Month: September 2024

Gentle Reader,

Every story has a main character. It’s important that we understand who the main character is. For those who know God, it is God. Sometimes it’s hard to focus on that. May the offering below, originally preached on August 1, 2024, aid us in remembering.

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We’ve reached that point in camp week when there’s not enough coffee for the adults and nobody has had enough rest. We’re all a little frazzled. And that’s okay. It’s just gonna take a little more effort, a little more intentionality, for us to really tune in tonight. But let’s make that effort. God is here right now. God has things to teach us. Things God wants us to know. So – let’s all take a silent, deep breath, the deepest one we’ve taken all week. Let it out slowly. Whatever happened earlier today, let it go. Whatever is coming next, don’t worry about it. Just focus in on the here and now.

Lord, we are here, and we want to hear you.

As usual, we have to build a bridge from where we’ve been in order to understand where we’re going. So, let’s take a brief look at 1 John 4:1-6.

• Salty John pops up again
  • There are some who are claiming to be prophets or teachers of God but they’re actually teaching lies
    • John doesn’t hate these people, but he does hate their lies because the lies lead them and others away from the truth
    • If you care about someone as John cares about his readers, you’re going to tell them the truth
      • The walking dead and the truly alive have nothing in common
      • You can’t have good and evil mixed together
      • These lying people need to stop their lies
      • Those who know the truth need to stop listening to lies
• A call to discernment
  • Don’t just assume that everything you hear from everyone is true
  • Ask God to give you wisdom
    • James 1:5
      • When you ask, God gives it
    • What doesn’t line up with what you know to be true based on what you read in Scripture, both in your personal reading time and when you’re with other believers like this – if it doesn’t like up with that, it isn’t true
    • Not everything that has “Christian” stamped on it really is Christian
    • All religions are not equal
      • All roads don’t lead to God
• Anyone who says that Jesus is not fully God and fully human gets it wrong
  • Jesus has always existed and will always exist
  • Jesus is uncreated
  • Jesus is God incarnate (God with flesh)
  • Jesus still has a body
• Essential bond between theology and ethics
  • What you believe impacts/informs how you live
• Be aware of who you’re spending time with
  • Doesn’t mean you can’t have non-Christian friends
  • Who you spend time with, who you listen to, they will shape who you are
  • Be anchored in Scripture and rooted in Christian community

We dive back into the letter starting in verse 7. I invite you to stand as we honor the reading of Scripture. Hear the word of the Lord.

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 abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.

– 1 John 4:7-12 (NRSV)

This is the word of God for the people of God. And we say together: thanks be to God. 

We have before us a small chunk of John’s letter, but it packs a huge punch. Last night we discussed the story that God is writing. The story of redemption, restoration, healing, freedom. Tonight we focus on the main character of that story. If you remember back to our first night together (I know, it might be difficult because you’re sweaty and tired and probably on some kind of sugar high) I told you that in this story, we’re not the main character. We’re also not the author. Our meaning, our identity, our point is not derived from being on center stage. Instead, we are free to be a cast of colorful characters who delight in constantly pointing to the one who is both the Author and the Star: the God of Stories.

But what is God like?

We started answering that question last night when we looked at the story. We have a problem. A problem called sin. This problem is both personal – the selfish things that you and I individually choose to do – and it is systemic – every atom and all the bits inside the atoms just a little bit cracked. The whole of creation is dysfunctional, and we can’t make it functional. God could have left us alone in that mess. But God didn’t. Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human, lived the kind of life we could never live, died a death he didn’t deserve but that he chose to undergo, and then he rose again three days later and just stomped that serpent’s face into the ground.

So we know something of God. But there’s more to know. At the same time, we can’t know everything, because God is God and we are not. If we could know everything, then God would be on our level. But God is beyond us. So we have to decide to be okay with living in this tension. God wants us to know God, and makes sure that we are able to know God, but we are never going to be able to get a full handle on God. We’ll always have some questions. That’s okay. That’s part of admitting that you’re a limited, flawed human and you need an unlimited, perfect Savior.

Okay, so, we already know some things about God. What more can we know, based on these few sentences?

John is back to using that familial or friendship kind of language. That “dear friends” or “beloved” that you see there on the page. It’s gentle, and kind, and makes you feel welcome. And it’s very much a deliberate choice on John’s part. Remember what we know about John. We know that he had a bad temper. We know he had prejudices. We know that he’s the last of the apostles. What I haven’t told you is that John’s older brother, James, was one of the first of the friends of Jesus to be murdered. We see that in Acts 12:2 – the king has James killed with the sword. Church tradition tells us that he was beheaded.

Imagine how John felt. He and James had done this whole Jesus thing together. And now he’s left to do it alone. Not alone in the sense that everyone was gone, but alone in the sense that the relationship you have with your siblings is unique (even if they drive you crazy sometimes). John had two roads before him as he mourned his brother. He could have gone down the road of hate and despair. Could have done violence with his words or his deeds. This man is human, like you and me, and it’s not a stretch for us to say that he was tempted to do that. But that’s not the choice he makes. He stays on the Jesus road. He decides that continuing to give his life to God, and to invite others to give their lives to God, is worth it, no matter the personal costs, which grew higher with every passing year. I don’t think that was an easy choice. But John knew it was the right choice.

He knew that because he knew that love must be the defining aspect of our relationships. He calls his readers “dear friends” and “beloved” because they are. This formerly bad-tempered man who has experienced great loss has learned to see others with and through the eyes of God. That’s why I went out of my way to tell you that the salty language here about those false teachers doesn’t mean that John hated them. No, John wanted better for them. He wanted them to know the truth. He wanted those whom they were influencing in a wrong direction to be protected, to stay within the truth. He is fierce because he is loving.

The kind of love that John keeps talking about finds its source and sustaining in God. It originates in God. John even goes so far as to say that God is love. 

A lot of people really like that. They really like that God is love. We should like that! It’s great! But it’s not what we often think it is. Love is not sitting back and saying, “you do you.” Love is not thinking, “well, that’s their truth.” Love is not believing that all religions are equal and all roads lead to God because God loves everyone. God does love everyone. And God makes the rules.

So it is very important that we understand what this love really is.

That other guy named Paul in his letter that we call Colossians, because it was addressed to people living in and around a town called Colossae – again, creative – he says that in Jesus “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (2:9). That means if we want to know who God is, what God is like, what it means for God to be love, then we look at Jesus. And we look at Jesus by reading the Gospels. We know that John wrote one of those, so let’s take a look at some of what John says about Jesus:

• Chapter 2: He attends a wedding and turns water into wine. This means that Jesus is fun. People like being around him. 
• Also Chapter 2: He makes a whip and drives a bunch of small business owners out of the Temple in Jerusalem. He doesn’t hurt them. He doesn’t hate them. But he does see that they are barriers against people coming to worship God. This action means that God wants nothing to get in the way.
• Chapter 3: He has a midnight conversation with a man named Nicodemus, who may have been too afraid to speak with Jesus during the daylight hours when they could be observed. This means that God is always available.
• Chapter 4: He talks with a woman beside a well, a woman who is an outcast in her town. She is the first person to whom Jesus clearly reveals that he is the Messiah. This means that God is for everyone.
• Throughout the Gospel of John: Jesus heals a bunch of people. He feeds a bunch more people. This means that God cares about every need we have.
• Chapter 8: Jesus kneels down in the dirt and doodles while a bunch of guys hope that he’ll allow them to kill a woman caught having sex with someone she wasn’t married to. He says, “Let anyone among you is without sin by the first to throw a stone at her.” This means God knows all of us inside and out. He then says to the woman, “Go and sin no more.” This means that there is such a thing as sin and that God doesn’t want us to be a character inside that dark story.
• Chapter 10: Jesus tells a story about sheep and shepherds. This lets us know that God is our guide and protector.
• Chapter 11: Jesus weeps when his friend Lazarus dies. He knows that he is going to bring Lazarus back to life. But he is empathetic. He feels the grief of those around him. God understands what we feel.
• John 14: Jesus plainly says that the only road that leads to God is the one paved with the life, work, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
• John 17: He prays for his friends, then and now. This means that God cares and God wants us to do well.
• John 19: Jesus goes to the cross. He gives up his life for us. 
• John 20: Jesus walks out of the tomb. God has done everything necessary for us to know and be in relationship with God.

God is fun, compassionate, available, creative, gracious, merciful, kind. God is holy, honest, protective, just, majestic, sovereign. All of these characteristics are true of God all at once. So love, the kind of love that flows outward from God toward us and then through us, is not wishy-washy, unboundaried, doormat love. It’s fierce love, like the kind John displays in his writing. It’s sacrificial love. It’s love that insists that there is a better way, and that that way is defined and expressed by Jesus Christ.

Make no mistake: Christianity is exclusive. God will not share you with another god. You can’t be a Christian and… There is One True God, and one way to God. That’s it. 

Christianity is also the most inclusive religion ever, because anyone, no matter who they are or what they’ve done, can choose to receive, to be changed by the love of God and the God who is love. By the grace of God, anyone, any time, can cry out to Jesus for forgiveness. He is the Savior. He is your Best Friend. He is also your Master. We can’t get that twisted. God makes the rules. God writes the story.

John says that if we get this, then we must love others in the way that God loves us.

Right relationship vertically – between you and God – will manifest itself in right relationship horizontally – between you and others. Again, this isn’t wishy-washy whateverness. This is not me going back on telling you that God does not require you to remain in abusive situations. What I am telling you is that the kind of love that God is, the kind of love that God calls us to live out of, is strong love. Strong enough to invite that outcast person to sit next to you at lunch. Strong enough to tell others the truth about God. Strong enough to remember that God is so, so patient with and kind toward you, and so you can be the same toward others. Strong enough to refuse to label anyone as less than, stupid, worthless, or an enemy. 

When we choose strong love, when we believe that God makes the rules and when God tells us to live this way it’s because God knows best, we start looking like Jesus. We start responding to things and to people in the way that Jesus would. And this is an ongoing, daily thing. The word John uses here for this kind of love is agapon, which indicates continuing action. You keep loving others in the way that God loves you. There is no end to it.

It’s not easy. I’m not gonna lie and say it is. You’ll be tempted to go down other roads, just like John was. You will see people who say that they are Christians but who act in ways that Jesus never acted. You’ll see people who don’t believe in God at all doing good things, which is a sign of God’s grace working to draw them into relationship with God, but can be unsettling. It’s a complicated world. But we’re not alone in this. Not only does the Spirit of the Living God live within each of us individually, but the Spirit is also here among us as a group. Every time you are with other believers, you are strengthened. This life of faith is personal, but it’s never solitary. We need each other. 

That’s how God designed it. You can’t see the Main Character, but you can see us. We demonstrate the reality of God’s presence every time we choose strong, fierce, holy love. We show the world that God is real and that God sets us free.

Tuesday night I had you write down the names of people or groups that you’ve hated, whether currently or in the past. I told you to leave those lists in your notebooks. Tonight, I want you to tear those pages out. I want everyone to lay down hate. To let it go. If you didn’t have anyone to write down, awesome. Help a friend let go. 

I want everyone here to come forward and lay your list down. Then, I want you to pick up one of these rocks as a representation of God’s love. Roll it around in your hand. Feel the weight of it. Reflect on what God’s love means to you, what God has done for you. Ask God to help you love others in the way that you have been loved.

GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,

MARIE

Image Courtesy of anotherxlife