I
John 4:7-21
I
want to start out by asking everybody to try something that will need a pencil
or pen and a piece of paper. You can use
the pencils in the pews, and the blank space at the margin of your bulletin. This is an exercise that I’m stealing from
the District Superintendent, who got it from someone else, and maybe you’ve
done it before. If you have, just play
along. Everybody ready?
What
we’re going to do is very simple. We’re
going to count aloud from one to twenty-six, and as we do that, we’re going to
write the letters of the alphabet – in order.
On your mark, get set, and…
How
did it go? This is an exercise that’s
supposed to demonstrate the difficulties with multitasking. We all know someone who claims to be able to
talk on the phone, type, and balance their checkbook all at the same time. Maybe that’s you. The point is that even if you think you can
do more than one thing at a time, you do not do anything as well as when you
focus on one activity.
I
John says that one thing should be the focus of our lives.
“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.” [I John 4:7-8]
That was the focus of Jesus’ life. He was not here to give new laws, but to help
us understand the ways and the reasons that God had laid out from the
beginning. He was not here to establish
some sort of kingdom for himself, or to enjoy special honors, or to set up an
institution like the Church. (That part
came later, as a means to God’s ends.)
“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.” [I John 4:9-10]
Religious
people toss the word “sin” around pretty freely. We speak of sins of commission: doing what we
are told not to do. We speak of sins of
omission: not doing what you know you should.
It’s a sin of commission to covet your neighbor’s wealth and a sin of
omission to refuse to share your own with somebody in need. Sin involves choosing something – anything –
over the love of God.
There
are those aspects of just being human that hold us back from that kind of
single-hearted expression of God’s love.
They may not totally prevent us from loving one another, but get in the
way of doing it as well as we could.
Going back to the alphanumerical exercise we did, it is not impossible
to write the alphabet and count at the same time. It is just harder. It takes more effort. Jesus himself knew that, as he put it,
“The
spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
[Matthew 26:41]
For himself, he knew what a struggle it can be – make that
what a struggle it is – to foresee the consequences of living by God’s love in
an unloving world, and still to go forward on God’s path. When his arrest and crucifixion were
imminent, he needed to take some time to strengthen himself to face them. He went to the garden of Gethsemane to
prepare. Matthew says,
“He
took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and
agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am
deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.’ And going
on a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if
it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want, but what you
want.’” [Matthew 26:37-39]
Fear (and sometimes it’s justifiable fear) gets in the
way for us. Jesus had to overcome that,
as he had to overcome all sorts of temptations, on his way to the cross. But he loved us enough to keep on going.
Back
to I John: fear is a major obstacle to living in God’s love, but Jesus has a
habit of overcoming obstacles. “A
wedding reception and no wine? Go get
some water. Five thousand people and
nothing for supper but five rolls and two cans of tuna? Sit down while I say grace. Sin?
Oh, yes, that’s the really big one… that does get in the way.”
“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. There is no fear in love, but perfect love
casts out fear …” [I John 4:17-18]
We no longer need to fear God’s judgment, because
Jesus has taken care of that for us. In
turn, the fears that we have about acting according to God’s love instead of
according to our self-interest, as real as they may be, can be faced and
overcome.
In
fact, those fears can even become an advantage.
I read a story this week about a woman from Pittsburgh named Sloane
Berrent who dropped a high-octane business career and went to work with an
organization called Kiva that makes microloans to really, really poor people
around the world. She found herself
hanging out with folks outside Manila who survive by scavenging in trash dumps,
seeing how ten dollars here or twenty dollars there could, in the right hands,
make a major difference. She said,
“I’m scared every day.
I’m scared people won’t think I’m doing this for the right reasons. I’m scared since I’m everywhere at once and
nowhere all the time I won’t have the opportunity to settle down and have a family.
I’m frightened something will happen to a loved one while I’m too far
off to reach them and I won’t be there for someone who loves me.
But here’s the thing.
I’ve also realized that fear is normal.
If I didn’t get a little tug in my stomach before something big, it
wouldn’t be the right thing. Fear is
energy mangled and a powerful motivator, so I just turn it into something
positive. When you’re scared your senses
are heightened. I use my fear to hone my
intuition. I’m alone in a lot of
countries and situations people at home wouldn’t be comfortable in, but nothing
bad happens to me. Why? Because I make smart decisions, but also
because I use my senses and I trust my fear to have its place when there is
something to truly be scared of.”[1]
She’s
right that there are things and people and situations where fear is like a
warning light on the dashboard. Fear is
worth paying attention to. But if the
fear comes from yourself, not from outside, then it is something to be handed
over to God so that you can get on with the one real focus of the Christian
life without distraction, so you can count from one to infinity instead of one
to Z.
“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. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their
brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not
seen. The commandment we have from him
is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” [I John 4:18-21]
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