Making It Real

1 John 3:11-24
Easter 4
April 25, 2021
William G. Carter

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you.

 

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 

 

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 truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

 

And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

In reading the Bible, it helps to survey the neighborhood. We expect the writings of John to command us to love one another. It is John who reports this commandment in his account of the last supper. Jesus turned to his disciples and declared, “I give you a new commandment.” 

According to one tradition, the apostle John, the fishermen from Galilee, made his way to Western Turkey. He settled around the large city of Ephesus and taken care of the mother of Jesus. When Jesus was dying on the cross, he had looked at the Beloved Disciple, “Here is your mother.” John took care of her as if she was his own mother.

Now in his advanced age, the legend says the small Christian community would perk up when they heard brother John was coming to worship. They waited on the edge of their seats. He had been with the Lord. When they saw John arrive and settle in, they asked, “Brother John, do have a word from the Lord?” He would look intently into their eyes, and then croak out the words, “Love one another.”

So we expect him to say this here in chapter three. We expect him to say this half a dozen times in this short letter, including three times in the selection which is today’s text. “Love one another!”

What we don't expect is how he sets this new commandment in the context of the ancient story of Cain and Abel. Remember that one? Cain and Abel were the two sons of Adam and Eve. Each one offered a sacrifice to the Lord. Abel was a shepherd. He sacrificed one of his sheep and God found that pleasing and acceptable. Cain was a gardener. So he burned up some vegetables and called that a sacrifice. The Lord blew that smoke back into his face. It angered Cain.

Rather than direct his anger toward God, and rather than take responsibility for cooking up eggplants and rutabagas and assuming God would enjoy it, Cain picked up a blunt object and struck down his brother. Then he lied about it. God said to him, “Where’s your brother?” Cain said, “I don’t know.” Then he said something foolish: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Well, of course he was.

It may seem curious that John talks about love as the alternative to murder. But this is not curious at all. It is a binary choice. Either we open our hearts to one another, or we bend in upon ourselves. Either we keep one another as brother, sister, kin – or we regard one another to be disposable. Old brother John knows the choice has been around since Cain and Abel. It’s the choice we must make after we have been expelled from the Garden of Eden. It’s the choice that never goes away.

One hot day in July, my wife and I went to hear a talk by Elie Wiesel. It took place in an open-air amphitheater that normally seats up to 5000 people, and 8000 bodies showed up. They were hanging from the rafters. All of us wanted to hear this extraordinary man – born a Romanian Jew, a Holocaust prisoner at Auschwitz, the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize. He was the author of 57 books, many of them reflecting on what it means to be a Jew in a world like this.

His topic for this interfaith lecture addressed a simple question: what does it mean to be moral? He mused with us as fellow children of the covenant. There are moral laws, holy commandments – don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t covet. And yet it is possible to keep these laws while disregarding their intent. Just because the rules are carved on stone tablets doesn’t mean they are inscribed on our souls. Wiesel reminded us how Hitler’s henchmen worshiped in churches on Sundays, and then committed atrocities on Monday morning, never lying, stealing, or coveting.

He went on to remark that many of us confuse morality with superiority, that if we commit to a code of conduct and keep it to the letter, this elevates us above everybody else. We neglect the truth that pride puffs us up. Either we detach ourselves from the suffering that so many encounter in this world. Or sympathy dies as our hearts turn to stone.

“So what makes us moral?” he asked. “Is it not to keep others as our brothers and sisters? To not allow evil to overwhelm the heart and thoughts of its victims by depriving them of the right to hope? In my vocabulary, this step has a name: intervention.”

We sat in silence, stunned because we were hearing crystal-clear truth. And he said, “To be immoral is to be indifferent. To see someone in trouble and decide we do not care. We always have a choice, to stand up for what is right or to do nothing.” There was a long pause, and then he sat down. There was nothing more to say.

I have pondered his words frequently. He was reminding us that “love” is a muscular word, a clear word. Love is not the marshmallow fluff of sentiment. Love acts for the benefit of other people, regardless of whether we like them. You don’t have to like someone in order to love them, at least not in the biblical sense. To love others is to grant them safety, to guard them from evil, to make room for them to flourish, to ensure they have (at least) the basic resources for life, and to welcome them as neighbors.

John says love is the ongoing work of Easter. Either we love in the name of the Risen Christ or we remain captive to a world obsessed with its own destruction. It is an either-or choice. He says, “Whoever does not love abides in death.” That’s clear. And to the Easter people in his church, he says, “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.” Love is the evidence of Christ at work among us.

Love is what fuels our mission as Christian people. We see needs and we do something about them. We refuse to remain indifferent. And the activists among us know that it’s frequently awkward to care for other people. We want to affirm their dignity; when we collect canned food, we don’t pull out of the pantry the expired cans of creamed spinach that we wouldn’t dare to eat. We provide healthy, nutritious food to the hungry.

And we don’t simply throw money at needy people. We use our money to build relationships, to empower people and not demean them. That can be complicated. It may feel good for you and me to give money to a worthy cause – but it feels a whole lot better to make a constructive difference.

A couple of years ago, I invited some friends on our Mission and Justice committee to read a book called “Toxic Charity.” It opened our eyes, cracked open our hearts. It punctured our false pride that we were doing nice things for needy people, mostly as a way to feel better about ourselves – rather than to show up and stick around, becoming as vulnerable as those who had been afflicted.

Robert Lupton, the author of the book, described a lot of our “do-gooder” deeds as part of what he calls the “compassion industry.” It is possible to dip in and dip out as religious tourists, without ever knowing the names or the stories of those we serve.

When I read the book, I remembered a scene from the Port au Prince airport from a mission trip that our church folks took many years ago. As we waited to board our flight home, a church youth group arrived. They wore matching blue t-shirts that read “Haiti Impact Work Camp, July 3-9.” Most of the kids had gotten a suntan that week. Some of the teenage girls were braiding one another’s hair. More than a few carried souvenirs. I wonder what kind of impact those kids actually made. Looked like they had a good week; but did they get their hands dirty? Couldn’t tell.

Loving other people is hard work. It’s good work, the best work there is, but it’s hard work. Because love steps into the gaps that a toxic world creates. Brother John puts the matter succinctly: “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 truth and action.”

So here is my invitation to you: what can we do together to show the love of Christ to a broken neighborhood? I want that question to always stay front and center for our church.

The first task, of course, is paying attention, and seeing truthfully what is going on around us. We have been living through fourteen months of a pandemic. A lot of good people are afraid. Many are lonely. A significant number have lost a loved one, or lost a job, or lost a livelihood. The social fabric has become unraveled. And many people can’t distinguish which voice is telling the truth about much of anything: the virus, the vaccines, the economy, the level of safety. What can we do to show love? Indifference is not an option.

You have continued to show generosity and we are grateful. The donations to our One Great Hour of Sharing offering were almost twice the size of our goal, and that money is being sent on to national relief offerings. But we have another issue closer to home. Your gifts to our Deacons have far exceeded our expectations. You have given the funds because you want us to express our care – but what might we do? The local food pantry has a surplus of funding, and that’s wonderful. Just this past week, the Deacons bought about 1700 diapers and 4000 baby wipes for a baby pantry in Dunmore. There’s wonderful generosity here. Thank you!

But how can we connect face to face in a time when we need to wear masks? How can we counter the world full of death with the love that gives life?  These are the questions that make love real. We cannot drive by. We cannot phone it in. I think we show up. We listen. We look beneath the surface. We pray – not merely for God to fix what we cannot, but to awaken opportunities among us where we can make a difference by showing love.

John says, “We know love by this, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” That is the full measure of love. 

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.