Easter 6B, 2024

6th Sunday of Easter, Year B

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

The content of belief is important: the well-known British preacher Jonathan Whitfield was preaching to coal miners in England. He asked one man, "What do you believe?" "Well, I believe the same as the church." "And what does the church believe?" "Well, they believe the same as me." Seeing he was getting nowhere, Whitfield said, "And what is it that you both believe?" "Well, I suppose the same thing."

What we believe is important. St. John clearly thought so also. The first 4 chapters of this letter have been spent discussing love and the significance of love to the Christian life, and to our relationship with God. Now, in chapter 5, John puts faith on the same level as love.

This word “believe” in Greek is from the same root word as the word for “faith”. In the Greek, the meaning is understood as “to regard as credible, [or] as true.” [Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 203.] So John tells us that everyone who trusts it to be true that Jesus is the Messiah - the Christ - has been born of God. Recall that in John’s Gospel account, Jesus tells Nicodemus, the Pharisee who visits him in secret during the night, that “...unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (Jn 3:3) Jesus later describes this as being born of the Holy Spirit, which is to say, born of God. We understand this to mean: BAPTISM.

For John, his motivation in his teaching and his writing was the belief that Jesus is the Son of God. If this is what a person believes, it is evidence that they are a baptized child of God. What do you think about that? Is that evidence? Luther certainly thought so. In baptism, we receive the Holy Spirit. And from that very moment, the Holy Spirit starts to go to work on us.

In the Apostles’ Creed, we say

“‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.’

What does this mean?

Answer: I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith… This is most certainly true.” [Tappert, The Book of Concord, 345.] (I cut out the last few lines, but the concluding statement is fitting for our thoughts this morning.

If you trust it to be true that Jesus is the Messiah sent by God to take away the sins of the whole world, this is evidence that you love God. Consider this: if the Holy Spirit is not in you, would you trust this to be true about a Galilean carpenter from 2000 years ago who was killed by the Romans for causing unrest among his fellow Jews? It doesn’t really make sense from the outside, does it? How could someone who was sent by God to save the world possibly be killed by a mere mortal human being, or even a number of such mortals? The God Who made us, the universe, and everything in it… gets His Son killed by one of His creatures? That just doesn’t make sense. Not from the outside, no. But we are not called to make sense of it. We are called to believe it. And we do so with the help of the Holy Spirit… the Helper sent by God after His Son’s ascension into heaven to do this work on our hearts. To help us to believe.

So John ties belief and love together. For John, “Believing and love go together in 1 John 3:23, in 1 John 4:16 (God’s love), and in this passage. The believing makes confession (4:15), loving shows itself in deeds (3:18).” [Lenski, 519]

1 John 3:23 ESV

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

1 John 4:15–16 ESV

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

I just spent the last two days at the annual Convocation of the Carolinas Mission Region (the event we hosted last year at this time). I was blessed to hear sermons from the leaders of our denomination, including Bishop Dan Selbo. As much as Bishop Dan has worked to carry our church body into the future, to set goals for us and challenge us, he never neglects to remind us of the fundamentals of our faith…the basics. At one point, he told us: “let’s never forget that this is all about Jesus.” We are the church of Christ. We exist because of Jesus, but we also exist FOR Jesus. We are who we are so that we can do the work He has commanded us to do - to tell the world the Good News about Him.

That hit me rather hard. It’s easy for us to get caught up in the mundane. We’ve got problems with our HVAC system, and so we need to spend money on that. The fire at the lake house didn’t go exactly as planned, and we’re getting all kinds of phone calls about that. Somebody crashed into the telephone pole on the corner and now the power is out in the church all day. The City of Hickory is planning to build a sidewalk on our side of Springs Road, and we’re going to lose the use of much of our property close to the road to make room for that. I probably don’t have to tell you that I have a very long list of topics I could share with you right now.

Guess what you don’t hear in any of these things? You don’t hear the name of Jesus Christ. When we are discussing those things, are we thinking about Jesus? Why not? Bishop Dan was quick to remind us that of our Core Values, the very first one is “Christ Centered”… and there’s GOOD reason that it’s first. If we are not centered on Christ first and foremost, the rest will fall apart. And frankly, if we’re not centered on Christ, does anything else really matter?

We are the Church of Christ because of Christ Himself - who He was, who He is, and what He has done, particularly what He accomplished on the cross, and what He accomplished by rising from the dead and leaving the tomb empty. The event we have come to call “Easter” is the central event of our faith. And that is why we celebrate it for seven weeks - a “week of weeks” as it has been said. The most important portions of the Gospel account are celebrated during Easter. It is a reminder of why we are called “Christians” and why we believe what we believe. It should also serve as a reminder to all of us of what it is we are to be doing in our lives of faith.

When we spent the weekend doing the Fresh Eyes for Mission summit back in 2022, we discerned that our first Vision Point was “to be a Great Commission Church”. I hope no one came away from that thinking this was merely an option that we’ve chosen. It’s not really an option. We have been commanded to carry this out, by the very Son of God - the One we call “Lord”. That word that means “one who has authority over me” - authority to give me a command which I must obey.

“2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.”(1 Jn 5:2–3) Right after tying belief and love together, John goes right back to his focus on love. Remember: this is not romantic love or brotherly love; this is agape love. Christ-like love. Self-sacrificing, self-emptying love. And for John, to love God’s other children (your siblings who also call God “Abba, Father”), you are showing your love for God. And John gives us one of the more simple explanations in Scripture here. The Bible doesn’t always tells us “how” - this is an exception to that. Do you want to show God that you love Him? Then obey Him. Keep His commandments. That’s how you will show Him that you love Him.

We are not a megachurch with a huge budget. We are not going to be single-handedly solving the homelessness problem in our community, or eliminating hunger in Hickory NC. But that is not our task. That is not our calling. That is not what God commands us. What He commands us to do is love our neighbor. What that looks like might be different for each one of us. I KNOW that must be true because the Yarners tried to get me to pick up a crochet hook on Thursday… and I’m here to tell you my hand wouldn’t even move in the direction of the table. That group of believers is definitely loving our neighbors with their work. I have other ways that I love our neighbors…that just isn’t one of them.

So what’s that mean for you? How are you loving your neighbor? Notice I didn’t say “how have you loved your neighbor”, as though it’s a completed action. This is ongoing. Until Jesus returns, our command is to love… to be loving our neighbor… to be loving the children of God.

As fewer and fewer of our fellow US citizens go to church, read the Bible, as the number of people in our country who say they believe in God grows ever smaller… is it any wonder that our society and culture is so divided and nasty? Do you think that maybe… since fewer people are given the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” that maybe that’s why our society is in so much turmoil? So much conflict? So much anger and hatred all around us?

Brothers and sisters…we don’t have to fix the whole country. We don’t even have to “fix” our own little neighborhood of St. Stephens in the city of Hickory. We just need to love our neighbor. Help the needy, feed the poor, small acts of love and kindness… a little every day. This is how we show the world that we are born of God.

I don’t wish for things in the world to get worse, but I think the time is coming when we will need to start putting aside our differences among our fellow Christians and stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the world. If it comes to that, we have to stop worrying about whether we baptize babies or not…whether we play worship music on the pipe organ or the guitar… whether the pastor wears an alb and stole, a suit and tie, or a t-shirt and jeans. We are going to have to look at the cross and remember the Lord we serve, the Messiah who came to take away our sins, the Christ who walked out of that tomb on the first Easter morning and remember that He has called all of us to do His will. We will need to remember that we trust and believe in Him.

1 John 5:4–5 ESV

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

As we love our neighbor, and as we renew our faith in Christ, we will enjoy His victory and look forward to life everlasting with Him. With that certain knowledge, and that hope, all that nastiness seems not quite so bad anymore. As we strive to be that Great Commission church…let’s just see if we can’t share that with those around us who so desperately need to hear the Good News.... shine a little light in the darkness, and maybe push that nastiness out of the picture. And we can start by telling everyone that Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!