St Luke’s,
“Beloved, let us
love one another.”
Two things you need to know about this morning’s sermon: First, it was
originally written a week ago but after the events of the past few days there
have been some extensive changes. Second, this is only part one. As with most
things, there are two sides to every story and what I want to say this morning
focuses very closely on just one side of the gospel message, so this evening I
intend to look at the other, which means of course that if you want the whole
story of today’s message you need to be back here at 6.30 this evening for
Evensong.
Let’s start though with part one. A wise and influential man once wrote
a message deemed so important and so essential that it was beamed around half
the world in one of the first live simultaneous international television
broadcasts. The essence of that message was repeated over and over and over
again throughout the broadcast, summed up succinctly in the phrase, ‘All you
need is love, da da da-da da.’ ‘Beloved, let us love one another.’
I’m not at all suggesting that there’s any connection between John
Lennon and the author of the first letter of John in the Bible. While there is
plenty of debate surrounding who this mysterious John actually was, I think it’s
actually quite unlikely to have been the Beatle. But while the author’s may not
be connected, what they wrote certainly is, because essentially what John
Lennon wrote in the late 1960s sums up what that other John wrote some 1900
years earlier – all you need is love.
True story number one; when I first went to theological college as a
Methodist 20 years ago this year I went to great lengths to plan my studies in
such a way that I would do as few biblical studies classes as possible. It’s
not that I had anything terribly against the bible, I just like Church history
more and even by that time I had met and disliked enough biblical
fundamentalists to have formed a pretty strong suspicion of the way the
scriptures can be used and abused from time to time.
Fast forward a few years and when I went back to college as an Anglican
one of the things I was told to do was fill in some of the gaps as far as
biblical studies went. I’ve always hated exams, and the only third year
biblical studies paper available that was completely internally assessed was
the Johannine Epistles in which were studied in great detail the three letters
of John. So I signed up and I loved it because even though the letters speak
constantly of love, they’re actually addressing a situation which is far more
gritty and down to earth than the subject matter might suggest. 1, 2 and 3 John
are written to a community which has had a major blow-up and the resulting split
has left hurts and bitterness and all the usual human dysfunctions that show
their faces when problems arise and in this case those problems have led to a
number of people leaving or being kicked out of the community.
Some of us have been involved in splits like that. In businesses or
clubs or churches or families, these are not pleasant times and it is
absolutely guarantied that no matter how necessary or ultimately helpful they
might be, the immediate outcome will be painful, and it’s into the aftermath of
all this that that the writer of 1 John offers, ‘Beloved, let us love one
another.’
We call 1 John a letter, or an epistle, but it’s not really. 1 John is
more like a treatise or an essay. It’s a theological argument if you like for
why and how a group of people who have been hurt and angered and every other
negative thing can and must still find a way to be together and stay together,
not just because they should, but because they have to.
True story number two; Oenone and I spent most of the past week at our
annual diocesan clergy conference in Tauranga. Suffice to say that from
Thursday morning onwards our attention was somewhat distracted. Some of you
will have read Noel Hendery’s column in yesterday’s newspaper. After the
shootings in Napier Noel decided that his column needed rewriting. Somehow
those events needed to be addressed within a Christian framework and rather
than just do that himself Noel brought it to us all. The result is really a
pastoral letter from all the clergy of Waiapu Diocese and its heart, in its
very essence, is that same message – love one another.
We’ve all been touched, I know, by the generosity and care of the
moteliers and others in and around Napier who have thrown open their doors and
businesses to those affected by the drama as well as the messages of support
and encouragement for the Police and others which have flowed in from around
the country, and I know that for every one thing we hear about there are a
dozen more we don’t. This is love, and in particular this is love as focused on
and discussed in most of the New Testament. Because in the scriptures love
isn’t a feeling or an emotion, in the world of the Gospel to love is to serve,
and to serve willingly, not grudgingly.
We all know what I mean I’m sure. You go to the supermarket and the
person at the checkout is perfectly able and efficient and the bags get packed
and the change gets given, but you just know that she would rather be
somewhere, anywhere, else. This is grudging service. True story number three; I
went to the service station the other day and I was running late and in a hurry
and a miracle happened and there was an empty lane so I went to drive straight
into it and suddenly this car is coming straight towards me. Now I’ve lived in
Havelock North for six years and I’m slowly acclimatising to the driving here
and I know that this is the sort of place where indicators aren’t just optional
but a sign of weakness, so I stopped driving forwards and I started to reverse
so this person could get out but by the time there’s a car behind me, so I have
to stop. Unfortunately the woman driving towards me doesn’t want to. So she’s
going (wave) and I’m going (stop) and even though there’s obviously a car right
behind me she actually gets out and comes over and tells me to move so she can
get out and I wasn’t feeling very loving by this point, so I told her there’s a
car behind me, just be patient, at which point she told me not to be rude and
stomped back to her car. I wasn’t in the wrong here, and I did move out of her
way, even though I was there first, but I wasn’t particularly loving.
‘Beloved, let us love one another.’ Let us serve one another, not
grudgingly, but willingly – this is the key to hearing that word love, and it’s
really the important point about 1 John, and in particular the reading we’ve
heard from it this morning. It’s about loving each other, yes, but it’s not
about loving – or serving – each other just for the sake of loving each other
or because that seems like something we should probably try to do. For the
writer of 1 John it’s absolutely imperative that the community love one another
because its by doing that – and only by doing that – that we can prove that we
know God, that we’re of God, that we are living as God has called us to live.
This is a community that has been torn apart by arguments and debates
and fights about who is right and who is wrong, and in situations like that –
situations that still happen today, far too often – how do we know which side
is the right side? How do we know which way is God’s way? “Beloved, let us love
one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and
knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
Whoever does not
love does not know God, for God is love.
Loving one another isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the way we
show who we are. It’s our very own not-so-secret handshake that identifies us
as Christians, and if the love isn’t there, if we’re focused on tearing down or
diminishing or denigrating each other, then it’s equally obvious we don’t know
God at all.
But that’s not the end of it. In first John we find that loving one
another is the mark of being a true Christian, yes, but it’s also much more: “…
for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love
God whom they have not seen.” If we can’t love one another, we can’t love God,
it’s just that simple.
Now we should note that in first John that command to love ‘a brother or
sister’ is quite specific; this is not a perfect community, these are not the
word of some ultra-inclusive, love everyone and everything, kind of pastor.
There is more than a hint of exclusivity here which points to some of the hard
edges of faith, but I want to leave that for tonight. For now I want to invite
us to stay with just those two thoughts; if we want to be what we say we are we
have to love one another, we have to serve one another, willingly,
ungrudgingly, deliberately, and when we get the hand of that, when we can
honestly say we’ve learned to love one another, then, and only then, can we
really say we love God.
‘All you need is love.’ It sounds to simple to be true, but sometimes
the hardest truths come packed in the simplest of boxes. “Beloved, let us love
one another, because love is from God.” Amen.