July 26, 2020 “Active Love” – I John 3:11-24

I John 3:11-24
“Active Love”
July 26, 2020 – Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

I want to talk more about love today. That is where our text starts, reminding us in I John chapter 3 verse 11 that the “message you have heard from the beginning,” what Jesus said more than once, is that “we should love one another.” But then our text takes a detour, starting in verse 12, to talk about hate. We live a hundred miles from a major city where protestors have clashed with federal police, at least in part because of hatred, hatred of Blacks, hatred of police, and hatred of those who exercise free speech in ways others don’t like. Hatred is where both John and we must start. Our problem is not only racial hatred, but a polarization between political viewpoints. It is very difficult to avoid hatred for those on a different side, at least for those in power on a different side.

Hate is in the news. Asian Americans are accosted on the street and blamed for the coronavirus and told to “go home to China,” even if they are not of Chinese descent. Immigrants of all sorts are being treated with suspicion, and the poorest and most vulnerable of them are detained in facilities where COVID-19 runs rampant. And of course Black people are feeling the weight on their necks of centuries of hatred as they remember what happened to George Floyd. We also find some white people imagining that they are hated and falsely accused of a racism they do not see in themselves. We see rancor and distrust between rich and poor, liberal and conservative, college educated and working class, and all the other divisions which simmer below the surface but which boil over when heated up by those in power or by others with loud public voices or followings on social media. Hate sells advertising and wins elections.

We also may, as in the example John chose here, feel hatred toward those very close to us, an estranged spouse, an abusive parent, or a difficult sibling. Verse 12 takes us back to the original hate crime, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain, and tells us not to be “like Cain who was from the evil one…” Genesis tells us little about Cain’s motives except for God’s warning about why his sacrifice was not accepted but his brother’s was. God says “do well” and you will be accepted; don’t do well, and “sin is lurking at the door.” John makes it plain here that this fratricide, murder of a brother, was motivated by the fact that Cain realized “his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.”

How much hatred and evil in this world is motivated by just the same dynamic between Cain and Abel? In a personal interaction our wrong becomes plain, but our response is not repentance and apology. Instead we resent the other person’s very goodness. I remember when my mother-in-law became incapacitated by Alzheimer’s. Our sister-in-law, Beth’s brother’s wife, conspired and stole a huge amount of Mom’s savings which would have paid for her care. When Mom died and Beth confronted her sister-in-law with the theft, the response was a bitter, ugly, “And you’re such a ‘goody-two-shoes.’” When we’re in the wrong we often hide it by despising those who are in the right.

Ultimately, though, John wants us to deal with sinful acts and feelings toward each other which may not rise to the level of murder or stealing from one’s mother-in-law. He pauses for a moment in verse 13 to note that Christians are likely to get hated in this world. “Do not be astonished” if it happens to you, brothers and sisters. The world is full of hate. Then in verse 14 he reminds us that hating is not something Christians do in return. Instead, we love one another. That’s how we “know that we have passed from death to life.” We are assured of our salvation in Christ by the fact that we love each other. The problem is what he goes on to say about hate, “Whoever does not love abides in death.”

John is probably talking about the spiritual death of separation from God. Those who have not yet experienced new life in Christ are “dead in their sins.” But verse 15 explains, “All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them.” There is much going on in that sentence. The first part is what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Just keeping the literal commandment not to murder is not enough. Being angry with someone and calling them names is the spiritual and moral equivalent of murder. To hate is to kill, at least in God’s eyes.

So when we do not love, says John, we abide in death and not in the gracious gift of eternal life. Abiding in death because we have failed to love spills over into all aspects of life and human society. Many Christians have felt that there is a present “culture of death” in our society. We assume that death is the answer to problems, so we abort babies, we execute criminals, go to war, and accept the deaths of some percentage of the population as the price to pay for a renewed economy. John says “Whoever does not love abides in death.”

Verse 16 shows that the Christian attitude toward life and death is just the opposite of a “culture of death” that solves its difficulties by killing or allowing some to die. Instead of wanting others to die for them, Christians want to do what Jesus did. “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” Once again, John is simply saying what Jesus said. Next week I will take up our Lord’s own words about laying down our lives like He did.

For right now, though, John gives us a little break. His sudden transition of thought in verse 17 shows us that to “lay down our lives” doesn’t always mean, maybe most of the time doesn’t mean, literally dying for someone. It means exhibiting love toward others in an active, tangible way that costs us something. Though the price paid is not as high as dying, it will also be difficult in its own way. We are to do it over and over. The specific example John offers us is helping “a brother or sister” in need. “How can God’s love abide in anyone,” he asks us, “who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?”

As I wrote in my blog this past week, when I read verse 17 my mind immediately conjures up images of people I see all the time standing on West 11^th at the corner between the McDonald’s and Fred Meyer, holding up signs and asking help from those of us in cars as we exit the shopping center.

My mind also goes back nearly forty years ago to an image of a woman with a baby who walked up to our table in an outdoor dining area off a plaza in Nauplion, Greece. She gestured to her baby and then held her hand out. Before I could even quite decide what to do, a waiter rushed over and shooed her away. But I still see her.

So when I keep on reading into verse 18 and hear, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action,” my first impulse is to hear it as a command to demonstrate love in very personal, individual and direct ways. Offer money or food to someone standing on a corner. Pay for a hotel room for a family living in a car. Help provide medicine or a doctor visit for a person in need of medical care. Give up resources I have in order to help someone else.

My problem, which I think is generally our problem as contemporary followers of Jesus, is that it feels like these specific, individual sorts of active love have gotten really complicated. Good books like When Helping Hurts teach us that just tossing money to a man holding a sign may do more harm than good. It’s not as if that’s exactly new news. A hundred years ago G. K. Chesterton wrote about the worry that a coin dropped in a beggar’s hat would immediately be spent in a pub. Chesterton responded that he would have spent the coin in a pub for himself, so what’s the problem?

Seriously, we do know that spontaneous acts of “charity,” which is of course just an old word for love, often are not the good deeds we imagine. As I said in my blog, the same thing is true as it was in Jesus’ time and down through the ages. There are “professional” panhandlers and others taking advantage of people’s generosity. Even some of those seriously in need might be better helped by connecting them with agencies and people trained to guide and support the life changes which will make a real difference. Here for us, the Eugene Mission is just that sort of truly helpful resource. That’s why we give regularly to the Mission through our Love Offering and through a food and clothing barrel and why some of you have volunteered there.

Honestly, Jesus and the Bible do not give us much guidance here. They tell us to do what John says here, to show love in tangible ways, “in truth and action,” but there’s not much direction about how to sort that out. I mentioned last week that Jesus paraphrased the greatest commandment drawn from Deuteronomy 6. He added an item to the list of human capacities used to love God. The Old Testament says to love God “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Jesus added, “and with all your mind.”

I will humbly suggest that we not only need to love actively, we need to love smart. I think that is part of what John meant in verse 18 by saying, “let us love… in truth and action.” That implies we need to engage in those actions which are truly loving, which truly have, as we said last week, the best interest and happiness of the other person in mind. I need to think carefully so that what I try to do in love is not just the easing of my own conscience or the stroking of my own ego to confirm a belief that I really am a good person. We will need to spend some mental effort and time to love in truth, to love wisely.

Moreover, we should not just assume we already know what is the loving thing to do for another person. Sure, sometimes it is obvious. If someone is standing in the cold in shirtsleeves, a loving thing to do is hand her a blanket or a coat, even more to invite her into some warm place if that’s possible. If a child in Africa has no clean water in his village, it is fairly clear a donation to help dig a well is an act of love. Like one of our members did this past week, if a family needs food, then share some with them.

I mention obvious acts of love because I don’t want us to get “off the hook” too easily, thinking we can do nothing because we just don’t know what to do. Yet we all know that there are other people and situations in which the truly loving action is not so obvious. Some of us have been trying to educate ourselves in how to truly love in relation to Black brothers and sisters. What does it mean to come alongside African Americans as allies in love without demeaning them or taking over their cause or playing the role of the white savior? That’s not an easy or quick question to answer.

But the frequent difficulty of knowing how to truly love someone—whether it’s the person holding up a cardboard sign on the corner, your adult child that seems to be headed for trouble, or people of color in our community and country—must not keep us from obeying our Lord. Skipping to verse 23, we hear John summing up everything God wants of us, “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just he [Jesus] commanded us.” It all hangs together. If we are not doing this active love that Jesus commanded, then we don’t really believe in Him.

Let me say what I just said again, as succinctly and jarringly as I think John is saying it all through this letter. If you aren’t actively loving people, you don’t really believe in Jesus. Remember the end of verse 14 here, “Whoever does not love abides in death.” If you take that seriously, it’s going to trouble you. It sure troubles me. It troubles me when I think about all the people, all the times in my life, in my personal relationships, in my career as a pastor, in my neighborhood as I shared last week, that I have found someone really, really hard to love or I simply cannot figure out any good way to actively love them.

That’s why I praise God that John slipped verse 20 in here. He sets it up with verse 19, telling us how reassuring it will be when we practice true and active love, “And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him,” before God. That’s when it’s all working the way it is supposed to, the way God commanded, the way human life was meant to be. We are loving God and showing genuine love for those around us by doing selfless, sacrificial acts of love that bring them happiness and blessing. Our own hearts will be reassured and we will be full of faith and hope in our eternal life with God.

That’s why love is the flower which blooms out of faith and hope. It is love which crowns them and gives them their meaning. Are you doubting your faith? Are you wondering if you are really a Christian? Are you feeling hopeless? Show some love to someone. That act of love will not save you, but it can reassure you. It can confirm that the love of God poured out for you in Christ Jesus is really there within you.

What about when your love fails, though? Or you just start worrying if you got it right? You pass by that beggar and just resolve to give a little extra to the mission—then you forget. Or you say no to your wayward child in tough love. Or you just don’t know what to think or feel about being white. Then you start second-guessing yourself, feeling guilty, tormenting your soul wondering if you really, truly have shown love at all. What then?

Then John wrote verse 20 for you and for me, adding it to what he said in verse 19 so that it all reads, “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.” Honestly, the flow of John’s thought here is not super clear, but when I think how confused my heart can get, how often I find myself second guessing what I’ve done or remembering that woman in Greece, that phrase, “God is greater than our hearts,” jumps out at me. So often my heart did not and does not know what the loving thing to do is, but God “knows everything” says John.

To act in love, sometimes I just have to do something and then trust that God is greater than my own confused mind and heart. Let me be as wise as possible. If someone is an addict, then giving her money is probably not love. If I work with someone of a different color, then let me think deeply now about the words I use and the jokes I tell. But when I’ve seen a need and thought and prayed and pondered in my heart and then done the best I know in the name of Jesus, yet my heart is still uneasy, maybe I can relax just a little. Maybe I can simply trust that God is greater than my heart.

John says, “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 commandment and do what pleases him.” Act in love and our hearts will not condemn us. Ask in love and God will give what we ask. In our Old Testament text, Solomon was able to ask God for whatever he wanted. He asked for wisdom because he loved the people he was to govern. He got that wisdom and more. Prayers get answered when they are prayers motivated by love.

In the Gospel, Jesus talked about men who gave up everything they had for a great treasure, a priceless pearl. When John says in verse 23, “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another,” that’s it. Believing in Jesus and loving each other is the treasure, the pearl, the thing we ought to want more than anything else in our lives. It’s the same as another parable we heard today. Faith, belief in Jesus, is the mustard seed that springs up in huge hope and then flowers in love to become the kingdom of God.

That mustard seed of faith has to keep growing up into love. You and I need to keep growing up into love. It takes thought. It takes action. Before coronavirus and new racial awareness, we may have relied on familiar habits like hugs and smiles and sharing snacks after worship to show each other love. Now it’s harder. We have to put up with all the awkwardness of Zoom and masks and social distance. It would be easy to just check out, to just take care of ourselves, to quit trying to love anyone else. From the numbers I read about how many Christians have recently dropped out of any kind of worship, on-line or otherwise, many are feeling like that.

Yet John says love for each other is not optional, not, as I said last week, just icing on the cake of faith. It is what faith grows up to be. There is no faith if there is no love. Yes it is hard. Our hearts and minds have to work overtime to know and feel true love for others across the internet and social distance. Yet John says God is greater than our hearts and God knows everything. Let us then believe in Jesus and let Him show us how to love in this different and strange time. Let us especially not give up on loving each other and loving the people around us. Let us not give up on love.

Our Lord’s great commands are commands to love. The text today concludes, “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 he has given us.” The first fruit of the Holy Spirit is love. So go do something in love this week. Donate to a good charity. Call up someone who is by himself. Apologize to a person you’ve hurt even if you think you did nothing wrong. Read a book by a Black author even if she makes you feel guilty. Pray for somebody you hate. Do a chore in your home that nobody in your family likes to do. Take some cookies next door… For Pete’s sake, I don’t know! But do something, some act of love.

Honestly, much of the time, I’m as confused as anyone else about how to show love, how to do love. All I know is that Jesus told us to do it. John is just reminding us here. Just go do something in love. Then let God, who is greater than our hearts and knows everything, work out how His kingdom will grow out of it all, out of what you and I do in love.

Amen.