2CC Sermon: Love In a Horrible World (1 John 4:7-21) Our Scripture this morning comes from the First Letter of John, not to be confused with the Gospel of John. The letter is not familiar to most people, but several of the verses we’ve heard this morning have entered into broader circulation. The first and most famous of all is right at the beginning. John writes: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (v. 8). Later he says, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another” (v. 11). And also: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out all fear” (v. 18). My own favorite verses are actually the last two: “Those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not know a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love a 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” (v. 20-21). What I like about the letter is that he’s trying to connect a big idea about God, and what God is like, with the challenge of living in community. John’s point is that if God is love, and that God loves us…not just Creation in general, and not just people in general, and not just the best and most deserving scattered all around the world wherever they may be, but us…you and me, well then, that presents a challenge. Because God doesn’t just want us love him back. God wants for us to love one another. To John, we can’t just leave the loving to God and go on doing our same old thing. Some kind of response is called for. Some kind of pattern for living is being described. A friend of mine who grew up in New York ended up in Boston for med school – one of those situations where you go someplace, knowing that you’re going to be there for a while. And though she had grown up as a passive Yankees fan, she was giving serious thought to becoming a Red Sox fan—for her, it was more about the rooting, about the energy of the crowd, about the players and their stories, and how their season was going. Well, she mentioned that she was thinking of converting to her advisor, thinking he would be glad to welcome another citizen into Red Sox nation—and a Yankee fan, to boot. He was appalled. “You can’t just come here and switch,” he said. “Being a Red Sox fan isn’t a pastime. It’s a worldview.” He might as well have said that it’s a pattern for living, that you can’t just buy yourself a cap and go on doing your same old thing. He would have agreed with John in our Scripture this morning: faith is not simply about what you believe—it’s about the commitments you make in light of what you believe. I’m thinking about that with a new urgency these days. The world had a bad week. Actually, it’s of course much longer. Really, I feel as if the closing week of the Winter Olympics marked the start of a particularly violent and desperate season, not only in the Ukraine, but in so many other places now. Nigeria. The US-Mexico border. And most recently, of course, in Gaza. As you know, on Friday, a much-needed 72-hour humanitarian cease fire there lasted only two hours before hostilities exploded all over again. In last Sunday’s New York Times, Tanya Luhrmann described the idea of what she called the “boggle threshold.” She reports that the Boggle Threshold is “the level above which the mind boggles when faced with some new report or idea.” Well, with all the violence in the world—so much of it justified in the name of religion—I am reaching my boggle threshold. I can understand that people grow up afraid of very real enemies, and that this shapes their perspective. I can understand that defending the poor and weak, who cannot defend themselves, can be an important religious duty—as, indeed, most religious traditions, including our own, understand it to be. But when it comes to letting children be victims, or deliberately using them as human shields, or using the desperation of some as a recruitment tool for violence, but cast as a heroic gesture of glory to God—I reach my boggle threshold. The Internet is a bad place to go for a person who is reaching his boggle threshold. But even so, I have been amazed. I feel like I have never seen the incredible volume of accusation that I’m seeing attached to almost every story about the troubles around the world—that any report and any reporter cannot be trusted, that they are not simply biased, but deliberate liars, working for evil people. Sometimes I feel like there is no listening going on. There’s not even talking going on. There is only shouting. And rockets. And what I find myself struggling to discern in all of this is what my duty is as a Christian. Sometimes, our Christian talk about peace and love seems so inadequate, like going to Gaza City or Tel Aviv and handing out needlepoint pillows that say “God is love.” Sometimes, when people say that as an American Christian, I cannot hope to understand, I am ready to believe them. I am new to these old questions, for sure. But I’ll tell you one thing. As an American Christian, I know bad religion when I see it. And I know that most people, when it comes to the neighbors they know, want very much to live in peace, and that the power of our relationship with the person we know is often much stronger even than the most convincing preacher claiming to know which forms of hatred are actually pleasing to God. I’m with John. If religion teaches us anything, it teaches us that we can’t just leave the loving to God and go on doing our same old thing, especially when our same old thing involves hating our neighbors. Nor should we Christians get smug for even a moment that our faith is above such temptations. In Jerusalem, in the very church built on the site where Jesus was crucified, four different denominations contest ownership and control, with disagreements so long-standing that even a stray maintenance ladder cannot be moved or even touched for fear that a riot will break out. And that is just one small example. There are as many God-awful Christians as there are God-awful believers of any other religion. Because it’s one thing to believe in Jesus. It’s quite another to truly take on the mantle of a Christ-like pattern of living. One in which we make the commitment to love one another as best we can, remembering, as John says, that “since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” Does that apply to people who follow different religious traditions? People whose diagnosis of the human condition and whose understanding of the cure may be different – quite different -- than ours? I believe it does. I believe it does, not least because once you start picking and choosing which neighbor to notice and whom to bother with learning to love, you stop sounding like Jesus, you stop acting like Jesus, you stop loving like Jesus…and so it seems fair to wonder if you’re actually still listening to Jesus. Never mind who the other person is listening to. Are you and I listening to Jesus? And what then? Jesus engaged people whose faiths were very different than his. And he didn’t try to talk them into his beliefs—and he didn’t step aside from complexity, and he didn’t limit his conversation to people who read the same kind of magazines. We should do that, too. In a world where shouting down opposing points of view is considered a practical tactic, to listen and truly hear, to learn and truly understand are radical acts. There is nothing more Christ-like than the act of bringing healing to broken people and broken places—especially the healing that can only come with justice realized, and hope restored, and love of neighbor finding its way out of the rubble. My own hope was restored a little bit on Friday evening. I learned that 180 children, mostly between the ages of 14 and 16 will be arriving from Israel and the Palestinian Territories will be arriving in Maine actually today to take part in a summer camp experience called “Seeds of Peace.” There are several camps around the country related to the program, and the program has brought together young people from different sides of many conflicts over the course of the last 22 years. Many of you may have memories of how transformational summer camp was for you. Imagine bunking with someone from “the other side” of a conflict the world says can never be won as long as there’s anyone left standing on two sides. Imagine what it is to meet your neighbor, and to come together in a place where you can talk and live together without fear—with all your questions, all your doubts, all your unchecked assumptions allowed to be part of the conversation. It’s where peacemaking begins. Where minds are expanded and hearts are changed. “Seeds of Peace” is not, per se, a Christian camp. But I can’t think of anything more Christ-like than the ministry of such a place. In an all-too-horrible world, they have found a way to listen and to hear, to know and to understand. To offer healing and hope. John writes, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out all fear.” This week, may you and I find some occasion for some fearless moment, an occasion to be bold, trusting that we might sow our own seeds of peace and hope. In a world where human inhumanity can bring us so close to the boggle threshold, we remember that there is nothing more mind-boggling and heart-lifting than power of the love of God. And this week, we recognize how deeply the world needs to see it in action. May it come alive in us this week…and in all our days to come. Amen.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 03:27:57 +0000
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