Tag Archives: God is love

We Will Be Like Him

Featured by

1 John 3:1-3    November 2, 2014   (St. Luke’s Church, Morton Grove)

(I was ill this weekend, and did not preach a sermon today. This is my All Saints Sunday sermon from November 2014.)

“We Will Be Like Him”

            Going on vacation. Who remembers vacations? I remember long car trips with smaller children. We did not have all the latest devices, the video games, Game Boys, small DVD players. No, those were simpler times. A number of years ago. And the children would ask, “Are we there yet?”  The trip would seem like it took forever! We would be on the road. Not quite there. Not quite yet. Still on the way. Still waiting.

            Of course, an extended car trip only seemed like it took forever! Here, in the first letter of John, the aged disciple is telling his friends something similar. But—I’m getting ahead of myself! We ought to go back to the beginning of this short passage. Just a little chunk, really, of what John says in this whole letter. 

            Let’s start with an overview. This letter was written to a group of dispersed believers. Similar to several other New Testament letters. The Apostle John was older by this time—late in the first century. He wanted to straighten out some misunderstandings. And, he wanted to get several main points across.  I’m not going to test you on these, but for people who were just wondering. Number one, God is light. Number two, God is love. Number three, Jesus Christ was a real human being, not just a spirit. Those main points were to combat some disagreements and squabbles that had already come about. Even though Christianity was only fifty or so years old.   

            I’ve given you all an overview, a bird’s eye view. Now, let’s dive in with a magnifying glass, and look at two verses in Chapter three.

I’ll remind us all of verse one of chapter three: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” This statement of John’s is significant! Why? Because this verse tells us such an important fact. We are called children of God. That’s incontrovertible. Why? Not just because you and I say so. No! But because God says so, that’s why!

I am not sure, but I suspect that John’s friends, the people he’s writing the letter to, have a similar problem as the disciples did. I’ve mentioned this problem before, when Jesus was here on this earth. A couple of decades before the writing of this letter. I don’t think the other believers “got it.” I don’t think they fully understood where John was coming from. That’s why he tells them in several different ways and several different places in this letter that God is love, and God gives love.  

The starting point, where John starts from at this point in the letter, is that God has named us all God’s children. Bam! Named! [ hand forward ]  Done! [ ref signal ]

We have a problem, though. The problem is the world. As the first chapter of the Gospel of John verse 10 tells us, Jesus “was in the world, and the world came into being through Him; yet the world did not know Him.” The world has a huge blind spot. The world is not in sync with God. The world is hostile to God, even though God made the world. And the solar system. And the whole universe. It doesn’t matter—the world is reeling under the effects of sin, and is therefore hostile to God.

What can we do about this negative state of affairs? Check out verse two. John says it again! “Beloved (or, friends), we are God’s children now.” John wants to make certain that we have got it!

We all—each of us—are called God’s children. Who is the oldest member of our congregation? And who is the youngest member of our congregation? All God’s children. Each of you is, and me, too! Each of us is God’s beloved child!

Yes, the hostile world gets in the way of living life God’s way. Nobody ever said the Christian walk and the Christian life was going to be a piece of cake. Ask the Apostle Paul. Ask the other apostles, including John.

But let’s move on. My favorite part of this passage is coming up! Remember how I started this sermon, a few minutes ago?  I started with the mention of vacations. Who remembers vacations? I remember long car trips with smaller children. A number of years ago. And the children would ask, “Are we there yet?”  The trip would seem like it took forever! We would be on the road. Not quite there. Not quite yet. Still on the way. Still waiting.  

I’m suggesting the concept of being on a very, very long trip. Not arriving yet, still being on the way. We are still in transit. We are children of God now, but not yet, too! We have a seeming paradox of both/and. Now, and not yet! That’s what I compare with this statement of John’s. Listen to verse two: “What we will be has not yet been revealed.”

Did you hear what John told us? That is why I say we are still in transit. Nobody knows for sure what we will be. And the best part of all, in my opinion, is this last sentence of verse two: “What we do know is this: when Jesus is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.” Did you hear? “We will see Him as He is.”

Did you all know we all are wearing veils? Invisible veils, that keep us from fully understanding the words of Scripture. We hear in Exodus that Moses talked face to face with the Lord. As a man talks to his friend. And whenever Moses talked like that, face to face with God, his face actually shone. The glory of the Lord made his face shine supernaturally! Did you know that the people of Israel were so scared of Moses after he talked with the Lord—and his face got all shiny—that they begged Moses to wear a veil? They wanted a separation between them and the glory, the power, the presence of God.   

Isn’t it similar with us, sometimes? The straight-up glory of God is too much for most of us to handle. We are still in transit. Still on the road, on this very long trip to heaven. Both/and. Now, and not yet.

Again, verse two: “What we do know is this: when Jesus is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.” Today, when we commemorate All Saints Day, is that time of year when we remember again and again the ‘now’ and ‘not yet’ of God’s kingdom. Yes, we are God’s children! Yes! A thousand times yes! We have the best guarantee in the world for this, too. God says so.

But what about the ‘not yet’ part? How can we reconcile that? Let me tell you my take on that: I do not know.  NOW but NOT YET. We are not quite sure. We don’t know the fullness of what that means. But I’ll tell you who does know. The saints in glory, our fellow believers who have gone before us, have received that fullness. They know. With unveiled faces, they see Jesus, glorified in heaven.

As for us? As we are here, in transit? Now, and not yet? We wait in this world, expectant. We live in hope, thankfulness, and gratitude as we gather around this table. As we gather for this meal, joined with the church of every time and place – with all the saints.

Alleluia, amen.

@chaplaineliza

(Suggestion: visit me at my other blogs: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and  A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!

Love Drives Out Fear

by

“Love Drives Out Fear”

1 john 4-18-perfect-love-casts-out-fear.

1 John 4:7-8, 13-19 (4:18) – September 16, 2018 – from Dave Ivaska’s book Be Not Afraid

When I was in grade school, I remember a story I read where a boy was punished very severely. He was beaten, and sent to the barn without any supper. I don’t remember where the story was from (probably in one of my textbooks), but I do remember my gut reaction to the moving and evocative words that described the boy and his situation. Sullen, lonely, filled with anger, but at the same time torn with some remains of love for the brutal father who had beaten him and turned him out of the clapboard house on the frontier into the cold night.

What kinds of fear do you remember? If not fear that you experienced, fear and anxiety of someone close to you? Those feelings, emotions and experiences can be so traumatic. I know, because I dealt with many painful, fearful, anxious situations while a hospital chaplain. And, sometimes, I was completely helpless to do anything to lend a hand.

Is there some fear or anxiety that even now surfaces from deep within? If so, I am so sorry to remind you of that painful experience. Except—in this sermon, in this scripture reading today, the apostle John deals with God’s love, and with personal fear and punishment. We can relate to John’s moving words.

To back up, in this letter John talks a great deal about love. God is love. Love is of God. We love, because God first loved us. Simple words, yet profound ideas. In our reading today, John continues with more of the same: “7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

Yet, you and I know that we cannot love all the time. Because, we are human. We get angry, and lonely, and fearful. Sometimes we back away, isolate, or even snap back at others. All of us do at times. Mile-deep emotions and mile-wide feelings come upon so many as we live our day-to-day lives—in the first century, as well as the twenty-first. Awkward situations and traumatic experiences choke out the joy and delight of living in community, of life in the family of God. What can we do about these complications of living, and of loving?

The apostle John knew very well about this dilemma. He was the youngest of the disciples. He was identified as “the disciple Jesus loved.” He lived the longest of just about any of the direct witnesses to Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. He wrote this letter late in his long life, a life full of hardship and trauma, full of persecution and anxiety. Yet—he was able to write moving words such as these: “Dear friends, let us love one another.” Matter-of-fact presentation of a simple yet profound concept.

John communicates God’s unconditional love to us in this letter, even in difficult circumstances. He shows us Jesus and His love through these simple words.

John understood very well what kinds of horrible things the persecutors could (and probably would) do to any Christians they got in their clutches. From the writings and letters of the second century, we know that John had personal experience with the persecutions. He was finally exiled to a tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea called Patmos.

So, what does John have to say about fear? We are talking about gut-wrenching fear. Remember, he was well-acquainted with fear, and its close cousin anxiety. Verse 18 says, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

The word for “fear” John uses here is the Greek word phobo, or the run-of-the-mill word that is found in the suffix “-phobia.” Many of us are familiar with all kinds of phobias, from fear of heights or enclosed spaces, to fear of spiders or snakes, to fear of the dark. Could I remind us of a certain phobia that Charlie Brown had, in the Charlie Brown Christmas special? He was frightened of everything. He had “pantaphobia.”

Perhaps the apostle John “does mean something closer to Charlie Brown’s depression-inducing pantaphobia in which fear becomes a general way to go at life.  John yokes this fear that has no place in perfect love specifically with a fear ‘of punishment,’ which may be an indication that what he is talking about is the fear of still being punished for our sins.” [1]

What a fear, indeed! Being afraid that God probably will not forgive me, no matter how much I do, no matter how hard I try to gain God’s acceptance. That unfeeling, unforgiving attitude from God would break my heart. Sort of like the attitude of an uncaring, unfeeling, even brutal parent. Not at all like Jesus, like the God whom John knew personally.

After this life is done, we move into the life to come. Common questions many would ask: “’How can I be sure I did enough for God to love me?  What if God plays all the sins of my life on some giant screen for all to see?  How will I ever live down the humiliation of that?  How do I know there is grace sufficient for even me?’ This is clearly the kind of fear of punishment John is pointing to.  And it is a miserable thing to have dangling over your head” [2]

Again, we get full assurance from John. And, John intimately knows Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, the Messiah, the creator of all the universe, the Logos, the Word. John is the beloved disciple, the one close to Jesus’s heart. John lets us know that “perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Yet, what are the next words from John? “We love, because He first loved us.” John circles back to this simple yet profound truth.

Commentator Judith Jones says, “God made love real and present by sending Jesus to live among us and to die for us. God continues to show us love through Jesus’ life-giving presence among us.” [3] That is the presence John is a witness to. That is the presence John is willing to suffer for. John loves, and through extension, we all love, because Jesus loves us. Unconditionally, fully, and with all His heart. Jesus loves us. Period.

So, it does not matter what our creaturely, very human selves tell us about phobias. It does not matter what Charlie Brown and his fear of everything whispers to our insides. John’s witness is that Jesus loves us, period. Jesus’s perfect, unconditional love drives out fear. Not only fear about everything on the outside, about fighting, hardship, and persecution, but about illness, loneliness, and sorrow.

Most importantly, His perfect unconditional love drives out the fear that I won’t measure up, that I won’t be able to do enough, be enough for Jesus. We love, because He first loved us. Period. John is a faithful and true witness to Jesus and His perfect, unconditional love.

Do you believe that? “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” John tells us so, right here in this reading today. Receive the Good News of the Gospel. Jesus came to save sinners, of which I am chief.

Fear is done with, banished, gone. Jesus came into the world to love us, unconditionally. That is truly Good News.

[1] http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/easter-5b-2/?type=lectionary_epistle

The Center for Excellence in Preaching, Stan Mast, resources from Calvin Theological Seminary: Comments & Observations, Textual Points, illustration ideas, 2015.

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2448

Commentary, 1 John 4:7-21, Judith Jones, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

@chaplaineliza

(Suggestion: visit me at my regular blog for 2018: matterofprayer: A Year of Everyday Prayers. #PursuePEACE – and my other blog,  A Year of Being Kind . Thanks!)