1 John
3:16-24
16
We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay
down our lives for one another. 17 How does God's love abide in anyone who has
the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? 18
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
19 And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our
hearts before him 20 whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than
our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn
us, we have boldness before God; 22 and we receive from him whatever we ask,
because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his
commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and
love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24 All who obey his commandments
abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us,
by the Spirit that he has given us.
It’s not a very common occurrence in
our house, but occasionally the responsibility for cooking dinner falls on me.
Sallie will email me a recipe she found on Pinterest. I’ll pull it up on my
phone or tablet and commence to gathering up the ingredients, pots, pans, and
utensils I’ll need to prepare the meal. To be honest, I’ve never found cooking
to be that hard; it’s just a matter of following directions, being careful in
some cases to follow them exactly. It’s helpful if the recipe is specific about
amounts and the type of ingredients: one teaspoon of kosher salt…one cup of low
sodium chicken broth…one, whole medium onion, diced…one tablespoon of chili
powder, etc. It also helps if we have those ingredients and their clearly
labeled. After all, paprika looks a lot like chili powder, and baking soda, and
baking powder are two totally different things, and you can really mess up a
recipe if you use two cups of all-purpose flour when you were supposed to use
two cups of self-rising flour. It’s helpful when things are clearly labeled,
when all the guess work is taken out and you can plainly read what it is you’re
stirring in the bowl. Labels are helpful because they keep us from making
mistakes, from wrongfully identifying something.
Can
I tell you somewhere labels would be helpful? Covered dish lunches and wedding
receptions. I can’t tell you how many times (not here obviously) I’ve been in
line at a covered dish lunch and had to ask those in line around me, “What in
the world is that in that casserole dish? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything
like that before.” Or the time, at my own wedding, hungry because I had been,
you know, getting married (taking pictures, talking to people who claim their
your relatives but you don’t recall ever seeing them, but your mom insists you
know who they are because they once changed your diapers when you were a
baby…), when we finally got to eat a
little something without having our picture taken, I bit into what I thought
was just a regular cream puff, but it turned out to have chicken salad in it—I
wish it had been clearly labeled! If food at these sort of things was labeled
I’m sure I could have avoided several gastrointestinal mistakes in my life.
Can
I tell you somewhere else where labels would be helpful? In our everyday
interactions with each other, especially with strangers. When I worked in a
garage, we all wore dark blue uniforms with our names stitched over one pocket
and the shop name over the other; it made remembering each other’s name pretty
easy. Why can’t life be like? Surely we have the technology now. Imagine,
walking down the street, someone approaches you, with just a quick glance you
could tell who he was: “Jeff—works at such-and-such;” “Clara—stay-at-home mom.”
Or what if those labels said things like, “Rachel—Christian;” “Larry—Agnostic?”
That’d make things easy, wouldn’t it? No more guessing who’s a Christian, who
you can talk to about your faith, who really loves Jesus. If we’d all just wear
name tags, labels that would tell all of those around us, those who might cross
our paths, “I’m a Christian,” that’d make things easier.
Of
course, some of us try to wear those labels—even if we have to manufacture them
ourselves. My friend Jason (who used to work at a small, local Christian
bookstore) and I called it “Jesus Junk.” I can’t be too judgmental about it
though, I used to have a lot of that “Jesus Junk:” I had a key fob with the
words “Got Jesus?” on it, a blue tag on the front of my truck with a big icthus
(that’s the fish symbol) on it. Some folks have car tags that say “God is my
co-pilot,” or neck ties patterned with pictures of Jesus or the books of the
bible. Some folks seem to just drip with gold crosses, while others can hardly
see out the back window of their cars for all of the bumper stickers printed
with bible references and cool, Christian-ese catch-phrases. While I don’t
think there’s necessarily anything wrong with wearing Christian-inspired
jewelry or decorating your car, home, or office with bible verses, I do think
that sometimes we can get the notion that that’s all it takes. We can be coerced
into believing that’s all it takes to let the world, others, know that we’re
Christians. It’s easy—slap a bumper sticker on our car, park it at the church
on Sunday, wear Christian t-shirts, share memes on Facebook and like pictures
of Jesus on our newsfeeds, back those who publicly claim to be Christians and
we’re done. Now everyone will know, everyone who sees us ought to know we’re
Christians because we’ve got the labels stuck on. But is that how they’ll know?
Is that how we know?
We’re
listening again today to 1 John, a letter written to a group of believers
dealing with divisive groups who are making heretical claims about the nature
of Christ. These groups claim to be Christians: they use all the right
language, know all the right words, might even know more bible verses too.
Their presence has caused confusion and division among these early believers.
It was hard to know if they were really believers, struggling with their
faith—a faith in its infancy in the first century—or if they were individuals
after an easy alternative, a religious system of beliefs that already coincided
with their comfort. How could they tell them apart from the real believers? How
can we tell those who are genuinely seeking faith in Christ from those who just
know the language, the right things to say? Is it even up to us?
I
suppose there might be a time and place for us to need to know, so how do we
know? Do we grill people on their knowledge of the Scriptures? How many of you
would like to stand up and give an account of everything you know about the
Bible? I bet there’s someone who knows more than you. Should we give them some
kind of spiritual standardized test, and upon scoring it, decide if they “cut
the mustard,” if they stack up to our ideal of what it means to be a “good
Christian”? Should we ask them to make clear, definitive, doctrinal statements
about the nature of God, the beginning of time, the meaning of the sacraments,
and the definition of life? What if they don’t agree with us? What if the
answers aren’t so clear to them? What if they see a lot more grey and a lot
less black-and-white? What if they’re still struggling with what they believe?
What if we’re still trying to figure it out ourselves? How do we know then? How
do we know if there aren’t any clear labels, and everyone looks the same and
knows all the right words to say? How do we know?
Fortunately,
the text before us tells us how in verses
19 and 20: “And by this we will know that
we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our
hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows
everything.” “By this we will
know…” What is “this”? The short answer is love. Love is how we know; love is how we can tell those who
are genuinely searching, seeking, chasing after God. Love is how we know who is
really trying to follow Christ; it’s how we know someone hasn’t simply learned
to “talk the talk.” So then, how do we recognize love? How do we know it’s real
love and not just acts of obligation? That can be tricky, you know?
I
think about growing up with my sister and all of our step-siblings, and how
we’d fuss and fight. How, when one of our parents would get fed up they’d tell
us to hug each other and say “I love you.” Of course we’d do it, but not
because we meant it, because we knew if we didn’t we’d likely get a whooping. That’s
not love. Or I think about that husband who, after several too many, comes home
to find a cold dinner on the stove and takes out his anger from the day on his
wife, and as she dabs her eye with the cold, wet rag, he stands in the doorway
of the bathroom and says, “I love you, baby.” That’s not love. I think of the
radical fanatics who stand on street corners with signs in one hand and a
megaphone in the other, shouting doom and damnation to those who pass by, those
who just as soon slap someone in the face with a bible than tolerate their
presence—and they say they’re full of the love of God. That’s not love. So what
is? How do we know? If love is how we know the truth, if love is how we can
tell the followers from the phonies, if love is what it really means to pursue
God, then how do we know? How do we know what love is?
Well,
“We
know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down
our lives for one another.” Love is the ultimate expression of
selflessness. It’s the willingness to die for someone else, to completely let
go of yourself and what makes you comfortable, what makes you who you are, all
for the sake of someone else. Love is being willing to sacrifice what you have
for someone else—even if they don’t deserve it, even if they’ve done nothing to
earn it. That’s the gospel, isn’t it? That “God so loved the world that he gave
his Son,” that God gave God’s self; isn’t that the gospel? And here’s the other
part, “we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Well, what does that
look like?
I
suppose we could look to the great martyrs of our faith, those men and women
who have courageously died, been murdered, lynched, and assassinated all
because they identified themselves as Christians. I suppose we could point to
the examples of those first apostles and the ways they were crucified,
beheaded, and imprisoned because of their desire to follow Jesus. We could, but
you and I don’t live in a culture where having faith in Christ means we risk
our lives. On the contrary, we live in a culture that claims to be Christian, a
culture where those who do not claim to be Christians are more likely to be
ostracized and outlawed. So, what does it look like for us to “lay down our
lives for one another?” The answer is found again in the text before us, in verses 17 and 18: “How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees
a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love,
not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
Can we truly say we’re willing to lay
down our lives for each other if we’re not willing to give up what we have to
help each other? Can we truly say we love each other if we’re not willing to
give what we have away so another can have what they need? Can we really claim
to love each other while living lives that ignore the least of these in our
world? Can we truly say we’re willing to die for each other when we’re hardly
willing to live for each other? Can we really call ourselves Christians while
there are those all around us who need us, those who need the basic things we
take for granted, and we are more preoccupied with debating the finer points of
biblical interpretation and politics?
“How does God's love abide in
anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet
refuses help?” Those words ought to knock us out of our seats! Those
words ought to echo in our hearts and minds every time we say, “Well, they can
help themselves…it’s their fault they’re in the position they’re in…I got mine
and they can get their own…all they’ll do is use my help to buy drugs, not put
food on the table…” Can I tell you something? People are tired of hearing the
Church, Christians, say they love everybody while they shut the doors to keep
everybody out! The world has grown weary of hearing Christians preach the good
news of God’s love in Jesus, while they horde wealth and dole out dollars as if
everybody else has to earn the grace God has given us for free. People have
grown callous towards a Church that talks about love, sings about love, claims
to know about love, all the while treating them with judgment, contempt, and
just downright hatred. Is it any wonder they’re not coming? Is it any wonder so
many are walking away? How do we stop it? How do we reverse the tide and get
back to a day when the Church, when Christianity, was the “it” thing, when
everybody came to church and everybody seemed to be a Christian? To tell the
truth, I don’t think we can, and maybe we’re not supposed to.
What I do know is this: “Little
children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
If we’re going to talk about love, sing about love, if I’m going to stand up
here and preach about love, then we ought to—no, we are commanded by God
to—love! It’s about more than labels, more than having it all figured out, more
than looking the part and talking the talk. It’s about getting are hands dirty
with the work of love. It’s about laying down our lives for one another, about
laying down any sort of litmus tests we have to determine if someone is a “good
Christian.” It’s about realizing we’re all struggling; we’re all wrestling with
our faith and trying to understand more of who God in Christ is. It’s about
letting go of whatever excuses have kept us away from accepting the
responsibility we have for each other and realizing that we are indeed each
other’s keeper.
“And this is his
commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and
love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments
abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us,
by the Spirit that he has given us.” This is how we know. This is how we know who God is,
who we are, and who God is calling us to be. So let us believe in the Christ
who so loved us that he laid down his life. Let us obey his command to love
each other, and let us love each other in truth and action, refusing to ignore
our calling as children of God. Amen.
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