of course, the irony of it all is that the Beatles themselves were not particularly immune to the temptations of wealth, sex and fame.

            Once again John and George took opposite ends of a spiritual spectrum.  This would continue even after the band broke up. John would go on to write the song “Imagine” which became an anthem for many humanists and atheists.  John asked his listeners to “Imagine, there’s no heaven.  It’s easy if you try.  No hell below us. Above us only sky.”  In this song John envisioned a world without religion and it was a more peaceful world.

            George Harrison, on the other hand, wrote the song  “My Sweet Lord” that blended aspects of Eastern and Western spirituality.  Over time his religion became more about the inner life.  Speaking about the spiritual life he said it was an internal thing; a personal thing, “You don’t actually do it in the road.”  He said,  “It’s a way of getting in touch with yourself.”  When Harrison died in November his family released the statement, “He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death, and at peace, surrounded by family and friends.  He often said, ‘Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.”

            So let me try to tie everything in this sermon together by saying; if my mom had allowed me to borrow her lake house then she would have discovered that there’s room enough on the wall for both Jesus and John Lennon.  There’s also room for George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr not to mention Buddha and Krishna and others.

The Beatles came to America in 1964.  It was a year when I had more hair on the top of my head than I do today.  And that is sad because I was born in 1964.  My baby pictures show me with thick dark hair forming a big curl on the top of my head.  The Beatles came to America in the year of my birth.  And the recent death of George Harrison, and John Lennon before him reminds me that my days on this earth are not unlimited.  Nor are the days of anyone else who lives.  “All Things Must Pass” was the name of George Harrison’s first solo album.  It is also a spiritual truth we can all contemplate.  All things must pass.  And yet a wise person once wrote that in a world that is constantly changing there are some things that abide; things like faith, hope and love and the greatest of theses is love.”  Or as someone else said, “Love is all you need.”  (Sing) So be it.