1
John 4:7-21
We
always have interesting discussions at Men’s Bible Study (Thursdays at 7:00am —
breakfast provided. I recommend it!). A couple weeks ago our discussion
prompted one of the participants to email me. He made a number of thoughtful
comments in that email, and then wrote:
I have heard all my life, WWJD [What Would Jesus
Do?], but that never really resonated with me. I could never really apply that
to my life. After this morning’s study, I am thinking more along the lines of
“what would love do?” If I can live my life and base my actions and
relationships with people on “what would love do”, maybe that will get me a
little closer to leading the kind of life that God wants of me.
That
is such a simple and profoundly important statement. And it seems impossible to
me that we could hear this passage today from the First Letter of John and
reach any other conclusion: God is love,
and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.`
How
do we forget that? We get so easily distracted. And what perhaps distracts us
religious people as much as anything else is our need to be right. We need to
have the right doctrine, for example, as if God cares about whether we have
memorized the Nicene Creed or understand the exact nature of the Trinity (as if
we could!). We need to have the right formulas, as if God just needs us to say
the correct words in the correct order. We need to have the right rituals, as
if it matters to God whether we say “alleluia” in Lent or we stand and sit at
the right times. We need to follow the right rules, as if God primarily created
us to follow rules. We need to belong to the right church, we need to wear the
right clothes when we go to church, and so on and so forth. We need to be
right, or at least our egos need that in order to feel secure or somehow
justified in our faith. And, of course, all too often those same egos dictate
that in order for us to be right, then other people must be wrong. And therein
lies the twisted thinking that has led to untold bigotry, intolerance, violence,
and senseless hatred.
But
Jesus doesn’t preach that we have to be right.
We are, in fact, justified (the word literally means “made right”) by
the sheer grace of God. We are all right because God loves us. Jesus calls us
to receive that love, live that love, and share that love. He doesn’t seem to
care if we’re correct in our creed or right in our ritual: he cares that we
love. Jesus sums up the entire Law in two commandments: Love God with your
whole being, and love others the same way you love yourself. Nothing else
ultimately matters. Everything we do in this parish — worship, ministries,
programs, budgets — all of it is meant to help us experience and share God’s
love.
And,
truly, the entire biblical story reveals the long, slow, arduous, often painful
process of people coming to realize that God really is love. There’s an old
Jewish saying that goes: God created human beings in his image, and then human
beings returned the favor. We have all too often tried to make God in our own
image, and so we have projected onto God our own hatred and violence, our
inability to forgive and our need to punish. But that’s our baggage, not God’s.
Hear these words: God is love, and those
who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
And
if God is love, then all love is of God. We cannot separate loving God from
loving other people: Jesus won’t let us because it is all one love. So John
goes on to write, Those who say, “I love
God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love
a 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. And that is what we see in Jesus, who loves his
Abba by loving everyone: not just his disciples, not just his fellow Jews, but
Romans, Samaritans, outcasts, the criminal crucified next to him — everyone.
There is one love. We are called to receive that love, live that love, and
share that love.
I
had an epiphany this week, reminding me of that. And, as it happens, it
pertains to the Men’s Bible Study. A number of the men in that group like to go
fishing, and one of them recently caught a big fish. I won’t embarrass him by
saying who it was, but for the sake of the story, let’s just call him Greg
Anderson. So we all passed a phone around with the photo of Greg holding his
fish: it was a fun, bonding moment. Well, the very next day I attended Friday
prayers at the masjid, the mosque on Pine Street where the local Muslim
community worships. I do that regularly to show friendship and build bridges.
Well, after prayers ended, one of the men I know there, named Tarek, came up to
me, gave me a big hug — and then whipped out his phone and showed me a picture
of him holding a fish he had just caught. And it hit me how one we truly are.
We come from different religions and different cultures — Tarek was born and
raised as a Muslim in Egypt — but we’re all bound together. Like many people in
this parish, he likes to fish, and he wanted to show me the fish he had caught.
We are all just human. We are all created and cherished by the same God. This
is what Jesus teaches us and what Jesus shows us. There is one love, and we are
all called to participate in it.
That
love is within us right now, through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us
as a gift. That love is all around us. We will share that love at the Peace; we
will eat and drink that love at the altar. I don’t know how you understand
worship or what you are looking for when you come here, but let me urge you not
to think of it as a dry obligation, something we do to placate a distant and
difficult god. It is, rather, an opportunity for all of us to soak in God’s
love: to let it flow into us and through us. We don’t have to make God love us
or do anything to make ourselves worthy of God’s love. We already have it. The
big question, the only question, for us and for everyone we will touch this
week, is whether we will receive it, and live it, and share it.
God is love, and those who abide in love
abide in God, and God abides in them.
No comments:
Post a Comment