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.