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David Orendorff    I John 1:1-2:2    April 19, 2009

I’ve chosen to spend the next six weeks on the First Letter of John because it is the lectionary text and because I believe it has something necessary and profound to teach us about being Bear Creek UMC. I invite you to do your own study of this short letter from now until Pentecost. Study it in your small group or join with Robert’s class for a more in-depth look at this marvelous letter.

The three letters were written sometime around the end of the first or the beginning of the second century. If they are not by the same author as the Gospel of John and the Revelation of John (as tradition says), they are certainly from the same community, for the metaphor’s, construction and concerns are very similar. In this first letter John’s primary concern is to clarify the proclamation of Jesus regarding a life of faith lived in community.

When John finishes his introduction in the first four verses, he immediately talks about sin. No one likes sin. But evidently, the congregations to which he is writing have a problem with sin. Sin is a problem for every person and every congregation. However, there are some folks in John’s congregations who claim “they have no sin.” John calls this self-deception, walking in the dark, and a lie.

When I think of sin I think of K. Morgan Edwards. K. Morgan at retirement was the Professor of Preaching at the Claremont School of Theology, one of our 13 United Methodist Seminaries. I got to know K Morgan because he was teaching a preaching workshop in the Yellowstone Conference, and my Staff/Parish Relations Committee gently and firmly suggested that I should go and they would pay my way.

I learned much from K. Morgan, and you should rejoice. One of his wisest teachings was that sermons should be 10% about sin and 90% about grace. He said this was true because once folks are reminded of their failures in life, they would punish themselves. And once they began self punishment it was necessary to remind them again and again of God’s forgiving grace. I will keep this wisdom in mind, and I hope you will, also.

What does John mean by sin? He means what we usually mean, breaking the commandments-the law-of God. But what is the law of God? In the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament, the commandments of God are summarized in the Ten Commandments. The list is varied at different places in the Bible, but the usual list goes:

1. You shall not worship any other god but YHWH.

2. You shall not make a graven image.

3. You shall not take the name of YHWH in vain.

4. You shall not break the Sabbath.

5. You shall not dishonor your parents.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not commit perjury.

10. You shall not covet.

When my grandfather was a pastor in the early 1900’s, the Methodist list had expanded to include things like don’t dance, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t play cards, and don’t go to movies, to name but a few.

But what John knows and what we know is that these various behaviors are merely symptoms of sin; in themselves they are not sin. The word sin really means “failure.” Within each of these “don’ts” is a failure-a failure to love God, neighbor or self. For John, the failure that is sin is the failure to love.

By love John doesn’t mean romantic, warm, cuddly feelings. though these may be a part of love. John is talking about a caring and compassionate nature directed toward God, toward our neighbors and even toward ourselves. The fundamental “don’t” for this kind of commandment is “You shall do no harm.” The fundamental “do” is “You shall do all the good you can.”

John says that when we keep the commandment of God to love, then we have fellowship with one another. The word translated here is koinwnia and can also be community. Where there is loving community, fellowship thrives. Where there is no or limited servant love in a community, fellowship rots. Those who say, “I have no sin” are not telling the truth and harm the koinwnia because they are either blind or willfully ignorant of their failures to love. Without honest self knowledge there can be no truth, and without truth about our failures to love, there is no community, no fellowship, no Bear Creek, no church of any kind.

Because I have mentioned that we fail to love, I know that you have already started remembering your failures. I don’t need to make a list for you; you’ve already made the list and felt its pain. This is the true meaning of confession. Confession is an honest reflection upon our failures. Confession can either be between ourselves and God, between ourselves and another person we might have harmed, or both. And confession is what John calls for if we are to be as healthy a community as possible.

What I know is that without honest confession we cannot be healed by God because we don’t know or won’t admit that we are sick and need healing. We walk in the dark and our disease infects our fellowship, our community. But when by grace we see clearly where we have failed to love and we confess our failure, then we walk in the light and our fellowship grows both deeper and broader.

John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God forgives us. There is no greater sign of God’s forgiveness than Jesus letting himself be crucified so that we might know to what lengths God’s love will go for the sake of our lives.

If we are to be as strong a fellowship as God sees us to be, then not only must we confess our failures to love, we must also be ready to both give and receive forgiveness. A Christian koinonia is a fellowship in which the forgiveness Jesus offers from the cross is practiced.

Let me be clear: forgiveness does not mean forgetting. It means not holding someone’s failure against them and not having ours held against us. I think a simple example is with friends. From time to time even our best friends fail us. When we forgive them we don’t forget the failure; we forgive it and move on. And when we fail our friends, as we sometimes do, then we need their forgiveness and their willingness to move on with the relationship. When asked by his disciples how many times they are to forgive, Jesus says 70 times 7, which is to say every time forgiveness is needed.[1]

There is another level of forgiveness with which many of us struggle. We can accept God’s forgiveness and our neighbor’s forgiveness, but we get stalled at forgiving ourselves. Every time we remember a failure we hold it against ourselves. Though the Lord of the universe and the one we wounded long ago ceased to damn us, we continue to damn ourselves.

To not forgive ourselves will break relationships as surely as not forgiving each other. To fail to forgive ourselves is a failure to love ourselves; it is a sin. To believe that we are unrighteous is to believe that at our core we are bad people. It makes God, who sees and calls us as good, a liar. And if we believe we are bad people, then we will act like bad people. If we believe that we will fail in love, then we will fail in love. If we believe we are a horrible person, we will behave horribly. I have seen people destroy themselves, fulfilling their self understanding of being a bad person. Self disgust is the primary disease of the addict.

One of the great healing powers of our faith is to see ourselves as God sees us. God sees us as beautiful and loving children. God sees us as always worthy of His love. God sees us as good and capable of being even better. To accept God’s loving forgiveness is to open ourselves to the healing power of the Holy Spirit so that we come to see ourselves clearly as good people who sometimes fail-to see ourselves with loving forgiveness. God does not hold our failures against us and neither should we!

This is what John wants us to know: that God’s love forgives us and heals us and that, by this forgiveness and healing shared in community, we become a fellowship of the living body of Christ for each other and the world.

I am a good person who sometimes fails to love, who sins. And what I say of myself I say of Bear Creek. There is sin in Bear Creek but Bear Creek is not sin. Our failings are not who we are. Our failures are the exception, an aberration of the loving people God has made us to be and who most often we are. When there are differences, we almost always discuss our differences with grace. And when we fail in grace, we seek each other’s forgiveness. The vast majority of the time I see us trying to be fair in our inevitable conflicts and in treating each with respect. I have witnessed how we live the hospitality of love as we make it nearly impossible for guests to escape without being warmly greeted and engaged. And our hospitality is expanding beyond Sunday morning fellowship. Several of the small groups have become adept at inviting new folks to join them. Our true nature, our great desire, is to be followers of Jesus and a Christ centered koinwnia.

Do we sin? Yes, we do. Are we sin? No, we are not. Though we may fail, we are not failures. Made in the image of God, we are love. When we fail, we know it and we confess it. And for our truth the Holy Spirit dwells in us, forgives us, and teaches us to forgive each other, even to forgive ourselves.

No one likes sin and this is a good thing, for it means that Christ is in us, leading us to the love of God. In this way Christ lives among and in us. As by grace we grow more like Jesus and we better know the joy of Christian koinwnia, fellowship and community. By the power of the Holy Spirit Bear Creek is love and getting better all the time. Thanks be to God.

Shalom and amen.