Remembering the Past...
        Planning the Future

    Park Christian Church
                                                                    (Disciples of Christ)

May 10, 2009

Scripture:         1 John 4:7-21

Sermon:           “In Visible Love”

            I want to continue this week with the first letter of John.  Last Sunday we studied the third chapter, verses 16 through 24.  And what I wanted to draw from that was something about how love is a tangible thing.  God’s love for us is a tangible thing.  Most concretely it is expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  So, it is more than a feeling or an emotion, love.  God’s love is action.  It is creation.  It is forgiveness.

            So, we who say that we believe in this Jesus of Nazareth, we who say that we follow him, our love, too, is not simply a feeling or an emotion.  Our love has sounds.  Our love can be seen.  There are aromas to love.  And you can touch what love has done.

            There are the sounds of hammers in the hands of folks lending a hand to build houses, for instance.  I like the sound of chalk scraping against a blackboard.  The love of a teacher for her students.  The smells of food cooking in the kitchen—meals for folks who cannot provide for themselves.  Love is tangible for us if it is real.  And that all has to do with the cross because it is there that God’s love is tangible.

            But, in a sense we are going to back up a bit this morning.  God’s tangible love for us is a pattern for our lives.  Love has real results, I suppose you could say.  But, a true spirituality of love begins when we make a claim about this as the very nature of God.  For if you believe that God has so loved the world, your faith and your following of Jesus in turn becomes so loving the world.

            Turn with me again to 1 John.  This week we will read from chapter 4, verses 7 through 21.  That is on page 327 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.  Notice here the mingling of the positive and negative as we read and hear.  God is love on the one hand.  The beautiful and gracious.  Perfect love casts out fear.  Things of that nature.  And then, too, are the strong words condemning folks who do not possess love for others.  If you don’t love, you don’t know God.  If you claim to love God without loving others, you are a liar.  Tough words.

            Let us hear the word of God…

            Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  God’s love was revealed among us in this way:  God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

            By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.  God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.  So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

            God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.  Love has been perfected among us in this:  that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  We love because he first love us.  Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have from him is this:  those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

            A few months after September 11, 2001, I was listened to NPR in the morning.  And there was a great little interview with comedian Chris Rock.  He was talking about the art and practice of comedy and how to find humor in almost any of life’s circumstances.  The interviewer tried to put him on the spot.  She said, “surely there are some things that are just too painful in life to be funny.  Is there anything that is off-limits for a comedian?  For example, the terrible tragedies of September 11.”

            Chris Rock paused for a moment, considering his words carefully.  He said, “You know these guys that got in those planes and flew them into those buildings believed that they were somehow helping God accomplish something.  You know that, right?  They believed they were helping God.

            “Now, if you think that God needs your help, you don’t know God.  That’s just crazy.”

            That is a little bit along the lines of what 1 John says here:  Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars.  They don’t know God.

            There is something about this life of faith that cannot be separated from loving as God loves.  And that’s a pretty tall order, to be quite honest.

            I was with a co-worker one time and she’d really been betrayed by another man we worked with.  In his own quest for a promotion and a raise in pay, he sort of sold her out to the manager by going through this long laundry list of grievances he had with her.  She hadn’t done this correctly.  She hadn’t done that on time.  She was at lunch longer than she was supposed to be.  That kind of stuff.  And word got back to her about all of this and she was livid.

            She said to me, “It’s a good thing God loves him.  I sure can’t find it in me right now.”

            Loving like God loves is tricky business.  Forgiveness.  Grace.  You know.  It’s comforting to know sometimes that God’s got a lot more of it than we do.  Feels like we’re off the hook at times.

            But, if we really considered the sort of love and grace we’re talking about here with God, I wonder how that would affect us all the time.  You have been forgiven.  You have been given grace.  You are loved by God.  No small words.

            I knew a man at another church who was just as reliable as you can get.  Whenever the doors were opened he was there.  And he was involved in everything.  It worried me, actually.  Sometimes folks get burned out on church when they get so involved.  But, he was this living example of faith as far as anyone could tell.  He had to be, right?  Why else would you do everything that needed to be done when nobody else would or could do it?  Taking out the trash.  Making the coffee.  Singing in the choir.  Teaching Sunday School.  All of it.  All the time.

            When the time came one year to nominate deacons and elders in the church, his name was at the top of the list.  The obvious choice.  He was already an elder to us, just didn’t have a title.  A spiritual leader in word and deed.  So, he was nominated.

            The man showed up in my office the very next day after getting called to serve.  He came in, shut the door, and sat down opposite me.  He said, “Preacher, I can’t be an elder of the church.  These folks have got the wrong man for the job.”

            Now, I did my best to reassure him of the honor and love that the congregation was showing him and praised him for his dedication and hard work.  But, he stunned me with his response.  He said, “Me and God haven’t yet come to terms with all that I’ve done.  You have no idea who you’re talking to.”

            Over the next half hour or so he described to me in detail a terrible story from his service in the Vietnam War.  The things he did and the things he allowed to happen were the sort of stuff I’ve read about from the Holocaust.  And he concluded by saying, “So, you see, I’m not the man of faith you think I am.  I can do and do and do all I can around here, but I don’t know if it’s ever going to be enough to get God to forgive me for what I’ve done.  I’m no elder.  No sir.”

            What he was trying to do was somehow get God’s attention, win God’s love and forgiveness.  You ever get caught up in that?  You make sure you get to church on some Sunday, maybe put a little extra in the collection, show up and do some work that needs to be done in order that God might think you’re better than you were a few days ago?  You ever get like that?  No way God’s in the mood for grace and forgiveness with you?  Not after what you’ve been up to?

            I guess we’ve learned that way of seeing God through life because that’s generally how we think things work with each other.

            I had a roommate in seminary, George.  Had this long, flowing hair on top of his lanky, athletic body.  Some folks said he looked like paintings of Jesus.  In fact, my home church recruited George to ride a donkey down the street for a Palm Sunday parade.  Not my niece, though.  She didn’t think he looked like Jesus.  She was about three years old at the time and she thought that he looked like the Disney movie character Mulan.  She called him George with the Mulan hair.

            Well, George had it pretty bad for a classmate.  He was forever hanging out wherever she was.  He even dropped a couple of classes one semester, classes he needed to graduate I might add, in order to sign up for two other classes that this woman was taking—just to get the chance to be with her.

            Now, one night he came home to our apartment, locked himself in the bathroom, and went at that long, long hair with a set of clippers like you’d shear a sheep.  Just shaved it all off.   And then he broke out a razor to shave his head completely.  It turns out that he came to believe that he might be more attractive with no hair at all than with very long hair, which was unusual.

            See what he was doing?  Trying to get her to have some affection for him.

            It’s the way we have learned to be.  Isn’t it?  So much so that we’ve come to understand that God must be operating that way, too.  We’ve got to get it all right, all together, all cleaned up in order for God to start paying us attention.

            I know some folks who can’t imagine being in a church service because they’re afraid the ceiling is going to collapse should they dare to darken the doors!  They think folks are going to start whispering, “Look what the cat just drug in here.”

            What 1 John proclaims in this passage is so utterly radical to our patterns of thinking and our ways of being that you can almost miss it.  We love because God loved us first.  God’s already made a claim on us.  God’s already said, “I love you.”  That’s what the cross says, you see.  John calls it an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  And that means, simply, God’s already said, “you’re forgiven.”

            Did you hear that?  You are forgiven.  It’s done.  You are forgiven.

            Yes, it really just might be true that God already loves you so very much that you cannot do anything to earn it.  It’s already there.

            It just doesn’t fit in with how we have learned to live.  I know.  But, if you can get your heart around that, and get your mind around that, you’d begin to see what the Christian life is truly all about.  It is about just receiving that love from God.  Just receiving it.  And being so overwhelmed by it, and overjoyed by it, that you’d live your entire life out of response to it.

            Now, consider the forgiveness that you’ve got.  Only you know what all of that might entail.  It’s between you and God.  But, consider it.  It is the result of an immense love that we’ll never quite understand or perfect ourselves.  But, if you can really grasp that it is true, and it is indeed true for you, how are you going to live in response?

            Love as God loves.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)