1 John 4:7-21 The Message
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
For most of us, the past 18 months have been a haze.
It is a combination of time standing still
And time never happening
My mind struggles to compute events during this season.
It is going to be interesting, in the future, how we mark this time of pandemic.
For me, one of the key dates took place almost one year ago.
On September 21st, 2020, I made my second trip to Arizona during the pandemic.
One month earlier, I had flow out to Phoenix, under the ruse that I was going to be with my parents as they celebrated their 65th Wedding Anniversary --- the reality was I was going to out to see what was really going on.
My father ---
The best analogy I can make of him was that he was the Dick Lancaster of First UMC in Downers Grove. (I would really say that Dick Lancaster was the Fred Conger here at Meridian Street)
This man who, in my eyes was always in control --- no longer had much control in his life.
After that trip, I knew that their time in Arizona was drawing to a close --- but I wasn’t sure how I would get them home.
On September 12th of that year, I was busy doing my semi-annual cutting down of some ground cover around our house when my phone rang. It was my mother, asking me to fly back to Phoenix and bring them home to Chicago.
My life changed at that moment.
Everything seemed to stop
Many of the things that had seemed so important --- faded into the background.
During Nancy’s fall break we flew out once more and this time we packed up their home in Arizona, drove their belongs back to Chicago and sold that home.
By January, they had moved into a retirement center out by the Fox River in Illinois
What I have come to understand more clearly is that as the writer of the beautiful poetry we know of as the Song of Songs tells us: Love is Stronger than Death.
Secondly, as the old song goes: Love Is The Answer.
What is the question you may ask? --- Love is the answer to all the questions.
And I am convinced, as I have told you before --- that God’s love
for you,
for me,
for all of creation is unconditional.
Can you imagine if we really believed that?
Believed that God really loved us unconditionally ---
And we really lived our lives that way?
As the author of the Revelation so aptly reminds us:
“Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
That is what love looks like
But that is not the way of our world
We live in a world in which almost 200 murders have taken place in our beloved city so far this year.
200
Every week we pray over those lost.
Why is this happening? --- because for most of us --- Love is not the answer
The truth is we have lost our way.
If you have ever read, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s powerful work: The Brother’s Karamazov, you know that within the book there is a poem or a story called “The Grand Inquisitor.”
In this poem, Jesus has returned to the earth in Seville Spain, during the days when the Church was seeking to convert all non-Christians: particularly Jews and Muslims to the Christian Faith. Failure to convert would result in arrest, trial and ultimately punishment.
This is not the golden moral age of Christianity
In case you are not familiar with this period of history --- according to history.com:
The Inquisition was a powerful office set up within the Catholic Church to root out and punish heresy throughout Europe and the Americas. Beginning in the 12th century and continuing for hundreds of years, the Inquisition is infamous for the severity of its tortures and its persecution of Jews and Muslims. Its worst manifestation was in Spain, where the Spanish Inquisition was a dominant force for more than 200 years, resulting in some 32,000 executions.
When Jesus shows up in Dostoevsky’s poem, he is not welcomed with shouts of Hosanna or Hallelujah --- instead he finds himself imprisoned by the church.
He is brought before the Grand Inquisitor --- who basically says to Jesus: “Not you again! You’re going to ruin everything”
The Inquisitor tells Jesus that during his earthly teaching ministry that he had made a grave mistake.
He muses on the story of the Temptation of Jesus found in our Gospels. The story goes like this:
the Spirit led Jesus up into the wilderness so that the devil might tempt him.
. . .
Then the devil brought him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He said, “I’ll give you all these if you bow down and worship me.”
Jesus responded, “Go away, Satan, because it’s written, You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” The devil left him, and angels came and took care of him. (Matthew 4)
According to the Inquisitor the mistake that Jesus made was saying NO.
The Inquisitor calls Jesus an idiot --- and tells him that with ultimate power --- think of all the good things that Jesus could have done.
In the Inquisitor’s mind:
Power works!
Might makes right
Love is not the answer --- Power is!
(adapted from Curry p 229)
Unfortunately --- that is the same direction that the church has gone since Jesus was murdered --- in a demonstration of power.
We didn’t believe that love was stronger than death.
We have, in the words of Bishop Curry, “betrayed the one we claim to follow.”
Charles Marsh, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, and author of the book The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today writes: “Jesus founded the most revolutionary movement in history: a movement built on the unconditional love of God for the world and the mandate to live that love.”
Or as the author of First John tells us in our text this morning: (CEB)
Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love.
. . .
God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
So how do we do it?
How do we love one another?
The author of 1st John makes it pretty clear that if we want to follow Jesus --- the only way is love.
The way of love is a commitment to seek the good and well-being of others.
When you are about to engage with someone, we must first see them as a child of God.
We must learn to listen --- because it is impossible to see the good and well-being of others if we do not listen to them and really see them.
Bishop Curry, reminds us in his book: Love Is The Way, of the wisdom of Robert Fulghum
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life --- learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.
As the old song says:
Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer
And when you feel afraid, love one another
When you've lost your way, love one another
When you're all alone, love one another
When you're far from home, love one another
When you're down and out, love one another
All your hope's run out, love one another
When you need a friend, love one another
When you're near the end, love
We got to love, we got to love one another
(Todd Rundgren)
In 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr. in a sermon to the Dexter Ave Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama entitled “Loving Your Enemies” spoke these words:
It seems to me that this is the only way. As our eyes look to the future, as we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that, we will be able to make this old world a new world. We will be able to make (humanity) men better. Love is the only way.
Amen.
