WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
May 7th 2006
Communion Sunday
Meditation Series: “Love is?”
Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“Now You Are Meddling…”
I John 3:16-24
Since coming to Westminster I have been told on two occasions that I had gone from preaching to meddling. Each time it was followed by something like: “keep it up.” Now, in case this phrase in not part of your vocabulary let me explain. It has to do with when a sermon begins to hit a little close to home. In other words, when a preacher moves from the general to the specific and the sermon has real implications for the ways in which we live our lives - then a preacher is meddling.
After reading over the first letter of John a few times, I am convinced this passage has moved into the category of meddling. There is no doubt in my mind that the writer of this letter was accused of meddling. After all, the writer says that the love of God in Christ means we are to have equitable sharing of resources. If this is not meddling, I do not know what is. So let us take a closer look at the words of this meddling preacher.
The reading begins with a familiar theological assertion. “We know love by this, that (Jesus) laid down his life for us.” The idea that Jesus died for us is known as the atonement. The simplistic understanding is that through the blood of Jesus we are saved. Because of the ways this theology has been abused it has come to resemble something like divine child abuse. (God can only be satisfied with the death of his Son.) Despite this abuse and misuse of this theology it should not be completely ignored.
Anthropologists have shown that the practice of some form of a blood sacrifice is evidenced in nearly all cultures. The need for blood seems to know no boundaries. Human beings are a blood thirsty people. This blood thirst has had a powerful impact on the development of Christian theology. As a result, the crucifixion is seen through a bloody lens. However, instead of simply reinforcing the age old myths and human bloodlust with the cross, something radically new has taken place. The death of Jesus was intended to be the end of human sacrifice and blood lust.
I am drawn to this understanding which, instead of working to justify violence, breaks with the human need to always find a scapegoat. The reality of this love is that human beings no longer need to follow the old pattern which seeks to find someone to kill in order to ease our fears and anxieties. In Jesus Christ, we are called to end the cycles of violence in our world instead of participate in them. The love of God in Jesus Christ brings to an end our ‘eye for an eye’ lifestyle.
Even with this challenging beginning, it is not the only challenge in the passage. While there are many difficult passages to understand in the letter of John the second verse from our reading is not one of them. It says: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brothers or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” The simple truth of this passage, and many others in the bible, is that God is not pleased when some people have an over-abundance of the world’s goods while many others starve. In our world, where money is a sacred cow of church and culture, this passage moved right from preaching to meddling.
There is little interpretation needed when confronted with passages like this. However, some of the most creative interpretations I have seen have worked to explain away these passages as having nothing to do with us. The easiest and most common side-step is to claim that the author was only talking about the community of believers. In the first letter of John, it is clear that the writer is only dealing with those people in the immediate community. This is often taken to mean we have no responsibility for those who are not Christians. While it is a correct reading of this book there is a glaring problem. The exclusion of people from the love of God, including the sharing of resources, is not biblical because it is in direct conflict with the teaching Jesus and Paul. All the creative interpretative work does not allow us to wiggle out of our responsibilities. If we have more than we need we are called to share.
However, we are left with another question. Why would the writer of this letter write about the necessity of loving only the believers? We know that the community which received this letter was experiencing conflict. It was a conflict which has nearly split the community. So, the teaching about love is dealing with a community which is finding it hard to love one another, let alone other people. Because of this it would make no sense to talk about loving all people if they could not love the person at the end of the same pew.
While this conflict is not wholly foreign to Christians in North America, we live in a very different time. After all, many see church as a voluntary society. Church for most Americans is a place where we go to find people who think like us, act like us and most often of the same race. If we are unhappy with one community we move on to the next one till our personal needs are met. While this fits our consumer mindset it was not something that the first Christians would have been familiar. Within the early Christian communities there was often great diversity of culture, belief, and social standing. As a result conflict was not uncommon. So the need to talk about loving brothers and sisters was necessary for the health of the community.
Despite the consumer church culture of North America conflict is still alive and well. We Presbyterians are no stranger to conflict either. Within many denominations there are ongoing fights about sexuality, loving-justice, biblical interpretation. (Though ultimately the conflict is really about who has power.) As I listen to, and participate in, the ever escalating rhetoric I am convinced that we are in need of a basic lesson in love for sisters and brothers from the first letter of John. We are not good at loving those Christians with whom we radically disagree. Too often, instead of heeding the words of I John to love one another, we decided to narrow who we include in the list of sisters and brothers. (The list of who is entitled to our love.) The words we need to hear once again from the letter are these: “…Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
The truth of the gospel is that God’s love is radically inclusive. Unfortunately most of the news coming from the pews does not often share in this inclusion. Instead, it tells a story which is not all that different from the world outside. Too often, Christians have lined up into camps which look an awful lot like the two major political parties. This is not the way it is supposed to be. Christians have been called to be living and transformed witnesses to the radically inclusive love of God. It means the church must not join in the calls for angry rhetoric and exclusion but show the world that there is another way.
I wish I could stand here this morning and tell you I had a three point plan for how we ought to do this. I do not. In fact, I am not all that confident that our denomination will get this right despite our best attempts. If I am honest, I must admit there are brothers and sisters in Christ with whom I have a hard time loving. I can get so wrapped up in our denominational arguments that love is often the furthest thing from my mind and heart. However, what I do know is this. We love for no other reason than that God loves us. Despite our love for violence and addiction to the ways of division and death God still loves us. Despite all of this we are still offered love.
So let me end by meddling… Who do you have the hardest time loving? Who do you find beyond the realm of God’s love? Guess what? God expects us to love them to. They have been made in the image of God they are our sisters and brothers so the command is clear. On this, there is no wiggle room – no room for interpreting it away. We are called to love because God first loved us. This is the truth; this is the good news. May God grant us the strength to love as we have been shown love. Amen.
