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.