Sermon Tone Analysis
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Love Lessons
I John 4:7-21
Last Sunday, Rosalie had this big Valentine’s Day Heart and she passed out little, red, blank cards upon
which we were to write our favorite verse of Scripture that had a loving message in it to put on her heart.
So I
thought I’d write a whole sermon on one verse.
1 John 4 is a verse where God is defined as love, period, and
we who profess to know God should love each other.
Each other — who all might that be?
People of different faiths may see the need for more love in the world, but can we agree that God is
love?
No one would argue that Islam and Christianity are essentially the same.
No, they are not.
Not everyone
agrees that Muslims and Christians worship the same God.
True, Muslims and Christians do share some
common affirmations.
They even have a common ancestor in Abraham.
But the apostle John proposes a huge
litmus test for anyone who would call him or herself a Christian.
Got a true story… Twelve American men boarded a plane for Honduras with the goal of doing a week
of work at a Youth for Christ camp, a Christian boarding school, and a mountaintop medical clinic.
There were
eleven Christians and one Muslim.
In addition to daily construction work, their schedule included nightly Bible
study and prayer.
But what Scriptures could they discuss together?
The team was eleven Christians and one
Muslim.
Where was the common ground?
Although Muslims do not consider Jesus to be the Son of God, they do revere Him as a prophet.
Because of this, the group's Bible study for the week focused on the parables of Jesus.
Rather than debating His
divine nature, the team dug into His teachings.
The men listened to Jesus say, "You are the light of the world,"
and considered how they might let their light shine before others, so that others might see their good works and
give glory to God in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16).
Responding to the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9), the men talked about how they could improve
the quality of soil in their own lives.
The lost sheep (Matthew 18:10-14) taught them that everyone matters to
God, and that no one is expendable.
Reflecting on the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), they
discovered the importance of taking risks and using their time and abilities to expand God's work in the world.
And when Jesus said that He could be found in the hungry, thirsty, naked and sick of the world (Matthew 25:3146), the men talked about where they had seen the face of Jesus in the people of Honduras.
Were there disagreements in the group?
Of course.
Conflict is the norm, not the exception -- especially
while experiencing the stress of foreign travel, the clash of strong personalities, and the strain of manual labor.
But the wisdom of Jesus did not drive the men apart.
Instead, it brought them together.
2
Eleven Christians, one Muslim ... one community.
"Beloved, let us love one another, because love is
from God," says John to the Christians of the first-century church, "everyone who loves is born of God and
knows God" (1 John 4:7).
This is a word that our fractured world desperately needs to hear, especially as
tension continues to exist between Christians and Muslims in a post-9/11 world.
"Whoever does not love, does
not know God," John goes on to say, "for God is love" (v.
8).
The dozen men in Honduras discovered that the command to "love one another" is one that Muslims and
Christians can agree on.
In fact, a Muslim chaplain named Bader Malek says that the moral teachings of both
Muhammad and Jesus "impel us to be kind to weak people, respect them, and serve them as much we can and
never ask for a reward."
Muhammad, the founder of Islam, didn't actually think he was starting a new religion: at least not at
first.
He was simply calling his fellow Arabs to a new, single-minded devotion to the one God.
As a young
man, Muhammad had studied both Judaism and Christianity.
In his day, Jews lived throughout Arabia,
particularly in the cities of Mecca and Medina.
There were Byzantine Christians there, too, in significant
numbers; the cousin of Muhammad's wife, a leading figure in their household, was a Christian.
So desirous was Muhammad of honoring these other traditions that, when he came to political power, he
insisted that Jews and Christians were to be, not only tolerated, but protected.
If they wished to convert, they
could do so; but in his view, there was already sufficient wisdom in each of these traditions to lead people to the
one God, the one he called (as did all Arabs), "Allah."
Allah, by the way, is the standard Arabic word for God
and is used by Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews as well as by Muslims.
The name Allah is probably a
contraction of the Arabic al-Ilāh, “the God.”
He called Jews and Christians "People of the Book" -- a phrase
that some have suggested can be translated, "People of an Earlier Revelation."
In those earliest days,
Muhammad taught that Muslims should bow, in their daily prayers, not toward Mecca, but toward Jerusalem.
Obviously, something went very wrong in later centuries.
The tolerance that Muhammad had
proclaimed lasted only slightly beyond his lifetime.
Political rulers put many Christians and Jews, many
Buddhists and Hindus, to the sword.
In those scheming political rulers, we can glimpse the roots of the violence
that is the terrorist's stock in trade today.
Yet, that sort of thing is no more a part of Islam than a bomb blast in
Israel or planes flying into the twin towers.
So how about the assertion of John that "God is love"?
That's a
different story.
3
At the very heart of our Christian faith is the bold assertion that God is love.
Not simply that God loves,
but that God is love.
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