Phil Kniss: Getting personal

We know love by this
Walking in Love and Light: Reflections on the First Epistle of John
1 John 3:1-7, 16-24


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A lot has happened in the two weeks since I last preached.

There’s been some disequilibrium.

On the political front,

someone attempted to assassinate the former president.

And a week later, our current president dropped out of the race.

And the vice president took his place on the ticket.

On the church front,

a week ago Virginia Mennonite Conference

had a consequential delegate session,

in which, sadly, 10 congregations withdrew from the conference,

and two congregations closed their doors.

But we also welcomed a new congregation in formation.

And a vote was taken, anticipated for over a year,

to reaffirm our connection with Mennonite Church USA.

It just needed a majority,

but passed with 75%, reassuring most of us,

but no doubt causing disequilibrium for others.

Meanwhile, Park View is undergoing

a complicated and multiphased leadership transition.

It’s going well so far, but it can be a bit unsettling.

On the personal front,

our daughter and son-in-law and two grandchildren

are moving back to Harrisonburg this week.

And 3 days ago, I officially became a senior citizen.

Oh, and there’s a retirement happening in there somewhere,

end of August . . . or was that April . . . ?

(inside joke for those who were here last Sunday).

What we tend to do in times of

uncertainty, anxiety, or disequilibrium,

is to gravitate toward whatever’s reliable and predictable,

and hang on for dear life.

I see it in our politics.

I see it in our culture wars.

I see it in our conference and denominational struggles.

I see it in the lives of families in transition.

I see it in myself.

And it’s not all bad.

Grasping for something steady can be healthy or unhealthy.

Our mental and emotional health can actually benefit

from having something familiar to hold close to us,

while we navigate the shifting ground under our feet.

Toddlers might need a stuffed animal.

Adults might need a brisk walk around the same block

at the same time every evening.

 But we can also easily veer into unhealthy ways

of trying to steady the shifting ground underneath us.

Sometimes we oversimplify and categorize and label—

both things and people.

That’s usually easier than dealing with

nuance in ideas, or complexity in people.

It takes a lot less energy to dismiss someone

as a MAGA hothead, or as a left-wing nutcase,

and walk away from them,

than it does to deal with their full humanity,

and to welcome their story.

_____________________

All this is to say I found the words of 1 John 3

to be some much needed words.

Fresh air blowing into a stuffy room

where it’s sometimes hard to breathe.

This epistle is a good reminder for any of us

who have gotten caught up in the anxieties of our day,

of our nation, of our culture, of our church, of our families,

and are starting to suffocate in it.

It is a call to find our spiritual and relational grounding

in the deep, deep love of God.

The love of God for us,

and the love of God for all whom God has made.

The writer says,

We know love by this, that Christ laid down his life for us—

and we ought to lay down our lives for others.

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods

and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Little children, let us love not in word or speech

but in deed and truth.

We will know love by our capacity to embody that love

in the most challenging of relationships

with real, breathing, human beings—

those who are like us, and those who are unlike us.

All who God made in love, in God’s own image and likeness.

_____________________

The other night, or I should say, the other morning,

sometime around 3am,

I woke up, and had some trouble getting back to sleep.

No one reason. Something I ate? Something on my mind?

Now, this might not work for everybody, but . . .

what helps me get back to sleep is reading a philosophical essay.

I subscribe to an online philosophy journal,

which is quite interesting in the daytime,

but at night, with my device on dark mode and the color off,

so it doesn’t trick my melatonin,

I’ll read some deep esoteric thoughts for 15 or 20 minutes,

and soon my eyelids get heavy, and I can go back to sleep.

It slows down my brain.

But the other morning, the essay I read was a little too interesting,

and too connected to 1 John 3,

so I used up most of an hour reading it.

Didn’t help my sleep, but helped my sermon prep.

The author was philosophy professor Bennett Gilbert,

writing about the philosophy of personalism.

He said that philosophy inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s

dream of a better world,

and said it could inspire us as well,

in these fraught times in which we live.

The essay was published just 5 days ago.

So I’m guessing Gilbert had in mind,

even the events of the last two weeks.

Simply put, the philosophy of personalism says that

reality begins with the individual “person”

and with personal consciousness,

to which we attach the most profound worth.

Some philosophers use metaphysics and other non-religious models

to develop their personalism,

But some, the author noted, develop it through

the theologies of Abrahamic religions

like Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

And Martin Luther King Jr studied under

professors at Boston University who were renowned

for their work on the philosophy of personalism.

Gilbert started out the article with a quote from King’s book

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

King was in an airport terminal

after the march from Selma to Montgomery,

and looking out over the sea of people there

who came to Montgomery to support them.

Later, he wrote about that moment,

“As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and rabbis, labor organizers, lawyers, doctors, housemaids and shopworkers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew I was seeing a microcosm of the mankind of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood.”

Gilbert surmises that King’s study of the philosophy of personalism

inspired that observation.

Then he quoted some lines from King’s PhD dissertation,

in which he wrote,

Only a personal being can be good…

Goodness in the true sense of the word is an attribute of personality.

The same is true of love.

Outside of personality, love loses its meaning…

What we love deeply is persons – we love in the concrete…

A process may generate love,

but the love is directed primarily not toward the process,

but toward the persons who generate that process.

Gilbert summarized King’s thinking this way:

“King subordinates everything to the flourishing of human persons because goodness in this world has no home other than that of persons. Their wellbeing is what makes the events of our lives and of our collective history worthy of effort and care.”

I hear echoes of 1 John 3 in that.

“Let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.”

It is important and worthwhile to love ideas,

and pursue our ideals.

I have long called us, as a church,

to think clearly and carefully, to think critically.

But if we are to be faithful conduits of the love of God,

our love of ideas has to bow to our love of persons.

Let me repeat.

I think this is crucial for the polarized times in which we live.

“Our love of ideas has to bow to our love of persons.”

This does not diminish, in any way,

the importance of critical thinking.

It just clarifies the starting point.

1 John 3, and apparently, the philosophy of personalism,

say that the starting point in our moral obligation

is the real and concrete person,

not an abstract idea or ideology.

God created all human beings in love,

and placed in all human beings the divine image—

even in people who we regularly

label with derogatory nicknames.

It’s going to get worse, folks.

The call for unity after the attempted assassination 2 weeks ago,

lasted for about two minutes.

People are right back to name-calling and dehumanizing.

As the struggle for political victory gets more intense

leading up to November,

we can walk a different path.

We can choose to see past the baseball cap

or T-shirt or bumper sticker,

and see a human being God loves,

a human being of inherent worth and value,

a human being with a life story.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a time for public protest,

or vocal messaging of matters of moral urgency.

The call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza is such a time.

I fully support those connected to Mennonite Action

marching peacefully to Washington this weekend,

and letting their voice be heard.

I also fully trust they will share their message

without dehumanizing or dismissing real persons.

I expect their long walk will also lead to some long talks

with people who don’t share their beliefs and convictions.

Those talks can be a win for everyone.

My challenge to us all this morning,

and the challenge of 1 John 3,

is to “get personal.”

Ideas are important.

And we should keep thinking clearly and speaking clearly.

But let’s keep the focus where it belongs—

on the well-being of the person who is loved by God,

without condition, without limit.

Our response depend on the circumstances,

but the person in front of us will still be in focus.

Whether they are in poverty, and need our tangible help,

as the example in 1 John 3:17.

Or whether they are struggling with life in some other way,

and need to be listened to.

Or whether they are acting out of fear and anxiety,

and need a calm person to look into their eyes and see them.

Or whether, even, they are actively attacking us or our values.

However the situation presents itself,

they are fundamentally a human being God loves.

On some rare occasions, we might need, for our own safety,

to protect ourselves, or run for cover,

or simply disengage from an unhealthy conversation.

But even then,

we can choose to see the other as a human being of worth.

We may not be the ones

able to look them in the eyes and communicate that.

But we can still choose not to dehumanize them,

and deepen the wounds that we all suffer from.

This will take lots of discipline,

lots of practice,

lots of patience,

as Election Day nears,

and after Election Day is over, regardless of outcome.

It will also require us, who seek to live this way,

to lean on each other for support,

and not depend on mass media or memes or viral videos,

to figure out how to live well.

We need to get personal . . . together.

So let’s stay together . . . and keep working at it.

—Phil Kniss, July 28, 2024

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Paula Stoltzfus: The Power of AND

God is light and life
Walking in Love and Light: Reflections on the First Epistle of John
1 John 1:1-2:2


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Phil Kniss: Loved and chosen

Belonging at the table
BRINGING CHURCH BACK to the TABLE
WORSHIP & PICNIC IN THE PARK
John 15:1-5, 12-13; Romans 12:3-5, 9-11; Hebrews 10:23-25


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God is love.

There is nothing more fundamentally true about God, than that.

The God we discover in scripture—

both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—

shows a God who is moved, again and again and again,

by a deep and abiding and unconditional love.

God created this world we live in . . . out of love.

And God’s love was expressed most fully,

when God created, and sought to commune with, human beings.

That’s the starting point for our theology.

God loves.

God loves us, and wants our love in return.

God longs for us to flourish,

to fulfill our created purpose—

and we were created to be

in harmony with God and creation,

living fruitful lives that extend God’s love

to those  around us.

So . . . church at the table

is where we embody this love

in daily life and ordinary relationships.

It’s where we belong . . . in the deepest sense of the word.

_____________________

That all sounds so good, and so right,

and . . . so hard to pull off successfully, in real life.

It’s human nature to protect ourselves.

And my desire for protection and security is in tension

with my desire for community and belonging.

Because, to protect myself,

I need to hold tight to whatever is shielding me

from pain or discomfort or loss.

But to belong to others in community,

I need to relax my grip on that shield,

and depend on the free will of others

to treat me kindly and justly.

I need to risk being disappointed sometimes.

So it’s a constant dance,

this thing of belonging, and community.

We all want it. We need it. We search for it.

But we can’t make it happen.

We can only open ourselves to it.

It’s a gift we can only put ourselves in position to receive.

_____________________

In scripture, we have many metaphors for belonging.

Jesus talked about a vine and branches,

in one of our readings today from John’s Gospel.

We are all connected to each other,

due to our common connection to the main vine.

In this case, Jesus said he was the vine.

And each branch has its own role to play.

We are each responsible to “abide.”

That’s not a passive thing on our part.

Abiding requires continual openness,

a constant inflow and outflow of life.

If we choose to isolate for protection,

we cut off the flow,

and we lose our connection to the vine.

Same with the body analogy Paul uses so often,

including today’s text from Romans 12.

The body of Christ is manifold and diverse.

There are many, many parts to it.

And every part has a singular, and essential, function.

Our functions are all different, and all needed.

So Paul’s words of advice are

“let God’s love flow” . . . unimpeded

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good;

love one another with mutual affection;

outdo one another in showing honor.

And later, the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, which we heard,

gave us an even more pointed directive,

if we want to flourish and belong in community . . . writing,

“let us consider how to provoke one another

to love and good deeds,

not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some,

but encouraging one another,

and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

_____________________

So what does it really mean . . . in practical ways,

to truly belong in a group that

“provokes each other to love and good deeds,” (Hebrews 10)

or that

“outdoes each other in showing honor,” (Romans 12)

or that

“lays down one’s life for each other.” (John 15)

That is the heart of the question we’ve been pondering as a church,

for the last year or so,

as we have reflected on the meaning of belonging,

and the meaning of membership.

How do we bring together these equally important values—

on the one hand,

affirmation, love, affection, respect,

honoring others, even at personal cost,

and on the other hand,

advocating for what is good and right,

going deep with each other,

being secure enough with each other to provoke each other

toward the life God intends for us.

In other words,

full acceptance of who we are, as we are,

and active loving engagement with one another,

helping each other become

the best version of ourselves.

_____________________

There are many nuances to that question,

and different ways to approach it.

I’ll just suggest one, as food for thought this morning.

And that is, the sequence matters.

One needs to come before the other.

The full acceptance and love for each other,

for who we are, as we are,

needs to come first.

We must know, beyond doubt, that we are loved and valued

and chosen to be included in this community, full stop.

Without a deep and secure knowing that we belong, and are loved,

we are in no position to be provoked by others

to become something more than we are now.

It takes relational depth, and trust built over time,

if we’re going to have any integrity

when we try to call out the best in someone else

who has not yet discovered their best.

Depth. Time. Love. Patience.

It takes all that.

And a willingness to keep loving and keep including,

even when we don’t see any movement

in the direction we’d like to see.

And to make it even more challenging,

let’s admit that we ourselves

may also need someone to call out our best in us,

that we are neglecting to see.

In fact, that “someone” just might turn out to be

the very one we were wishing would change.

All our knowledge is incomplete.

We are wise if we live like that’s the case.

And put our heart and soul into the main job,

of making sure our fellow travelers know they are loved,

and are chosen, and that they belong at our table.

I’ll end with an anecdote and an invitation.

The anecdote comes from the author Anne LaMott,

who wrote, in her book Grace Eventually,

about a Sunday School game she would play

when she taught the pre-kindergarten class at her church.

She called the game “loved and chosen.”

Here is what she writes about the scene in her classroom,

with the children on the floor, and she, sitting on a couch.

Here are Anne’s words . . .

I sat on the couch, and glanced around slowly

in a goofy, menacing way,

and then said, “Is anyone here wearing

a blue sweatshirt with Pokemon on it?”

A four-year-old looked down at his chest,

astonished to discover that he matched this description,

like . . . what are the odds?

He raised his hand.

“Come over here to the couch, I said.

You are so loved and so chosen.”

He clutched at himself like a beauty pageant finalist.

Then I asked if anyone that day was wearing

green socks with brown shoes?

a Giants cap? an argyle vest?

Each of them turned out to be loved and chosen,

which does not happen so often . . .”

And they all ended up on the couch.

Because everyone is loved and chosen.

I believe Anne is right. A foundational truth about God,

is that God loves us, and God chooses us.

Now the invitation . . .

You’re probably ready to get up and stretch a little.

So go ahead, stand and stretch.

Now, in a second, I’m going to invite you

to turn to the person on your left or your right,

and say, “You are loved. You are chosen. You belong.”

Or maybe even walk around a bit,

and find someone else to say that to,

either just because you want to,

or because you think they might need to hear it,

or someone you may not even know.

I assure you, that everyone here deserves those words today,

“You are loved. You are chosen. You belong.”

So I invite you to be the one to deliver those words to them.

And of course, others will be saying them back to you.

“You are loved. You are chosen. You belong.”  Go.

_____________________

Now I invite us to return to our seats,

and prepare for a song of response.

And it occurs to me this might be a good time to add something,

in light of the attempted assassination

of former president Trump last evening.

It’s shocking and disturbing for everyone of us

who want to live in peace with all our neighbors.

And it comes during one of our most difficult seasons

in our public and political life,

when chaos and demonization of the other is par for the course.

My invitation this morning to speak love and belonging to others,

should not only apply to other members of the church,

or to our own faith community.

Our missional task in this moment,

is to reassure every human being of their worth,

of their inherent goodness,

and make that our dominant message.

We don’t have much control over how

the political machinery,

and social media,

and public press,

are going to spin this thing,

and react, and point fingers.

We do have control over ourselves,

at the small scale,

at the table,

with each other,

with our neighbors,

across the backyard fence,

to let love have both the first and last word.

The song of response Karen chose, days ago,

fits both my sermon, and current events.

The words are,

Between darkness and light I will always walk;

and wherever I will go,

I will open a window of light,

and will plant the seeds of love.

May it be so.

—Phil Kniss, July 14, 2024

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