More Than Words

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 4/26/15

Read 1 John 3:16-24

Image Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library

Love, Love, Love.  Sometimes 1 John can start to feel a lot like the beginning of that classic Beatles song, “All You Need is Love.”  It seems as though every other word or thought that comes from the author of this text is about love. Of course, that is not a bad thing, but in today’s society we can become so inundated with the word love, that we can begin to lose sight of what it really means. Today, when we talk about love the first thing we usually start talking about is romance. We talk about finding the love of our lives. We watch shows and movies and read books about different love stories. We even call the most intimate act of a romantic relationship “making love.” But if we branch out of the romantic love we might begin to talk about love for family, or love for a friend, or even love for our pet. Still we use this word love in other different ways. We say we love something when we are passionate about it or when we enjoy. We say I love my job, or I love hiking, and sometimes we water the word down so much that we say I love frappacinos from Starbucks or that we love a show on T.V. When we hear the word love used in so many different ways almost every day,  it is easy for us to overlook  or shrug off it use here in 1 John.

            The love that 1 John is talking about here in our scripture for this morning is radical. It is not just another word or thought, it is the essence of our relationship with God and with others. In fact, this scripture echoes the Great Commandments of that Jesus gave, “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your mind, and all of your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Our relationship with God  and our relationship with others is through love; a love that consumes all of our heart, that consumes all of our being. When we hear this commandment many of us think to ourselves, “I already love God and my neighbor, so I guess I’m good.” Apparently this was the mentality of the community that this letter was written to as well. The whole community confessed to loving God, they confessed to loving each other, and yet there was so much division amongst themselves that you would never know it. There were so many in the community suffering while those with the means to help just seemed to ignore it. And so our author writes to this community and says, “ Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”  How often do we claim to love but only express it in words, but God calls for more than words.

            And it begs the question, How do we know what love is, and when we are loved?  In 1990 the group Extreme put out a song called “More Than Words.” The song is a love ballad like many songs, but in the song the artist pleas for an expression of love that I believe translates well into Christian love. The song begs for, “More than words to show you feel That your love for me is real What would you say if I took those words away? Then you couldn't make things new
Just by saying I love you.” The song speaks to the fact that love is more than a verbal assent to an ideal. Love is more than words, love is action. As Christians, when we speak about love for God and love for neighbor we are talking about more than words. Love for God is not just saying that we believe. Love for neighbor is not just saying that we recognize that they are of sacred value. Love is action. ““ Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

            So what does this love in action look like? Well, the Bible makes it pretty easy for us, it looks it Christ. Our scripture for this morning even begins saying, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.”  We know love because of God. This is a theme that we will look at in more detail next week, but for the moment notice that the greatest example for us of love, is that Christ was will to lay down his life for us. And so we ought to love likewise, we should be willing to lay down our lives for one another. What does it mean to lay our lives down for one another. Usually when we hear this phrase we hear it as we talk about the heroic actions of our soldier putting their life on the line for our country. We hear it when we talk about our first responders, those police officers and fire fighters who risk their lives in order to protect the lives of others. Lay down one’s life as we know it is a grand and heroic act. We would expect that for a Christian to lay down their life it would require a grand heroic act as well. Certainly through the history of Christianity we have seen faith and love lived out this way through the lives of what we call martyrs. This goes back as far as early Christianity with people like Justin Martyr. Justin was a philosopher who was converted to Christianity in the time when the Roman Empire was still hostile to Christianity. After his conversion, Justin spend most of his time defending Christianity and even started a school to teach the next wave of Christian thinkers. After and debate that he had with one man, Justin was tried, convicted and killed for his beliefs.

            We see a similar passion and willingness to lay down one’s life from some more recent figures as well. In the 1930s during the rise of Nazi Germany as many Christians were being swept up into the Anti-Jewish anger, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and renowned theologian refused to go along with the Nazi regime. He openly spoke out against the Nazi’s treatment of Jews, especially the concentration camps, and for it he was arrested in 1943. He himself was sent to a concentration camp and in 1945,  just weeks before Nazi Germany crumbled, Bonhoeffer was killed. Finally, no one can forget the actions of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Channeling his faith in the one who willing died on the cross for us, King helped to lead a Non-violent resistance to the unjust and oppressive laws in society toward African Americans. Though he often faced ridicule, violence against him, and even imprisonment, King fought on for the rights of millions around the country. That fight cost him his life as he was killed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. These are just a few examples of those who were willing to lay down their lives for others and for their faith. While these are often extreme examples I do believe that our faith calls us to act accordingly if we were ever to find ourselves in a similar circumstance.

            Laying down our lives for one another is more than just martyrdom. It doesn’t necessarily mean dying for our beliefs, but it does mean risking ourselves and our livelihood for others. It means putting others before ourselves, even when that might affect us negatively. And it doesn’t always have to be some grand gesture. Let me tell you a story, it’s one that I have not shared with many people, mostly because it is a little embarrassing personally, but I believe it shows the little ways in which we can lay our lives down for others.

            When my parents divorced, my Mom kind of bounced around from house to house trying to find a place that was right for us. Most of the times this was out of the school district that I grew up in and that my dad still lived in so Mom would have to take me to school on weeks that she had me. My freshman year of high school we moved into a place that was in the same school district so I could finally ride the bus to get to school. Though it was in the same district, the high school I went to was made up of two different middle school, and where my mom lived was where the kids from the other Middle school lived.  In essence, when I rode the bus from her place, I had no friends on the bus because I hadn’t gone to middle school with the kids. As you can imagine I was a pretty quiet kid, so I didn’t go out of my way to make new friends, since I would just see my old ones once I got to school. One day, however I remember two of the older boys in front of me turned around and started picking on me. I tried to ignore them, but they wouldn’t let up. As I started to get frustrated, out of nowhere the girl behind me said, “Leave him alone.” It was girl that was in some of my classes, but I didn’t really know, I think her name was Jessica. She was your typical pretty blonde cheerleader, but here she was defending me, someone she hardly knew, to people who could have turned on her. She certainly wasn’t risking her life defending me, but as someone who was already kind of popular but still just a Freshman, still with four years of that social pressure ahead of her, she did risk her reputation to stand up. I never got to thank her, I was too embarrassed to be defended against bullies by a pretty girl, and I doubt she even remembers the encounter, but I sure do.

            Maya Angelou once said, ““I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I have not forgotten how that act made me feel that day. 14 years from that day, if that were to have never happened Jessica honestly would be another name and face that I would have forgotten, but because of one simple, yet brave selfless act, I remember her as a caring and loving person. As Christians we are called to lay our lives down in similar ways. Not always in grandiose acts of martyrdom like Justin, or Bonheoffer, or King, but also in the everyday simple actions like Jessica.  We are called as Christians daily to put our wants and our desires behind us and to first lift up our neighbors in need; to truly show them the love of God through the ways in which we love them.

            As Christians we can talk, and preach, and read, and pray, and sing about love until our faces turn blue, but it won’t mean a heap of good if we do not live and act in love. We cannot talk about our love for God, and yet fail to go to God in prayer, to join in Worship whenever possible. We cannot talk about our love for this Earth that he has created while we destroy with chemical spills in our water, or the overuse of Styrofoam which will sit in landfills for centuries. We cannot say that we love God’s creatures, and allow pets to be abused or neglected, or Rhinos in Africa to become nearly extinct just because some people around the world believe their horn to be an aphrodisiac. We certainly cannot say that we love our neighbor when there are those who are hungry, homeless, or sick in our own communities that we ignore as we go back to our own homes, cook plentiful meals that we sometimes even let go to waste, and enjoy our little pleasures that we have, however meager they may be.  If we speak about love but do not act, then we have no right to speak about love at all. “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Love requires more than words.

            Yesterday I was able to witness love in action. Some of us went yesterday morning and prepared breakfast for men and women who came to help build a house for a veteran in need though Habitat for Humanity. To see so many people from the community come out to help someone in need was a greater sermon than I could ever preach here in the pulpit. Later that day I was privileged to attend the baptism of the daughter of two friends ours. They are a clergy couple that wouldn’t both be able to be at the same church for Sunday worship, so they had their baptism yesterday, and because of that I was able to be part of the service. As I watch this beautiful girl being baptized, claimed as a child of God like we talked about last week, I as thought about the Habitat community that I had just seen hours earlier. The same love and community that those builders had shown for the veteran in need, was the same love and community that this beautiful girl was being brought into, and in fact was the same love that she will be called to show. The connection to me couldn’t have been more striking; these vows, these words said in this sacred moment of baptism are more than words they are a declaration of Love. A declaration to love like the men and women of Habitat for Humanity. A declaration to love like Jessica did on that bus over a decade ago. And yes, when necessary a declaration to love when necessary to the point of giving our lives like Justin, Bonhoeffer, and King; because Christ showed us the greatest love on the cross. These words at baptism are a declaration of love, first and foremost from God to us, but also from us, to live and act in love towards God and towards our neighbor, because love is more than words. 

Children of God

Sermon as Preached at Lambs and Evington UMC on 4/19/15

Read 1 John 3:1-7

Has anyone here ever tried to research their family tree? I remember in Middle School one of our assignments was to do just that, trace our family as far as we could and then too present it to the class as a family tree. This involved sitting and talking to my parents and my grandparents to get a collection of names and dates if they remembered them. As a middle school assignment, my tree wasn’t all that intensive, mostly a collection of Aunts, Uncles, and cousins, and a history that stretched as far as my great-grandparents. Still, displayed on a huge poster board it was impressive to see all of the branches that could stretch just from the family members I knew. On Ancestry.com you can go into even more detail with. You start by putting in yourself and your parents, and maybe your grandparents and then usually a little leaf will appear. It takes you to information like birth, death, or marriage certificates, and from there you usually find information about their parents or aunts or uncles and cousins, and as it all adds up you start to see a massive family tree. James is the child of so and so and his cousin is the daughter of Gertrude. I think there is something in finding out who our family truly is, and traditionally this has been with the analogy of a tree.

             When we think about family we tend to immediately go to that genetic nuclear family. Whose child am I? Who is my sibling? We think first of our parents and grandparents, our brothers and our sisters. For many of us it is natural to frame our understanding of family around genetics because we have been privileged to grow up in an environment where we belong. But this concept of family is different for almost everyone. The other day apparently was National sibling and to celebrate many people on Facebook including myself, changed their pictures to a picture of them and their siblings. After a while I began to notice many only children make many statements about not having a sibling, some even put up pictures of cousins or just best friends and called them brother or sister. It got me thinking, for an only child who is their brother or sister? For the child who was adopted genetics is not the best indicator of who their family is. For those whose ancestors were brought here by force not choice; a family tree can only go so far, and may stir up some pain. Family is not as cut and dry as we sometimes make it out to be.

            As Christians we have taken on a new understanding of family. When Jesus asks his disciples “who are my mother and my brothers” it became apparent that family is more than just genetics. Those who follow Christ are Christ’s family, and are each other’s brother and sister. It is through the water and Spirit of Baptism that we are claimed as children of God and enter into this family, the family of God. As Baptism challenges our understanding of family, maybe it can also challenge our typical means of tracing our family history. Maybe we can move from a family tree towards a family stream. Think for a moment about your baptism and who baptized you. That same person who baptized you by water and the Spirit in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, where you were claimed as a child of God; was themselves a child of God and baptized. And they were baptized and brought into the family of God by someone who was also baptized. And if we begin to trace not the branches of our family tree, but these streams of Baptismal waters we find ourselves connected to the early believers baptized on that day of Pentecost. We find ourselves connected to the Ethiopian Eunuch baptized by Philip. If we follow those streams of baptism far enough we even find ourselves connected to Jesus Christ himself. And as we hear the words from heaven proclaiming, “This is my son with whom I am well pleased” we realize that through that same water and Spirit we too are children of God.

            The author of 1 John understands the importance of being children of God. Despite its name this book of the Bible was most likely not written by the same evangelist as the Gospel of John. Instead this book is much more like one of the letters we find from Paul written to a specific community for a specific purpose. The community this letter was written to, was one that was probably highly influenced by the Gospel of John, hence the name 1 John. Like almost every letter to a community we have in the Bible, this letter seems to address a conflict in the community. There seems to be a lack of understanding of what it means to follow Christ, and there seems to be many false teachers leading the members of the community astray. As we will see in the next few weeks, the author of 1 John settles these conflicts through exploring love, and in particular God’s love.  In our scripture for this morning the author begins by describing our relationship to God as being children of God.

            What does it mean to be a child of God?  It means we belong to God. It means we are able to hear the words of God spoken to us through the prophet Isaiah saying, “Do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine.” You are mine. It is in these words that we are able to find comfort, a comfort the world cannot give to us. It is a promise from God that there is nowhere we can go, or anything we can do that will leave us deserted from our heavenly Father. It is a promise that in our times of fear or grief, like a mother God will be there to nurture us. Being children of God means that our connection to the Holy of Holies, is through an intimate, familial relationship. Therefore when God’s children are out in the community helping those in need, when they are studying they are studying the Word, when they are comforting those who are sick or grieving we can almost hear the words of a proud parent crying that’s my son, that’s my daughter. But though there are certainly things we do that please our Father above, noting can earn or take away God’s love. So even when we fail, when we do what we know we shouldn’t, when we have failed to be an obedient church, when we have not love our neighbors, God still cries out, “You are mine” you are a child of God. It’s like have you ever been a parent or family at a large gathering where there are a bunch of kids playing. You are talking to the parents, when all of the sudden your kid comes around all covered in mud or paint, or they broke a nice piece of art and that dreaded question is asked, “Whose kid is this?” Unlike some of us would, God doesn’t hesitate, they are mine, they are a child of God.

            Being a child of God means we belong to God, but this is not a select family, it is a place where all belong. Being God’s children is a word of hope for so many in the world. There are so many who feel worthless, so many who feel abandoned, so many who feel ridiculed or despised; and so in a world in which they feel rejected, in God they can find a place where they belong, you can find a place where you belong. Because as a child of God you are family, you are a son or daughter of God, and likewise you are a brother or sister to many.

            As we hear the good news today that we are children of God, that God has claimed us and that we belong, we must also wrestle with what it means for us to be a child of God.  How does the world know we are God’s children?  Often it is easy for the world to tell whose child we are. About a month ago I talked about how messy and unorganized I was and how I always needed Heather to find things. When it comes to space, this is true I am as unorganized as they come, but when it comes to time the same cannot be said. I am a meticulous planner of time. Each day I plan out what I plan to do and when, I’m such a planner that I even account in my day to day plans, time for unexpected, unplanned events! And because of this I hate to be late. If I say we are leaving at 10, we aren’t leaving at 10:05 we are leaving at 10. It reminds me of Dad and I sitting in the car on Sunday morning waiting for the girls to be ready to leave. When I get into one of these tizzies about time those close to my family will often say, “You are definitely Wayne’s son.” We tend to resemble members of our family.  I am told often that not only did I get my red hair from my Papa, but also many similar personality traits, including the call to ministry.

            Is the same case true for our Heavenly Father?  Do we share in the likeness of God?  Sadly, often the answer is no. Our scripture tells says, “ Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” Here we find really the paradox of faith, the paradox of being a Christian. We are children of God, but still we must become children of God. We are children of God in that God has claimed us, there is nothing that we can do that will either earn us that title or cause God to take it away. It is the gift of grace, freely given, that we are children of God. And yet though we are God’s children we do not act like children of God. We do not love as God loves, we do not serve as God serves, we do not adequately reflect our kinship to the Lord of Lords. What we will be has not yet been revealed, but when God is fully revealed we will be like him; and yet God has already been revealed through Jesus Christ and so we are called to be like him. We are called to be the children of God.

            But how do we do that? If we are already God’s children, how do we become God’s children? First and foremost it starts with us realizing that we are in fact children. No matter how old we are or how much we think we know or have experienced, we are God’s children, not God. This seems like a pretty simple concept to grasp but Christians seem to fail at it over and over again. We tend to act and to speak as if we have all of the answers. We tend to judge other as if we ourselves are the judge siting on the throne. We tend to ignore our daily prayer life because we think that we can handle it, and only turn to God when things get out of our control. In our daily lives and in the life of the Church we act as though we make the rules, we set the tone, we make the decisions; but how quickly we forget that we are not the Father, we are but children of God.

            And as children we have a lot of growing up to do.  Too often we act as though Baptism; that water that connects us to each other through that family stream, it the end of the story. We act as though because we are saved we can just wipe off our hands and walk away. The truth is however, that baptism is not the end, but is just the beginning of the journey. Jesus told Nicodemus that we must be born again. We love this term, “born again Christians” but if we are born again that means that we are infants, and we have a lot of growing to do. We must allow God to be like our father, instructing us in the way to go, and disciplining us when we go astray. We must allow Got to be like our mother, nurturing us when we fall, feeding us with the spiritual nutrients we need to survive. In order for us to become a reflection of our Heavenly parent, we must be will to submit to the guidance and nurture of God. We must be willing to turn away from our sin and turn towards God. We must be willing to journey.

            And as we journey, as we grow as children of God remember those words of comfort from God  “You are mine.”  You are God’s when you feed the homeless, visit the sick and those who are imprisoned. You are God’s when you stand up for justice and have compassion for the marginalized of our society. But you are also God’s when you fail. When you put yourself above others, when you scorn a friend or talk bad about a neighbor you are still God’s. Because God has claimed you as one of the children of God, when you fail and when you succeed you belong to God. And so in our journey in which we are but infants, may we strive to live in a way that reflects the love that God has shown for us, so that when someone looks at us they may say, “Surely they are a child of God.”