Wed 27 May 2009
Every One Who Loves the Parent, Loves the Child
Posted by johnl under Sermons
David Orendorff I John 5:1-2, 11 May 24, 2009
This is the final sermon of the series on the Letter of First John. I had planned to do six sermons in the series but the Cantata was so good we chose instead to do it for one of the Sunday’s. That left me with five Sundays to deliver six sermons. So today, you are blessed. I am giving two sermons for the price of one. I will try to make them short.
We call the author John and he may indeed be the author, but he is not writing for himself, but on behalf of his congregation, probably in Ephesus. John writes to no specific congregation as do almost all the other letters in our New Testament, but to other congregations in general encouraging them and us to seek to be a fellowship of love.
Behind the writing is this congregation’s experience of members or former members who did not love each other. And evidently some of the congregation actually hated others within their own congregation.
John’s call to love is based on his faith that God is love. We know this because the Spirit of love dwells within us and all creation. We know this because in our baptism we experience the God’s love in unconditional forgiveness and a strengthened power to love each other. And we know this because Jesus Christ as God with us loved us, even dying for us in love. In shorthand John says we know God is love because of the Spirit, the water and the blood.
John is adamant and redundant in saying that those who love know God and abide in God and God in them. But those who do not love do not know God and do not abide in God. The fellowship of a Christian congregation lives or dies on this. To be faithful is to love and the congregation thrives. To sin is to fail in love and the congregations dies. Where the love of God is lived there is life. Where the love of God is denied there is death.
Sin, confession, repentance, and forgiveness are important to John’s understanding of how we return to abiding in God. But there is something even more important that I pray you have gleaned from the sermons on this letter. Before we sin, as we sin, and beyond our sin is John’s unalterable truth that we are first, foremost and always, like Jesus, children of God.
Too often we have been told that we are sinners first and children of God second. But for John, and for me, this is backwards. First we are children of God, first we love as God is love, and only on occasion do we fail to be who we really are. I know it is sometimes hard to believe this us ourselves, and I struggle with this as well as you do, but this is the fundamental shift in thinking, the repentance, that John again and again in this little letter, calls us to. We are told to quit thinking of ourselves as failures who occasional love well. We are told to have a new mind, a mind that believes we are love and only occasional fail.
In the Midweek Bible we talking about this and someone said, “What about the news. Isn’t it always bad?” Yes the news is bad and that is what makes it news. It is news when a mother does not love her child. Mother loves child is not news because most mothers most all of the time, love their children as best they know how. And really good mothers love their children better than they were loved.
Robbery is news. Honesty is not news because most of almost all the time are honest. Acts of kindness almost never make the news but acts of hate and war fill the news. Kindness is not news. It surrounds us with a constant grace. We are God made flesh. We are love.
Yes we need confession and we need repentance but not because we are wormwood and rot, but because we need to return to being love. We need to remember who we really are and whose we really are.
We feel badly when we fail to love because we are love. We weep for our betrayals because we are made faithful. We grieve when we grieve others because we are joy. We are peace, patience and understanding. All that is good and all that is God is who we are.
Over my few years here we have used a variety of measurements to understand our congregational needs and health. These have been helpful but they are meaningless if they do not lead us to love. The true quantitative and qualitative measurements of our health are in how we answer John’s basic question: Are we obedient to the command of Jesus to love God with all we are. And if we love the parent our God, then we will love the child, our neighbor and ourselves.
I leave it to each of us to answer. It is tempting to answer in how others have not loved. But that would be judging others and not loving them. The way to healing for ourselves and Bear Creek is to with John look at our own abiding in the love of God, our own loving of each other.
I am suggesting that each of us on a regular basis ask ourselves, “Do I love others the way God loves me? Are there words and acts for which I need to confess a failure to love? Do I repent of my failures, my sins; changing my mind toward the love of God and away from my own fears? Will I accept God’s forgiveness, and where is it the loving thing to do, ask for the forgiveness of my brother or sister in the faith? Will I regularly and faithfully practice being in the love of God by worship, study and service?”
If you learn nothing else from John, learn this. God is love. God has made you to be his child. You are love. Our greatest sin is to not trust this. Repent. Turn you mind away from that little accusatory and judgmental voice and hear the truth, you are love.
I take all this to heart for our life as Bear Creek. Whether we are a living or dying congregation is totally dependent upon the faith of Jesus Christ: Do we love God so that we live in God’s love? Do we love each other as God first loves us?
Shalom and Amen.
