Sermon from 1 John 4:7-12 for August 26

So…

I assume you have had a great summer, and that you have done wonderful things and learned wonderful things, and that you are excited for fall to get started.

What are some of those things you have done and learned?

One of the things that Sue and I are learning about is how much fun it is to be grandparents. Noah is cute and snuggly and easy to love.

With family, it is easy to be in love and to do loving things. With friends too.

Helping out when needed, remembering special days, getting gifts, taking meals, sharing our resources, time, energy, and emotions is easy.

I mean our fdays at Loon Lake were glorious, and Loony as always, but wonderful.

But when it comes to time with others we can be quite guarded.

Nobody wants to get hurt, and so naturally, we are careful with offering our loving support to folks we don’t know well. And when it comes to people who just don’t think right and do right, we are prepared to not be loving at all.

Yet here is John, purported to be one of the Apostles, telling his group of followers of Jesus, and us, something quite radical, that loving each other, even our enemies, is the evidence that God is in us.

Have you ever wondered about your salvation, or about your status, as it were, with the kingdom of God? John says the evidence you need of a sanctified (read that God changed life) is the way you love others.

Now Jesus said essentially the same thing. That it is easy to love family and friends. There is no credit in that in the Kindgsom of God. That is assumed. Even the some of the worst characters on Game of Thrones can do that, though often poorly.  

The fact is, we reward those who love us. In legal terms it is called, I think, a quid pro quo, or in other language a tit-for-tat, or you butter my bread, I butter yours. Give the same as what you get. Loving your lovers is the way it works.

But in the Kingdom of God, the deal is different. God loves us completely, even when we don’t come close to loving God completely.

And so, the author of first John points out, it become clear that there should be a wild overage of love in us, enough to share with even the nastiest of people, because God has overflowed his love in us.

We should be like a backyard pool with a firehose in it, slopping over the edges full; like a river where it has rained for days, flowing like a torrent, like a Niagara Falls, so overwhelmed with God’s love that we can’t help but share it with others, even the kind of others Jesus kept love: outcasts!

So, all the evidence you need that God is in your life, is your willingness, and in fact your actions, that show without any doubt that love is overflowing from you.

So how you doing with that? On a scale of 1 – 10? Maybe a three or four? Remembering that loving your spouse, your children, your parents, your in-laws (maybe a point for that) and your friends doesn’t count.

All that counts is the overflowing love you have shown by your attitude, but also more importantly by your actions, to folks who you don’t know, or perhaps you may honestly feel don’t deserve your love, or even Gods’?

So if you are doing very well at that, what is holding you back? Loving others who don’t love us is hard. It feels scary, leaves us feeling vulnerable. Loving jerks and people we don’t know very well is hard.

Think about it. The list of those folks we would find hard to love would of course be unique to each of us. Your crabby neighbors, that jerk at work, the folks at Spectrum Internet, or the fool that cut you off in traffic.

But some of the folks might be ones we share in common.

In any case, the evidence of a Christian life, Christ in us, is the way we individually, and as a community of faith choose to love folks who need our love, but whom we don’t have a connection with, or whom we don’t see as deserving.

As a church, we try to find ways to challenge our faith, challenge our love, by seeking out individuals and communities of people that we can love. It’s one of the reasons our Deacons’ work so hard to get us to feed the hungry, help folks with medical conditions, care for those grieving.

And it is why we would send a group of folks to Texas to rehab flood damaged housing.

Sure, it will help them; but more importantly, it will allow us to let that love of Christ in us flow.

It’s why we send money to help with Rachel’s projects in Namibia.

It’s why we are always on the look out for needs nearby that we can make a difference doing something about.

It’s because we need to love others! It is who we are in Jesus!

So, what are you doing to love others?

And now I get to sing! 

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He who loveth not knoweth not God for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another!” 1 John 4:7-8

Love is the proof that God’s love is living in us!

Amen.

Sermon from 1 John 4:1-6 for August 19

So…

What are some pretty important things that Christians disagree about?

What do you in a world of competing understandings of the Christian Faith, in a world where some seem to feel that the faith supports one idea and yet others make clear that the faith suggests no such thing?

There are lots of controversial things happening in our current world that rock solid believers in Jesus disagree about. National politics have become intense. Even local issues can place Christians of different backgrounds in very different places.

What do we do about a power plant, Orthodox Jews and renegade Buddhists. Are we for solar farms, are we for high density housing, do we trust our neighbors, even when they are very different from us: didn’t grow up in dairy country and can’t stand the smell of manure!

Christians under oppression seem to do better at hanging together on difficult issues. They seem to have understood American Patriot Ben Franklin’s words: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

But in our world, Christians come in all varieties from all kinds of theological perspectives, and so we don’t often agree on much. 

Is it essential, for example, that Jerusalem be reestablished as the capitol of Israel and the Temple be rebuilt so Jesus can return as the Southern Baptists and many non-denominational Christians believe; or is it possible that the Israel that God is most concerned about is the church his Son Jesus established, and that the end of time is a complete mystery which will be revealed in time, like Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, the Reformed Church, Catholics, and even Greek, Russian, Syrian, and the Coptic Orthodox Churches believe?

And how do you sort out the differences?

We’ll the larger church has always believed that there are four standards for checking out the truth: scripture, church tradition, the community of believers with whom you worship, your own conscience, guided by the Holy Spirit. Keep in mind, all of them are potentially faulty if you wish them to be.

Some think scripture is never faulty. Which is true, unless of course you read it badly, or you read it in such a way, that even though Jesus makes clear that we are to love our enemies, you choose to read about Jaal pounding a tent peg through General Sisera’s eye socket and say, “that’s what a good Christian does”!

There is the old story of the man whose devotional reading consisted of cracking his Bible at random and reading the first verse his finger touched.

One morning this was his verse for the day: "And Judas went out and hanged himself." That can't be it, he thought. So, he tried again. "Go thou and do likewise" was his second verse. Chagrined, he thought, the third time will be a charm and read, "What thou doest, do quickly!"

Evidently, he was reading the King James Version.

The point is, for a person who takes scripture seriously, we need to see that scripture is the Word of God, but it is also a collection of stories about God’s people, and sometimes the story is about how they got is all wrong!

So, we need to temper what we read about Jaal’s story in the book of Judges in the Old Testament, with Jesus, the incarnate son of God’s specific teaching in the New Testament.

And the same is true for the others. We need to check things out with scripture, church tradition, the community of believers, and with your own conscience listening always for the Spirit of God, but we also need to use a bit of common sense.

When we disagree, we need to take the time to listen to each other; what a gift and challenge that would be! But we also need to listen to what these other four means of grace, these standards have to say. It won’t be easy. Many of us are hard of hearing, and sometimes the Spirit has to shout. But the idea is that we would all end up on the same team.

In the meantime, we need to be generous with each other. We need to love each other, especially since we have been commanded to do exactly that. And we need to open our hearts to God, asking that God’s lead us to a place where together we can serve him, our world, our country, our local community and each other well.

May it be so.

Amen.

Careful: Sermons Ahead

Friends:
After having been away for several weeks it's time to start preaching again!

It was fun seeing Noah our grandson who is now 6 weeks old and over 12 lbs, spending time with Brian and Rachel and Katie and Mary and his royal majesty Noah, riding in the power boat and kayaking out to the bay, and seeing the kingbirds, white tail deer, and even a blue haron from only 15 feet away.

And it was a delight to go to Georgia for the wedding of Laura Lee (Patterson) Huttenback (whom I baptized some 30 years ago) to Andy Sidford in Dahlonega Georgia at the Frogtown Winery.

(Be sure to ask my bride of 35 years, what it was like to pan for gold, eat at the Bourbon Street restaurant, and travel through the Luray Caverns! We that and drive through driving rain storms there and back!)

But regular life calls and it is time to get back to the Word and sharing it with a very blessed community of Jesus' followers. And cut the grass. And unpack. And get ready for fall. Sigh!

Thanks to Elders Candy Burnett, Jim Eggleton, Edgar Hayes, and Elizabeth Orengo for leading worship and preaching. They are true disciples putting their spiritual gifts to work on behalf of the community.

And thanks to all our staff members, who although the boss is away, choose to play with love and grace as they do their ministry of typing and cleaning and playing and caring for God's people here in Otisville.

We are truly blessed as a family, a larger one as we add more little ones as well as amazing adults.

May God continue to work in this wonderful outpost of His kingdom!

See you on Sunday!

Jeff