But for the Grace of God

1 John 4:7-12, 18-21

August 13, 2017 • Mount Pleasant UMC

To say it has been a difficult week in our country is an understatement. Threats from overseas, and late in the week, threats and home-grown terror and racism in Charlottesville, Virginia. To some extent, we’ve come to expect the posturing from North Korea, but when we’re honest, we have to admit we don’t understand a mindset that seems to want to create war, to attack others without provocation. They are “the other” to most if not all of us. And then we watch the white supremacy movement that took center stage at the end of the week, the hatred and violence that it bred, not just among those at the rally but also among those who were commenting on television news. Such events frighteningly remind us again of what happens when we label people, any people, as “the other.”

We live in a world today where “the other” is an increasingly large category. If “the other” is anyone not like you, then there are a whole lot of “others” who may look just like you and me but don’t believe or act or live anything like you. Last year’s presidential campaign, on both sides, did its best to play on the fear that comes from “the other,” and as a result we’ve found ourselves living in a world that is more divided than I think anyone alive today can remember, a division that came to the fore this past week. Sometimes that even shows up in neighborhood conversations. Maybe you know someone like this. Take a listen.

VIDEO SKIT: Neighboring 1

In the world we know, Republicans hate Democrats. Liberals hate Conservatives. One denomination hates another. One religion hates another. We have whole industries built on our fearing “the other.” And while politicians and CEOs use that fear to increase their standing in the polls or to increase the bottom line, when we gather here in worship, our goal is entirely different. We’re not here to take on the world’s viewpoints and attitudes. We’re here to learn to think like Christians so that we can act and live like the one who said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44-45; cf. Willimon, Fear of the Other, pgs. ix-x).

This morning, we’re starting a new, three-week series called, “Next Door,” during which we’re going to focus on the art of neighboring. By the end of this series, we will zoom in on the neighbors who actually live next to you, but today we’re going to start with a much larger definition of those who are “next door,” those who are neighbors, those whom we’re called to love even when it’s difficult. Today and next Sunday we’re going to remember that Jesus’ definition of a “neighbor” is much broader, much more expansive and inclusive than ours usually is. Jesus’ definition even includes “the others,” those we might fear, those we might consider to be “enemies.” To gain some perspective on what that might mean for our lives today, we turn to an ancient letter written by one of Jesus’ closest friends.

1 John is a short letter, written to believers in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), and it focuses on helping people get back on track with Jesus. It appears that there were those who had once been part of the Christian community but had rejected the faith at some point. John is hoping to help them see the core of the Christian faith (cf. Cultural Background Study Bible, iBooks edition, pg. 9519), and that is really what he’s getting at in the verses we read this morning. In these fifteen verses, 7-21, John uses the word “love” twenty-seven times (Wright, Early Christian Letters for Everyone, pg. 158), so you would be right to guess that what he really wants these believers to get is the idea of love. Love is at the heart of the Christian faith, but he also wants us to understand what kind of love he’s talking about. It’s not Hallmark-style love. It’s not mushy feelings. It’s not hearts and flowers. In John’s understanding, love is something that has a path—it has a place it comes from and a place it is going to. First of all, John says, “love comes from God” (4:7) because “God is love” (4:16). God is the very definition of what love is. The word John uses here—over and over again—is the word agape, which you might remember is a word that doesn’t have a direct correlation in English. It indicates self-sacrificial, no-strings-attached love. God is that kind of love. It’s not that we measure God against our idea of what love should be; our idea of love should be measured against who God is, for he alone is the standard of love. John puts it this way: “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (4:9). God himself came in Jesus, who willingly gave his life as a way to make us right with God. He, quite literally, loved us to death. His sacrifice on the cross is ultimately what love looks like. The path of love begins in this way: it comes from God through Jesus.

But the path of love is also going somewhere. We’re called to take the love God has poured out on us and use it to love others. In fact, John is pretty bold: he says loving other is not a option. If you claim to follow Jesus and worship God the Father, then loving others is your life. If you don’t love others, then you are a liar, John says, and you cannot claim to love God (cf. 4:20). John is so adamant about this because of the teaching he heard from Jesus many years before. There was a day when an “expert in the law” came to Jesus and asked which commandment, out of all 613 commands in the Jewish Law, was the most important. Can you imagine trying to choose the most important law out of all the legislation our country has on the books? Yet that’s what this man was asking Jesus to do, and on a “higher” level. He doesn’t know it, but he’s asking the Son of God to choose which law is his favorite. And yet, Jesus didn’t seem to hesitate when he said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:34-39). These two commandments are not really separate, especially as John understands it. We most demonstrate our love for God by loving those around us, and we can’t truly love others if we don’t love God. It’s two sides of the same coin, the love coin, the agape coin. Love comes from God, and love goes to others.

We should be known as people who have been loved by God and therefore love others. But let’s be honest: sometimes Christians act in ways that maybe aren’t all that loving. I had a whole different story to tell here, but then on Friday I came across this photo which a friend of mine had retweeted. My friend retweeted it as an example of why Christians get such a bad rap. You probably can’t read what is written on it, but the receipt is from a $60 meal at a Buffalo Wild Wings, and instead of leaving a tip, the customer wrote this: “Can’t tip someone who doesn’t love Jesus! Bad tatoo.” (Apparently it’s okay to buy food from a person and a company that doesn’t profess a love for Jesus, but not to tip. And they spelled tattoo wrong.) Whoever they are, they had completely judged this person based on a tattoo and nothing else. It’s because of stuff like this that many wait staff hate to work Sundays after church, because Christians pull stuff like this. Is that the loving response? Is that the way Jesus would respond to this waiter? Why do we spend more energy preaching about what we’re against than the one we are for? Or why do we spend so much time speaking about how much we hate this or that rather than about how much we love those for whom Jesus died? When we’re focused on “the other” as an enemy, we’re neglecting the teaching of Jesus and the instruction of John. We cannot love God if we treat others this way; if we say we love God and hate our brothers or sisters, John says we are liars. The love we know comes from God and goes to all others in the world around us.

Let’s be clear, though: loving someone doesn’t mean we condone everything they do. It’s not a matter of “hate the sin, love the sinner;” that’s not in the Bible, by the way. It’s a matter of loving “the other” and letting God take care of the rest. God is the judge, not us. And the reason God is the judge is because, no matter what the sin or the brokenness of the other person, we have to realize we are just as vulnerable to that same sin, that same brokenness. And even if we might not have committed that particular sin, we have others that cause us to stumble. This calls for humility, for as the old saying goes, “There but for the grace of God go I.” We are all just as likely to be “the other,” to struggle with brokenness and sin as the next person.

So we receive love from God so that we can give it to those around us, and especially to “the other.” That’s the “path of love.” But in the middle of the path is a little word John uses to describe our “normal” way of life. It’s in verse 16: “Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” “Live” isn’t quite a strong enough translation of the word John uses here; older translations often used the word “abide,” a word we won’t tend to use much anymore. But the word John uses has the meaning of “dwell, stay, continue, settle.” It’s is what we do in our homes: we dwell there, it’s where we settle, it’s the place where we are most ourselves, most comfortable. Two years ago, when we were preparing to come to Terre Haute, we bought a house here just south of town, and at the time we looked at it and signed all the paperwork, it was someone else’s home. During the two months between the purchase of the house and our moving here, there were only a few times someone actually stayed there, and even when our stuff arrived, it was still just a house we owned. I can’t tell you the moment, but I know I’ve experienced it every place we’ve lived—it’s that moment when the house you own or the one you are renting (or the one that’s been provided to you as a parsonage) becomes more than just a place to put your stuff. It becomes home. It’s the place where you are most comfortable, where you stay, where you dwell. You “abide” there. You live there. That’s the desire God has for us: that being in his love and giving out his love becomes more than just “something I do because I’m a Christian.” Having that attitude is sort of like owning a home but choosing to live in a tent in the yard. John says our calling is to live, “dwell” or “abide” in love so much that loving the other is where we’re most comfortable—it’s our second (or first) nature.

There’s a Biblical word that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, preached quite a lot about to describe such a state. The word is “sanctification,” and Wesley talked about it in terms of “entire sanctification” or “Christian perfection.” Wesley believed it was possible and knew people who had testified to the experience of being filled so with God’s love that they had a singleness of intention. They were solely focused on loving “the other” with the love of Christ. “Love God and love neighbor” becomes the “controlling desire” of such a person’s life. When we describe it as “Christian perfection,” however, we’re not talking about “perfect” in terms of performance. This is not about doing every little thing without any error, or without any temptation to sin. It’s about our hearts being set on loving others the way Jesus loves them; it’s about dwelling so deeply in the love of God that we cannot imagine responding to anyone in any other way. I have known a few, a very few, people who seem to have dwelt so long in the middle of God’s grace that they have become what Wesley envisioned as sanctified, but they would also be the first ones to turn the attention away from themselves and toward Jesus. This is what it means to live in God and have God live in us. It’s what makes our faith more than just another “good cause” in the world. It’s a call to transformation that starts here and lasts through eternity (Harper, The Way to Heaven, pgs. 81-91).

And that’s why John can make this strong statement: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love” (4:18). There was a time in my life when, I now realize, I was more of a servant of God than a child of God. Jesus uses that language to differentiate between what we might call a “fear relationship” and a “love relationship” (cf. John 15:15). There was a long period of time when I was genuinely afraid that I might do this or that to displease God and that he might turn his back on me. I was living what I talked about a few weeks ago, a performance-based religion, and that almost always results in fear, even terror. I am not the only one to experience that. Most famously, perhaps, was Martin Luther, whose work resulted in the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago this year. Early in his life, Luther lived in dire fear of God and struggled with the need to confess completely everything he had ever done wrong. On at least one occasion, he confessed for six hours straight. He was tormented by fears and doubts; he described it this way: “I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!” Fear, John says, has to do with punishment. When Luther discovered and embraced the grace of God, it completely changed his life, as it did mine as well. There’s not an exact moment I remember, but over time God made his grace real to me, reminding me that he loves me just because I am. I did not need to fear, for God is a “good, good Father.”

There have also been times in my life when I’ve had a fear of “the other.” When I had a chance to work on the west side of Chicago, in a very different culture from what I had grown up in, I faced that fear most strongly. Even going to grocery store in that neighborhood for our group was stressful. We did have an occasion where one person tried to distract us while someone else tried to steal our already-paid-for groceries, but that was not the norm. Yet the fear persisted, especially when our director said our afternoons would be spent one week out in the community inviting people to come to the day camp we were running. We were to go door to door in an unfamiliar neighborhood, but God was at work even then. One single mom said she would love for her kids to come to the day camp, but she had to be at work early and they had no way to get there. For a reason I don’t quite understand, I volunteered to come pick the kids up every morning. God used that experience to help me learn to love the people who lived in the neighborhood, to begin to see people as he sees them. In these and other similar situations, God continues to work on my heart and make me less fearful, for perfect love casts out fear. And that perfect love comes from God, becomes the place where we live, and is what we are called to give to each and every person who crosses our path.

In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to focus on specific ways we can love our neighbors, but first we’ve got to get straight what John says here. Our heart needs to be right before we attempt to put love into action. Our worldview needs to center on Jesus to be able to adequately respond to the violence and hatred in our world. So listen again to John’s words: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (4:10). If we’re going to take John’s word to the church seriously, we should be always growing in our love for God and love for each other. But, ultimately, John says we can only love like this as we gaze at the cross, as we understand and accept what Jesus did for us there. And so we come this morning to the table of communion, this practice we do every month here to remind us of Jesus’ sacrifice, his great love for us seen on the cross. The night before he went to the cross, Jesus gathered his closest friends and used ordinary elements—things they found on the table near them every day—and he transformed their meaning. Bread. Wine. Body. Blood. A reminder, every time we see these things, of God’s great love for us and of our call to love even “the other.” As we come to the table this morning, I invite you—I dare you—to ask God to deepen your love for him and for others. God loves “the other” just like he loves you, and he calls us to do the same. Let’s prepare our heart as we come to the table this morning.