Let Us Be About It
Originally preached on April 28th at Gayton Road Christian Church. The lectionary text was significantly longer- a full fourteen verses (1 John 4:7–21)- which I shortened at a point that made sense so the sermon would be a reasonable length and a singular focus.
However, this sermon is also unusual for me for different reasons! Sometimes I do narrative, which is a different type of sermon, and sometimes I have the church recite the scripture, and sometimes- like this time- there’s enough questions that the church does some of the preaching themselves.
It’s also a text that hits a little closer to home for me, and which was a challenge to write and anxiety-inducing to preach, because what was coming out of my mouth was not the way I’ve always heard it.
But sometimes, the way we’ve always heard it means there’s space to grow.
1 John 4:16–21
4:16 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.
4:17 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.
4:18 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.
4:19 We love because he first loved us.
4:20 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.
4:21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be ever acceptable to God, Creator and Redeemer.
Our new testament reading this morning is… Rather long. The original lectionary text goes from verse 7 through 21, a whole 14 verses- so we’re getting fewer than that. There’s a lot in this passage, and trying to touch any of it with any amount of depth and also going through all 14 verses would leave us with a sermon a lot longer than y’all want to sit through and I want to preach.
So we start with verse 16, because it makes sense as a starting point, there’s a bit of a shift there. A few weeks ago when we celebrated easter, we declared that we had good news! That Christ was not there, that he was out in the world and alleluia, life had won over death.
In my denomination and yours too, we say what we believe during the service. We recite the Lord’s prayer, we say a creed together, we sing hymns about our faith and life together. We say a thing that declares what we believe, and then we go out to try to do it for real.
First John is kind of a love letter. He spends a lot of time talking about what love is and how the people are to express it toward others in the community, toward others in the world, and toward God. That starts, for John, with recognizing the love God has for humanity.
Soooooo. What do we do with that? How do we know God loves humanity? This is an actual open question and while I will do the Dora the Explorer thing and answer it myself if y’all stare at me long enough, if you have an answer you want to toss up, please do so as you feel led.
[the church called out several responses, including nature and bible stories and divine intervention]
There’s Scripture, “for god so loved the world…” “Love others as you yourself have been loved, this is the first and greatest commandment…” “My yoke is easy and my burden is light…”
There’s creation itself- that points not just to God’s love for humanity, but God’s love for all of the earth. The Shenandoah mountains speak about God. The irises and the daisies and all the blooming flowers witness to God. The sun and moon remind us that there is time to do and time to rest and both are needed and both are good and both are of God.
Then that’s where Scripture and creation collide- And God created… And it was good. The good creation, including humanity, are a testament to the love of God.
Those are, perhaps, also how we know that not only does God love humanity, but God is love. And if God is love and we abide in God and God abides in us, what are we to be about?
What do we believe about ourselves and others that is not perfectly loving and not of God? What have we learned that we could unlearn; what have we believed that love has not? About ourselves? About our communities? About the people at the edges of our communities looking in?
And if we think about it, if all love is in God and from God, perhaps we can learn to see the face of God more clearly in anyone who loves. Perhaps we see the face of God when the love is not what we expect it to look like, but is love nonetheless.
Love nonetheless will be perfected in how we love each other. Love nonetheless will be perfected in how we speak to and about those around us, how we speak to and about ourselves.
Do you remember what unconditional love, the love of God, is said to be like? Patient and kind, humble and truthful, gentle and compassionate and understanding. Both word and action, declared with confidence and put into practice. There’s a two for one there, and a pop quiz, which letter did that come from?
[1st Corinthians 13]
We are to live as Christ lived. To love as Christ loved.
In trusting in that action, that belief, that call to walk where Christ went- even the places that are a bit more unsavory or more difficult or the places we are called to go are the depths of our own hearts and souls to do the difficult work of healing from all that is not love- there we may be bold, knowing that God goes with us.
In this letter, John imagines that everyone- even Christians- will have to give an account of their lives to God. Whether they lived in kindness and compassion and gentleness and truth. The measure of a life is then whether we have taken the love of God, the love we have been shown from God and others, and turned then to those in our community and those the world leaves unloved with that same compassion and kindness that has been shown to us. We don’t have to boast about why we’re about the work of loving- we just have to do it.
There’s fear that he talks about putting aside here, and it’s a specific kind of fear. The fear of judgment, the fear of violence or punishment that comes from doing wrong, or from interacting with those who are not acting in love.
The fear that is cast out is the fear of condemnation if we don’t get the loving perfect all the time. We may still be afraid at times. Of the world, of violence or meanness that is not of God, of the unknown and the uncertain and the unloving. It is not then that our faith is imperfect, or not strong enough.
Hear loud and clear- fear is not an indictment of faith. In faith, we can still be afraid- and we may turn from the fear to the love of our communities, our families, our friends, and our God.
The love that casts out fear is found in each other, and in every turning toward that love, we find ourselves a step closer to the perfection in love the author of this letter speaks about. There is no fear of judgment- we have, after all, our whole lives to love our way into it.
Deep breath. Shake off that whole thing about not being good enough for God or for anybody else. Shake off the false responsibility of figuring out how to love ourselves and each other and everybody else without a path to follow. Shake off doing it alone and perfectly right now.
That’s the next verse, those seven words: “We love because he first loved us.” We learn love in relationship. Theoretically it’s possible to accept the love of God without ever spreading it around to other people, but at that point it gets a little weird and self-serving and probably isn’t love anymore.
We love because we have been loved first. We learn to love in relationship, first from our families of origin, whatever they may look like, and then from others along the way, and at some point in our lives we learn to see all the ways that God’s love exists in our lives, and we learn how to best love those we care about. Love is responsive, not static. It changes as we do; it changes based on how we need to be loved at any given time.
Our last two verses are John driving home that point.
If we know what love is, we have to love others. If we say we know what love is, but we don’t love the people in front of us, who we can reach out and touch and see and respond to most immediately, how will we ever love a God we cannot see except in the faces of our community?
Or beyond our community. I would challenge us to the reading of that part, of the definition of brothers and sisters.
And I’ll do that with another question that yes, you can answer if you want or your can stare till I do the Dora thing. Who are Christ’s brothers and sister? Who does Jesus hang out with?
[the church offered up several responses, including tax collectors, women, the poor, the sick, fishermen, and others]
Literally everybody. From religious people to sex workers to someone who would later betray him to those whose love was clouded by fear to strangers to murderers to family to the sick to the untouchable to the people who were explicitly not welcome in society.
And I won’t tell you to go ingratiate yourself into communities that aren’t your own. A lot of times if we don’t listen carefully to what people need, that ends up being more obnoxious than helpful.
But I will challenge us to think about how we think about the people we don’t spend as much time around. How we talk about our political enemies, or people from other parts of the world that seem strange and fearsome, or people whose lives and beliefs and actions we don’t understand.
We love, because we have been loved. We love, because we experience the love of God. We love, because we support each other in community. We love, because once we know what love is, we can only respond by loving more.
We love, not because we have no fear, but because as we learn how to live and love through our fear, we live just a little closer to the kind of love Jesus came to teach us.
We love, and we do not just declare it. Let us speak of love and dream of love, and then let us be about it.
