Fifth Sunday of Easter
April 28, 2024
1 John 4:7-21

“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” It seems so simple, doesn’t it? That lesson from the First Letter of John goes on, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

Like I said, it seems so simple. God is love. Therefore, we love each other. And if we do that, then God’s love lives in us. Maybe it’s because we live in such a world of animosity, maybe it’s because there is so much rancor out there, that this message of love hits a nerve with us. We can get rid of all the other stuff in Christianity – the doctrine, the dogma, the discipline – and get to the root of it. God is love. Love each other.

Now, that I am a proponent of hate, but it does not take long for this easy reading to unravel. Sure, love might work in families, or cities, but what about geopolitics? Or, speaking from human experience, you can think you love something or someone, but it turns out, that was just a passing sentiment. Sure, this passage about love is from the New Testament, and it seems that Jesus talks about love all the time, so we assume the entire New Testament must be about love; but that’s not the whole story. In the entire Gospel of Mark, not once does Jesus tell his disciples to love. No, Jesus commands them to pick up the cross. How inconvenient. In the Letter to the Hebrews, love is not the core value of the Christian community, but it’s patient endurance. The same with the book of Revelation; the author isn’t telling those early Christians to love each other, he’s urging them to stick with Jesus no matter how bad life gets. 

Oh, I suppose that you could say that all those bits are really about love, it’s just that don’t use the word, “love.” Well, if that’s the case, then the word “love” is so loosey-goosey that it doesn’t have any meaning at all. So we have to dig a little deeper.

And the First Letter of John helps us out. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” This author, writing to a tiny little Christian community, probably just one hundred years after Jesus, is giving those Christians a very specific command. Love each other. Love your brothers and sisters in the Lord. This is not a general command to love everybody and everything, it’s a specific teaching about loving each other in the church. 

I know, it seems almost trivial. Just love each other in the church? That seems too small. Shouldn’t we try to love everybody? Shouldn’t we love the whole world? Why just the people in the church? Isn’t that the problem with the church, that all we do is care about ourselves? But think of it this way – if everybody in that little Christian community to which this letter was addressed was already loving each other, then the author wouldn’t have to say, “y’all should love each other.” The only reason First John is telling them to love each other, is because they aren’t. The assumption isn’t that people in the church love each other; the assumption is that they don’t.

That’s why they’re told to love each other, because even in the church, love does not come naturally to us. And judging from the history of Christianity, judging from my own experience as a priest, it can very, very hard to love even the people with whom you worship every Sunday. Would you believe it, other people might talk during the service, they sing off key; heaven forbid, they might sit in your pew. They might vote differently than you do, they might have different opinions.

And yet, that’s the point. The point is not that everybody in the church is the same; it’s that we’re all different. But we love each other. That’s what the First Letter of John is getting at. It’s not self-centered, it is self-giving.

That’s why I think Church is so desperately important for our world to day. The church is not a place to isolate ourselves from society. I know that’s the temptation with all that is going on. You just want to come to church, hear a nice message, escape all the nuttiness out there for an hour or two on Sunday morning. But that’s not our purpose. No, our purpose as disciples of Jesus is to transform the world into the loving Kingdom of God. The point is that the Church, the body of people who gather for prayer and worship and fellowship, is the training ground for love, the place to practice love. The church is the place to train yourself in love, to get good at it, so that when you get out there in the world and things really get dicey, when you face rancor and hostility and anxiety, and when you’ve got problems at work and when you have trouble with your neighbors, when you’ve got family problems and you need to know how to love, you’ll have already practiced it. By following Jesus in here, you’ll be ready to follow Jesus out there. So here is where we learn to stretch out our arms upon the cross, which is the perfect image of love, so that we know how to do that out there. Just as the Father sent the Son into the world, so now the Son sends us into the world.

I know, it seems so trivial. Faced with so many problems in the world – wars, degradation, poverty, hopelessness – what does the church do? We have Bible Studies, we sing some hymns, we have coffee. We volunteer, have endless committee meetings, we sign up for meal trains, we pray for each other, we give and forgive. Taken at face value, it might seem like we’re using a garden hose to put out a forest fire. But really, the simple nature of it is quite radical stuff. It’s about learning the way of Jesus.

So as the author of the First Letter of John told that congregation two thousand years ago to love each other, we need to hear again. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” If we want the world to be a better place, if we want our society to be more loving, less toxic; if we want our community to be healthier, happier; the place to start is right here. Here, this is where you learn how to love people who disagree with you. Here is where you learn to deal with people of different ages and across economic barriers. Here is where you learn to lay down your own ego, worship the Lord God, and leave as someone better. This is why I come to church every Sunday; it’s not because I have to, it’s because I want things to be better, and the Lord knows, love does not come naturally to me. So I need a place to practice.

This is my vision for the church, for Trinity, yes, but for the church at large. It’s the same vision as the First Letter of John. That as Jesus scarified himself for us, we learn how to make sacrifices for each other. That is love. It’s not a warm fuzzy feeling. It’s not a sentiment. No, love is the hard wood of the cross and the cold nails in our hands. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God.”