Walking in Love and Light: Reflections on the First Epistle of John
1 John 4:7-21
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Love is work.
I don’t know of any love that isn’t work.
It’s meaningful work.
It’s life-giving work.
It’s worthwhile work.
But it’s work.
Which by definition
takes energy,
takes intentionality,
takes persistence,
and can be deeply challenging.
_____________________
And there’s a lot of talk about love in 1 John.
1 John is a general epistle,
a letter that reads more like a sermon than a letter.
We believe it was written at a time of extended
pressure against the church,
which was still a primarily Jewish movement,
scattered around the Roman Empire.
And it was also a time of turmoil from within.
External pressure came from both the local Jewish synagogue,
which in some Roman cities
had already expelled followers of Jesus from the synagogue,
and it came from the Roman Emperor cult,
which was actively and violently coming for those
who refused to bow to Caesar
and participate in Emperor worship.
And this extended pressure campaign was taking its toll.
The church suffered within its own ranks,
as some members left,
recanting Jesus to rejoin neighbors at the synagogue,
or compromising their faith in Christ as One Lord,
by also participating in emperor worship,
thus avoiding the wrath of the Empire and staying alive.
So . . . the pressure was real and great.
The church was divided as to how to respond to the Jewish community,
how to respond to the Empire,
and how to live with each other . . .
how to navigate their vast theological and cultural differences,
as Jews and Gentiles in one small fellowship.
The early church was a setting in which
it would have been especially challenging to do the work of love.
Perhaps, it’s no less challenging for the church today,
in our context,
with external and internal pressures on a variety of fronts.
How to do the work of love . . . ?
“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God;
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
—verses 7 and 8.
When it comes to love, the rock-solid starting point
for the early church, and the church today,
is our identity as a people bound in relational covenant
to the God of the universe, who IS love,
who embodied love in the person of Jesus Christ.
The love to which we are called is not an emotion.
It is a work to be done.
And it is work that can best be done,
within a sturdy commitment to each other,
within covenant.
In a little bit, we are going to be celebrating together,
the decision that Lewis Yoder has made
to enter into covenant relationship, through baptism.
I’m sure that ritual will be accompanied by some feelings,
some emotions, on the part of Lewis, and his family, and us.
Those feelings are wonderful,
but they are only tangential.
They aren’t the substance.
The substance is
the choice Lewis is making to do the work of love,
and the choice we make to partner with Lewis in that work.
_____________________
In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate the angle taken by
author Scot McKnight, in his book Fellowship of Differents.
Scot defines “covenant” as the “rugged commitment to love.”
There is nothing casual about covenant.
We enter into covenant with resolve and trepidation.
We assume it will be hard work.
We assume we will change in the process.
There will be disappointment, pain and struggle,
but the covenant will survive,
if we are willing to be transformed by it.
God’s covenant, or “rugged commitment” to love us—
is the main story of scripture, highlighted here in 1 John.
We human partners in the covenant fail—
miserably, and repeatedly.
But God keeps faith, keeps covenant,
keeps reaching to close the gap.
McKnight came up with a rubric that I like,
which I’ve shared here before,
and in my sermon at the Mennonite Church USA assembly
in Orlando some years ago.
McKnight says God’s covenant love
shows up in three movements in relation to us.
First, God promises to be WITH God’s people,
to move into our space, join us in our messy lives.
God came and walked WITH Adam and Eve in the garden.
During the exodus from slavery, God was WITH Israel
in a cloud and in fire.
God promised Israel, “I will never leave or forsake you,” Deut. 31.
God is first and foremost WITH God’s people—
in the tabernacle, in the ark of the covenant,
in the prophets, and ultimately, profoundly WITH us,
in Jesus of Nazareth,
who was even named Emmanuel, “God with us.”
God WITH us is the heart of the Gospel.
Second, God is FOR us.
God’s presence is not neutral.
God forms an alliance with God’s people,
in order to bless the world,
to bring about God’s saving purposes for all creation.
In Christ, God shows ultimate solidarity FOR us,
as he bears our sin and suffering on the cross.
God says “I am FOR you.”
I will be your God, and you will be my people.
I will send my Spirit to be an advocate,
to be FOR us, and FOR God’s mission in the world.
Third, God’s love is directed TOWARD transformation.
God’s love is a transforming love,
intended to move us TOWARD a particular end.
Love has an aim, a telos.
It points us in the direction TOWARD Christlikeness.
So there is love in three movements, God WITH us, FOR us,
and inviting us TOWARD a transformed life.
_____________________
Now, 1 John says our love for each other,
should mirror and reflect the love of God,
that love which abides in us.
So I think we can assume our love for each other
is most authentic when it has these same movements:
WITH, FOR, and TOWARD.
Or we could also say,
presence, advocacy, and direction.
But . . . kind of like I said in a sermon a few weeks ago at the park,
the sequence matters.
Love is like a well-composed concerto.
There is a first, second, and third movement.
Only after I am willing to be WITH someone, for the long haul,
will I have any credibility when I act FOR them,
and claim to be their advocate.
If we don’t make the effort to be truly WITH,
then our advocacy will be experienced
more like being patronized.
Only after the powerful combination
of being radically WITH and FOR someone,
can they experience my love as authentic.
Then, when I do offer DIRECTION, as the spirit leads,
they can receive it as an act of genuine love,
even if I might challenge them in a direction,
in which they haven’t yet shown a willingness to go.
But sadly, the temptation is always there
to jump straight to giving direction, and call it love . . .
before we ever establish our being WITH and FOR.
A parent cannot shape the moral direction of their child,
without having first established a relationship of love and trust,
by being WITH and FOR their child.
Giving direction,
without prior, long-term presence and advocacy,
will not be experienced as love, but as coercion, as violence.
I think, to a large degree, we have all been guilty of that.
I’m not talking here about extreme emergency,
like grabbing a stranger and moving them out of the way
of an oncoming train.
On occasion, quick and forceful action is compassion.
No, I’m talking about how, in our ordinary lives,
we practice this work we call love.
Do we love with integrity?
By respecting the worth and dignity of everyone,
and being with them and for them,
without condition, giving them agency.
That is our continuing challenge.
This is hard work!
It takes rugged commitment . . . in other words, covenant.
It’s hard to be truly WITH someone,
especially when they inhabit a world
that is strange or foreign or distant to us.
Sometimes, we need to travel a great distance,
emotionally, culturally, or otherwise,
to be with someone.
But that is our calling, to be WITH one another in love.
It’s even harder to be FOR someone,
to truly be an advocate for the wellbeing of someone
with whom we have significant differences, or tension,
or even outright enmity.
In this fraught political season,
I’ll be looking for examples of where a politician or candidate
demonstrates genuine empathy toward a struggling opponent,
instead of exploiting every vulnerability
as an opportunity to attack.
I’ll look, but I won’t find.
We witnessed it in the Olympics, multiple times.
But it won’t be repeated on the political playing field.
And the most difficult is calling others TOWARD transformation.
And no, it’s not difficult to tell someone to change.
We do that at the drop of a hat.
I mean, calling for real transformation,
without sacrificing the integrity of the relationship,
without causing the other to doubt our love.
The work of love requires extreme humility.
Our call is not to fix the other.
Our call is to love each other into Christlikeness.
And we can only do that in the context of a sturdy covenant,
and mutual commitment to one another.
God give us the courage and strength we need.
_____________________
And right now,
may God give us what we need to enter into, and participate in,
a new baptismal covenant
between Lewis Yoder and his God, and his people—
most specifically, this congregation.
Baptism is a joyous ritual of the church,
and it is a solemn and weighty one.
Lewis will soon declare his loyalty and identity,
as a child of God in community with us.
And we, in turn, will declare our loyalty to and identity with Lewis.
It’s been a joy to meet several times with Lewis
in preparation for this morning.
I got to see first hand, and clearly, and explicitly,
what I’ve been observing for a number of years,
and which you have observed as well.
We have seen Lewis mature in body, mind, spirit, and faith.
Lewis trusts in Jesus.
He trusts in the goodness of God.
And he trusts in this community
that seeks to be faithful to God’s call.
So, he is ready to go all in with God, and all in with us.
Baptism is not a sign of our achievement
or even a test of all that we know and believe.
It is rather a declaration of loyalty to the way of Jesus,
as lived out in community.
Lewis is ready to say yes to us and God.
I trust we are all ready to yes to him.
—Phil Kniss, August 11, 2024
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