How Well Do You Love?
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Years ago, I had a couple in my office doing premarital counseling. I use an instrument which measures how well you know each other and how different you are. It pinpoints various areas which might become sore spots.
The couple had completed it and it showed several hot zones. As we talked about these potential problem areas I asked the young woman, “how will you handle this?”
And she said, “Oh, that’s not a problem. He will change for me because he loves me.”
There are times I have to restrain my laughter because seldom does that happen as envisioned.
Such is the problem of love. Do we really love? Love is hard to measure. It has no scale. And we are terrible judges of ourselves. If you ask most people, “are you a good driver?” they say yes, even the ones getting out of the smoldering wreck. If we cannot judge something as trivial as our ability to drive, why would we have a good grasp on our ability to love?
Since one of John’s great tests of the genuineness of fidelity is loving as Jesus did, how do you know how well you love? John doesn’t give us test. Instead, he lets us reveal it to ourselves.
Discussion
Discussion
The Command
The Command
John begins this discussion at the very beginning.
For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
All that John will discuss has to do with the message, the anchor of faith. It is bedrock to faithfulness. It has been there since the inception.
He presents a single command.
Love one another. Three words that summarize the gospel for John.
It appears in the gospel he penned.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Jesus is in the upper room. Feet were washed and example given of service left. Now, he talks to his disciples vital words, last words, words meant to penetrate and stick. And he points again to his own example.
They are to love each other as he has loved them. He wants them to look. At that moment they would not comprehend the full extent. Within a few hours, that kind of love would become a bloody reality.
Those three words—love one another—is John’s favorite expression.
It occurs in chapter 2 of this letter as well as the gospel
The early church historian Eusebius tells a story of John at the end of his life. Exile at Patmos ended and he was allowed to go back to Ephesus where he would die. He was almost 100 years old and had grown feeble. As Eusebius paints it, each Sunday the elders of the Ephesian church would help John to the front where he sat in a chair in front of the congregation. They would ask him, “brother John, do you have a word for us today?” Here is a man who has seen miracles. He was at the empty tomb on resurrection day. I peered into the heavens and watched Jesus ascend. What great insight would he give?
He would pause and then say, every Sunday, “little children, love one another.”
And it wasn’t just John.
Luke records the challenge to Jesus to name the greatest commandments. He turned the question back upon the man and got the right answer.
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
It undergirded the commandments of the Law of Moses, indeed of any civilized society.
It is the central paradigm of Christianity. Some religions are religions of performance. So so many prayers at a precise time of day. Offer gifts. Their key words are “keep” and “observe.”
For Christians, it is “love.”
That’s why John feels the need to confront us with a contrast.
The Contrast
The Contrast
John starts at the beginning with one of the more sinister acts on the human stage. Let’s look at Cain, John says.
Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.
The story of Cain is well-known. Envy fills his heart when God rejects his less-than-acceptable sacrifice. Out of that he commits pre-meditated murder by coaxing his brother into the field where he beats him to death.
John minces no words. He uses a word filled with violence and dripping with blood—murder. He asks a rhetorical question and then provides the answer. Why did Cain murder Abel?
It wasn’t what Abel had done but his own evil heart.
When good is done, it creates a sense of exposure of evil in us. We don’t like it so we have to extinguish the good.
In Greek society centuries before Christ, one of the stars on the stage was a philosopher named Alcibiades. He hated the noted Socrates. He told him, ‘Socrates, I hate you, because every time I meet you, you show me what I am.’
So it is with Cain. His heart, full of the venom of hate, could not stand to see Abel because it showed him his own faults.
And that is hate…the desire to make someone disappear. Jesus knew the motive was behind the act.
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister, will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
The hatred in a heart is merely the pulling back on the hammer of the weapon of destruction. It is a life armed and dangerous.
But why bring up Cain? Why is he so important?
No one sees themselves as a Cain. No parent would name his child Cain because of the connotation. We are never as bad as the worst.
We take great comfort we are not like that. The words we use to excuse ourselves are “at least.”
At least, I don’t beat my wife.
At least, I am not a serial killer.
At least, I pay my taxes.
With those two words we elevate ourselves to semi-stained glass status. If we can just throw ourselves up against the worst, we look pretty good in the contrast.
That’s when John flips the story.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
Here we have Jesus and his love. He laid down his life for us. He gave it all. It’s not what he refrained from doing but what he did that was in our best interest. He is the great model of sacrificial love.
Remember, John has described this in his gospel.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
We might then ask, “then why bring up Jesus?” Don’t we already know this part of the story? After all, everyone wants to be like Jesus.
But there is a sticking point. Jesus loved as I can never love. He is divine, and I am just a man with limitations. No one should expect us to love to that level. It’s a wonderful aim, but totally unattainable.
And so we have two examples, Cain of hate and Jesus of love, we tend to excuse ourselves with both. I am not as bad as Cain and I am not as good as Jesus. I have neither sunk so low or risen so high. So, please excuse me from this commandment of love.
That’s why John issues a single challenge.
The Challenge
The Challenge
The problem for humanity, and Christians are included, is “how do you know what love is?
It is easy to protest, “I’m no Cain.” But at the same time we cannot say, “I have gone to the cross to save humankind from their sins.”
So John wants to bring concreteness to this seeming theological discussion.
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
John, after citing Jesus’ example says, “we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Does that mean we have to go to the grave?
When John wrote those words he had something in mind. He uses the term “ought” which is term of obligation and moral duty. We have the moral duty to do it.
But then, he couples that with the present tense which indicates this is a constant act. We always ought to....
If it is dying, it is one-time act. But John has this ongoing sense of the word.
So, he produces a reachable standard, something which is laying down a life without dying.
We protest, “I can’t always.” And so we do it sometimes. When a community on the Louisiana coast or Nicaraguan coast is blown away by a hurricane, we pitch in to help. If we have a close friend who is in a pinch, we can help them out with something.
But John puts reality into play.
If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
Now, we are getting into deep weeds. There are real people with real needs. They have necessities that need to be addressed. We’re not talking theory but entry cupboards.
Each year, the postal service gets letters addressed to Santa Claus. This year is no exception. And they don’t all come from children. Here is an example.
Marilu, a mother, wrote a letter of her own. It said, "This year has been really rough for us," she wrote. "We have been struggling financially because of all the hospital bills & they just keep piling up. We would appreciate clothes & shoes. Those are essential."
What should happen with the Marilu’s in life? Do we wish some government agency could handle it? Should we point them to a church office and say, “I am sure someone in there could help you?”
John rejects the easy. He asked, “what would you do?
He speaks to those who have material possessions, or have the “world.” We have the things the world produces. We have money, heated air, healthy food, and clean water.
And he asks, “what do you do with that stuff?”
And then, it turns grim. See someone in need and you have no pity on them.
John spares no venom in his denunciation. The words have a kick in the gut.
Pity is an insufficient word to describe John’s thought. Neuroscience tells us that a part of the brain processes some information apart from the logical part. It communicates directly with the intestinal tract. It’s not something you think about, but someone you feel.
Haven’t you done that? Someone starts to talk about the death of their child. Tears stain their cheeks. Do you process that information? Or do you hurt in your stomach? The butterfly feelings? It is the “gut feeling” we talk of.
The reason we feel that way is to protect us because it hurts too much. So much so that we will do anything to change the painful subject. Instead of listening, we say, “by the way, what did you have for Christmas dinner?” Let’s go back to the mundane that doesn’t threaten me as much.
It is the feeling of compassion. It is something that Jesus felt profoundly.
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
He saw crowds confused about what to do, helpless and wandering and it “hurt him in his inward parts.” That’s true compassion.
Yet, John pairs it with a dastardly term—has no. The verb means to shut a door and lock it so no one can get in. John says that a person who refuses to help someone in great need slams the door to them.
In Charles Dickens’ classic holiday story, A Christmas Carol, two men come to the office of Ebenezer Scrooge seeking funds to help the poor. Listen to the scene:
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”
“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that.”
“But you might know it,” observed the gentleman.
“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!”
There is no better insight into the words of John. The door slams both to the office and to the need.
It brings John to his pointed truth.
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
Love is not a word that easily let fall from our lips. If that is all, it is a four-letter word belonging to the string of other four letter words in an empty vocabulary. If love does not show up in action, in tangible help, then what exactly is love?
We tend to fill Christianity with all kinds of metrics. We like measures. We post them at boards in the front of the auditorium or print them in the bulletin. People in pews and dollars in plates. They are easy to measure but also irrelevant to the heart of Jesus.
Words are easy. We can sing, “O, how I love Jesus” in loud voices while seated in padded church pews enjoying 72-degree controlled air conditioning.
Can you love Jesus somewhere else? Can you do it in a rusted tin shack with a dirt floor with a trickle of sewer water running through it? What do you do?
Can you love Jesus when you see a young mother with an 18-month-old baby on her hip. He has been born out of wedlock and the father fled from responsibilities. She’s living in the car and the baby is crying from hunger. Can you still sing your song?
Many times it doesn’t take much, just something small.
I want to tell you about a man who did something. I won’t mention his name because it wasn’t for attention that he did what he did. He worked downtown in a steel-and-glass skyscraper. He went to eat lunch everyday at a restaurant that piled plates with an obscene amount of food. He could never eat it. He had them package it up in a styrofoam container, with the server expecting it to be leftovers. Instead, he took the sack full of excess and as he walked back to the office, he stopped in front of a homeless beggar and said, “here is something to eat.” And he did it every day.
And John says, “now tell me, how much do you love?”
Conclusion
Conclusion
I am afraid we like mediocre Christianity. We are never as bad as others but never as sacrificial as Jesus. But…we are comfortable.
In this passage, John challenges us to do three things.
First, stop comparing down. We like to be “better than.” And the truth is all of us are better than most. We can clear that bar without a sweat. We are not Cain, Jezebel, Judas, or Hitler. What virtue is that?
Second, start seeing people. One of the small treasures you glean from the life of Jesus is he noticed people. While others stepped over beggars, crossed streets to get away from lepers, and questioned the spiritual state of the blind, Jesus stopped and noticed. He wanted to do something for them.
We would do well to start opening eyes to need for it is all around us.
Third, start acting. Our words are better than deeds most of the time. We have right theology and wrong response. I hope we don’t get to the judgment with a list of all the things we did that were correct and nothing to show of how we showed Jesus to the world.
It’s a lesson we must learn. We have to look in the mirror because in it, we see the face of Jesus.
It was a lesson Henry Nouwen had to learn as a boy. He wrote:
One of the most vivid memories from my youth is connected with a little goat given to me by my father to care for during the last year of the Second World War. The goat's name was Walter. I was thirteen years old then, and we lived in a part of Holland that was isolated by the great rivers from the D-Day armies. People were dying of hunger.
I loved my little goat. I spent hours collecting acorns for him, taking him on long walks, and playfully fighting with him, pushing him where his two horns were growing. I carried him in my arms, built a pen for him in the garage, and gave him a little wooden wagon to pull. As soon as I woke up in the morning, I fed him, and as soon as I returned from school I fed him again, cleaned his pen, and talked to him about all sorts of things. Indeed, my goat Walter and I were the best of friends.
One day, early in the morning when I entered the garage, I found the pen empty. Walter had been stolen. I don't remember ever having cried so vehemently and so long. I sobbed and screamed from grief. My father and mother hardly knew how to console me. It was the first time that I learned about love and loss.
Years later, when the war was over and we had enough food again, my father told me that our gardener had taken Walter and fed him to his family who had nothing left to eat. My father knew it was the gardener, but he never confronted him—even though he saw my grief. I now realize that both Walter and my father taught me something about compassion.
And John would say to us, dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.