Who is God? What does God expect of us? Around the turn of the first century, a beleaguered Christian community in Asia Minor (in what is now Turkey) struggled with these questions. Within their fledgling community people were arguing with each other. Even though they were deeply committed to Jesus they still disagreed about the nature of God, whether it was possible to know anything about God, who Jesus was, and how they were supposed to live out their faith. Worse yet, these Christians were a tiny minority in the vast sea of Jews, Greeks, Romans, and people of other ethnicities. Unlike those around them, they welcomed into their midst both Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free. They let both women and men lead them. They were mostly despised by their neighbors, who thought them at worst insane, or at best misguided. Amidst the tension within and the disdain and persecution without, their leaders wondered if they would survive as a community of Jesus’ disciples. And then a series of letters arrived. It wasn’t clear exactly who they were from. The writer just called him or herself “the elder.” The letters helped the Christians answer some of their questions about God and begin learning how to live out their commitment to the Way of Jesus.
Today we know these letters as the first, second, and third letters of John. In our Bibles they now come close to the end of the New Testament. While the second and third letters seem to be truly letters, the first letter, from which our Epistle reading comes this morning, seems to be more like a sermon or essay than a letter. Don’t be confused by the name! It’s unlikely that the Gospel according to John, these letters, and the Revelation to John were all written by the same person. John was a very common name in the ancient world! What is likely, though, is that the writer of these letters and the writer of the Gospel according to John shared many ideas, may have been part of similar Christian communities, and may have known some of the same accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Certainly, they used similar language to convey their ideas. If you’ve been hearing echoes of the Gospel of John in our Epistle readings, you’re in good company!
Even though as disciples of Jesus we live in a very different time and place from those ancient Christians who first heard “the elder’s” letters, we may have some of the same questions they did. As I listen to what people share in our weekday Eucharists or in our study sessions, I hear people wondering who God is for us now. Many of us are still grappling with who Jesus is, and we certainly wonder what God expects of us in the twenty-first century. Perhaps this part of “the elder’s” letter can give us some clues.
Actually, “the elder’s” first letter is hard to follow. Like Jesus’ speeches in the Gospel according to John, the writer does not follow the linear arguments so familiar to us moderns. Instead, following the high-toned rhetorical style of the ancient world, the writer keeps spiraling back and forth over similar themes. Fortunately, the portion we’ve heard this morning gives us the heart of the letter, allowing us to hear what it is truly most important. To begin with, the writer reminds us of God’s love. Indeed, we are God’s beloved. God loves us, and all creation, with a deep, active, sacrificial love. God loves us without any quid pro quo, without waiting for us to love God first, and without any expectation of a return of God’s “investment” in us. How do we know this? We know it because we believe that Jesus was truly the Word of God, who became flesh and moved into our neighborhood. We know it because we have seen in Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, the depth and breadth of God’s love for the world.
How then do we respond to the discovery of God’s sacrificial love, love which was manifested most clearly to us in Jesus’ sacrifice? If we are committed to being Jesus’ disciples, if we “abide in him,” then we respond by attempting to love, albeit perhaps feebly, in the same way that Jesus loved. And right now, let’s be clear: the love “the elder” is talking about is not a mushy, romantic love. The love “the elder” is talking about is a verb, not a noun, an action, not a feeling, a sacrifice of self for the sake of another. And, what is more important, the love we are attempting to act out in our lives goes in two directions. We are called to love God, to praise God, and to thank God for all that God has done for us. And, no surprise, we are called to love those around us, the brothers and sisters we can see. In the Gospel of Matthew we hear that loving God is the first and greatest commandment, and that second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. Here “the elder” goes one step further and suggests that love of God and love of neighbor are the same, that they are inseparable, indeed that we express our love of God through our love of our brothers and sisters. And we express our love with this assurance: that God will continue to deepen our love, continue to transform us, and continue to enable us to become more and more like Jesus himself.
Is it easy to love others in the same way that God loves them? As the community to whom “the elder” was writing knew well, it is very difficult. For that community, as for us, it is often difficult to love those who are right in our very midst. Those who live in convents and monasteries – communities dedicated to practicing and modeling God’s love – know that even in the best families and Christian communities, some of us are harder to love than others. Perhaps, though, knowing already that all of us are loved by God can help us to see that all are valued by God, and that all have a place in the Body of Christ.
I have struggled in my own life with understanding the value to God of all of God’s children. I often feel as if I have taken only baby steps in learning to love my brothers and sisters as fellow beloved children of God. As some of you know, I spent the summer of 2006 at Children’s Hospital in Columbus doing what we call clinical pastoral education, i.e., serving as a pastoral care intern. During that summer I met many severely disabled children, children who would spend their lives blind or deaf, children who would never walk, children who might never be able to dress or even toilet themselves. I struggled with how to be pastorally present to these children, children who were so different from my own competent and successful grown children. Then I began to pay more attention to the parents of these children. I remember one young mother, who patiently held her infant day by day, loving him despite his uncertain future. I remember the parents of a twelve-year old girl, lovingly giving her the most basic services as she lay inert in her bed. I remember the foster mother of two disabled children. Although she and her husband had two “normal” children, they especially felt called to foster those children whose disabilities made them unlovable for other foster parents. As I saw real love in practice in those parents, I began to share their love for their children, began to get an inkling of the goodness and value of these children, despite – or maybe because of – who they were.
I began seeing these disabled children through their parents’ eyes after reading Henri Nouwen’s account of living in a L’Arche community. The L’Arche communities were founded in France in1964 by Canadian philosopher Jean Vanier. L’Arche is the French word for shelter, and the L’Arche communities enable “normal” people to live with severely mentally challenged people. “The purpose of these specifically Christian group homes, says Vanier, is not to ‘normalize’ the disabled according to the standards of society, or to solve all their problems, which is never likely to happen, but rather to celebrate them as sacred gifts of God who have their own gifts to offer us.”1 When we first meet disabled people, suggests Vanier, we may be afraid of them. Or we may think we need to leap in and help them. But when we meet severely handicapped people, they really want to ask us just two questions: do you consider me human, and, more important, do you love me? If we meet the disabled on their own ground, says Vanier, “we behold them with wonderment and thanksgiving. We embrace them as fully human and love them for who they are. We can even see the face of God in them, for God uses the weak to confound the strong.”2
“We love because he first loved us…. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” And so we trust that as we continue to draw nearer to Jesus, as we continue to deepen our relationship with God, as we let God’s love flow through us to others, as we begin to see God in the faces of those around us, we will continue to mature in our ability to love: God’s love will be perfected in us. May it be so.
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1. Daniel Clendinen, “A Father, A Son, and Two Important Questions,” Journey with Jesus, May 6, 2012, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml
2. Ibid.
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