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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