Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 21, 2024

Love in Truth and Action

Nanette Sawyer
Associate Pastor

Psalm 100
1 John 3:16–24

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Today we take up the complicated matter of love. These scripture verses — about sacrifice and truth, reassurance and boldness, action and abiding in God’s love — they all sound wonderful, but they seem quite abstract as concepts. What do they mean in practicality?

The first letter of John was written to a community that had experienced a bit of a schism, a fracture. Some members of the community left and did not act with love toward the community that remained. The teachers who remained with the community encouraged them to remember that God is light and God is love. To be a disciple of Jesus means to “abide in him,” or to walk as he walked, to live in the same ways that he lived (1 John 2:6, cf. CEB). It’s an invitation to walk in the light, to do the right things, but to also walk in love, so that everything we do is done with a spirit of love. 

This points us in the direction of several spiritual practices. We are invited to find our grounding, our foundation and inspiration, in a deep experience of God’s love for us. This knowledge, this experience, becomes the wellspring from which all our actions of love and service spring. But to ground ourselves in that belief is easier said than done. 

Unfortunately we can start to use this scripture as a judgment against ourselves. Who can live as Jesus lived? How can we even begin to love as he loved? 

When we think in these ways, our hearts begin to condemn us (1 John 3:20). We might think, “I’m not good enough, I don’t serve enough, I don’t love enough, I don’t sacrifice enough.” There is within each of us a self-doubt that gnaws at our hearts. It weakens us. It distracts us from the truth of God’s love. It may cause us to overwork or be filled with anxiety. We may distract ourselves from our sense of inadequacy by redirecting our attention to what we see as the failures of others. We might direct our anger at them, those others, and turn away from our own feelings of vulnerability, our grief at the pain in the world, or our fears of failure, of not being enough. 

But the world needs us to be deeply honest with ourselves about ourselves. Our discipleship begins — though it does not end — with addressing our own sense of worthiness and belovedness. Do we feel worthy of God’s love? Do we believe we are beloved?

The authors of this first letter of John say at the beginning of the book, “We are writing these things so that our joy can be complete” (1 John 1:4). And you may recall that Jesus said similar words in the Gospel according to John. Jesus said, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:11–12).

Joy is what Jesus is offering us in this twofold commandment. Joy, not shame. Joy in our experience of being loved, first of all. If we can get to the experience of that love, it can become a resource within us greater than any other. The more deeply we know how precious and beloved we are, the stronger we can remain in the face of injustice, violence, hatred, or indifference. 

Scripture tells us that nothing external can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8), but nevertheless, external things confront us and try to make us feel separate from God and God’s love. The violence of the world — the pain and injustice of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and every other kind of ism that separates and belittles and harms people, the violence of the world and the violence of war — it’s all so unbearable. This scripture and these commandments are not given to judge us for being hurt or feeling afraid. 

These commandments to love are offered as opportunities to develop our inner resources. These verses are reminders that in the deepest place of truth Christ abides in us, the very Spirit of God’s love dwells in us. How do we find our way to that joy, that assurance of God’s love for us? What if we struggle to believe? 

Christian scholar and author Diana Butler Bass has given us some wonderful things to ponder in her book Christianity after Religion. She reflects on how we talk about and think about Christianity and how that has been shifting over time. One question she asks is, What comes first, belonging or believing? Do we first believe ideas in our heads and then join an organization that reflects those beliefs, such as a church? Or are we first welcomed into a community that then shapes our beliefs and our practices? 

Maybe it’s not an either-or thing, but social patterns do seem to be shifting. Butler Bass suggests that in religious life, as in most life, it is belonging to a community that shapes who we are and how we understand ourselves and our purpose (Diana Butler Bass, “Belonging, Behaving, Believing” on dianabutlerbass.substack.com, 12 July 2023).

Belonging comes first, she says. Once we are welcomed into a community, then we learn the songs and the prayers and participate in the ministry activities and the life of the congregation. By behaving in these ways we start to believe particular things about the meaning of our faith and our purpose in the world. Belonging leads to behaving in certain ways, which then leads to believing. 

Butler Bass gives a nonreligious example to demonstrate this process of belonging, behaving, and believing. She talks about learning to knit. If you don’t already know how to knit and you try to learn by first reading about the history of knitting and different styles of knitting and theories about knitting, you probably won’t get far with actual knitting. 

The way you learn to knit is by getting a mentor who will show you how to hold the needles and make the stitches. Or you join a knitting group with which you spend time copying and learning from the other knitters. After a while you become more adept. Then you start to have ideas about your knitting, opinions or even beliefs about knitting. You begin to be able to talk about knitting, to start your own projects, or to teach others about knitting. Reading about it is not enough. You have to do it to learn it.

It’s the people-to-people connection that helps us learn behaviors. Our behaviors then change us. and out of that our beliefs develop. But belonging to each other happens first — being in community together, sharing our gifts and skills, changing the patterns of our lives. We practice the heart of our faith, and then our ideas about our faith develop and change. 

That actually sets a high bar for all of us. It suggests that our individual behavior is contagious and that it shapes our community. What we do and how we treat each other matters a great deal. 

A friend of mine tells a story about a theology discussion in which a congregant blurted out, “I can’t love God.” This was surprising to everyone, because this was a man who served everyone, spoke with everyone, seemed to love everyone. Why would he say that he couldn’t love God? He went on to explain.

“‘I have so many people I am committed to love, but my time and my resources are finite. If I add God to the list, I will only be able to give God a small part. But,’ [he] paused to try to find the right words to explain … and then continued tentatively, as if asking for permission, ‘if I can love God through loving people and the world, then I can love God with all of my love.’”

My friend went on to describe how this affected him. He said, “At that moment, I came to understand how sweet and real Norm’s love for God really was. Norm isn’t about God because God isn’t about God. Or alternatively, Norm is all about God because to be all about God is to be all about all of us” (Samir Selmanovic, It’s Really All about God, pp. 246–247).

Our service to each other, to the community, is an embodiment and an exhibition of God’s love. In order to live into Jesus’ twofold commandment to love as we are loved by God through Christ, we have twofold or two-directional practices. 

Our first task as followers of Jesus is an interior focused practice — to practice experiencing God’s love for us. Our second focus is as a community of followers — to practice extending that love, that respect, that kindness, to each other. These two-directional practices reinforce each other. We belong to God, and we belong to each other. We are part of God’s creation, which is wonderfully and beautifully made, a single fabric of existence, woven together by many threads. 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, and storyteller. She has a wonderful poem about belonging which begins with the word “And.” She writes,

“And if it’s true we are alone,

we are alone together,

the way blades of grass

are alone, but exist as a field.

…

Just as thirty-five trillion

red blood cells join in one body

to become one blood.

Just as one hundred thirty-six thousand

notes make up one symphony.

Alone as we are, our small voices

weave into the one big conversation. …

(Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “Belonging,” wordwoman.com)

We are together — like blades of grass or red blood cells, or notes in a symphony or small voices in one big conversation. 

At this church we have more than a thousand volunteers involved in the life and ministries of our church. That’s one big symphony. That includes those who are teaching Sunday school and leading youth activities and tutoring in our Chicago Lights program and making sandwiches for lunches during the week and hot meals for Sunday Night Supper. It also includes people serving on committees, typing up notes, monitoring our finances, tending to the care of this building, scheduling meetings, and inviting others to attend events or to offer their own gifts and skills for the well-being of this church and all our guests and neighbors. 

Together we are serving tens of thousands of meals a year, tutoring children, knitting and crocheting (yes, knitting) boxes of warm things for people of all ages, planning and hosting classes and activities, starting up conversations at Coffee Hour, getting to know each other and learning about our interfaith neighbors. We have five pages in our worship bulletin listing all the things we’re doing as a community.

All these things mean that we have hundreds of items on our to-do lists. But checking off those items isn’t the most important thing that we do. It’s important. It’s beautiful. But it’s not the most important thing. 

Loving each other while we do those things, that is the most important thing we do. Something mystical happens when we serve side by side with each other and witness the generosity of God, the love and tenderness of God flowing out through us and into the world. We have to keep reminding ourselves and each other that this service, these gifts and activities, flow out from an unconditional love that God holds for each of us. We love because God first loved us, Christ first loved us. That love is the greatest resource we have. 

It is the source of our power, our creativity, our resilience, and our passion. If you believe it about yourself, that you are beloved and beautiful, it will shine out of you and into the world. If it’s hard to believe in God’s unconditional love for you, go to God in prayer, yes, but also let the love of others testify to you of your own value. Let us learn from each other about love, the way knitters learn to knit.

How we express our discipleship reflects how we feel deep inside. How we act reflects the state of our hearts. And so, begin your discipleship here, in your heart. We say that we are saved by grace alone, but do we really believe that? Do we live as though we believe that we are loved simply because we exist? 

We cannot save the world. Only God can do that. But we can certainly change the world, by acting with the resources of God’s love, here and now, with each other, and with all those whom we meet. We can be disciples of Christ in every place we go. May it be so. Amen. 

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church