Sermon – Light in Love and Love in Light 1
Micah 6:6-8; 1 John 2
Farmville Presbyterian Church
April 14, 2024
– Following the commandment of love
Other than preaching on chapter 4 of 1 John (which is one of my favorite passages in all of Scripture and our text in two weeks), I don’t think I have ever preached on this letter before. To be honest, John is a little weird. It does not read like anything else in the Bible. It is poetic and heady and theological and a little gnostic in feel. It does not just tell stories or give you facts or lists of laws or make things plain and simple. I imagine you got that from the reading of chapter 2. Paul is not easy to follow, either, but Paul is much more straightforward and teachy in his writing. John is about images and ideas and emotion. Bear in mind, this is the same Christian community that gave us the Book of Revelation, also, but that is a different sermon.
It is almost like the writer assumes that you know what he is talking about without pointblank saying it. We all do that at least somewhat to others with whom we are communicating. My wife carefully lays all kinds of verbal traps for me every day. She says something in her own language that we can only call “Anneish” that trades easily identified words and ideas for others that only she knows. She might ask for tweezers when she really means nail clippers or for her pocketbook when she really wants her calendar which is not in her pocketbook at all and in an entirely different place. When I follow what she says, though, instead of what she means, I can get a little flummoxed. She tells me I was just supposed to know what she meant.
There is something of that going on here in 1 John, also. We have lots of family language, antichrists, loving the world versus our brother and sister, light and dark, and a question about knowing Jesus and Jesus’ special commandment. There is a lot packed in here, so let’s jump in.
John’s teaching is all about being real before God and each other. Last week we saw that we needed to be honest with our sinfulness or we were living a lie and not walking in the light of God. Now, we see what it looks like to walk in that light. We really, truly, and sincerely need to know Jesus. It all begins with him, and that is really what this whole passage is about. The same Jesus who lived and breathed, and suffered and died, and rose and lived again, that Jesus has completely opened a whole new way of doing things that is a rejection of sin and the ways of the world. You can claim to know Jesus. Plenty of people know of Jesus. Some people rejoice in the idea of Jesus or search for him in history, but to truly know Jesus and who he is is to cling to his commandment with everything that we have. That is how you know Jesus – not through all of the tricks and gimmicks of the world, not with all the books of the world, not with all the teachers of the world. We will know him by living his commandment.
Wait a minute. It was Moses who gave us commandments. Jesus did talk about parts the law that were important – loving God with all we have and our neighbor as ourselves, but when did Jesus give any specific commandment?
Well, it happened once, and that was also in the writings of the John community, no surprise. The Gospel of John 13:34-35 makes it abundantly clear what Jesus expects from us, and if we want to know Jesus, then it is absolutely imperative that we keep this one commandment: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Sometimes this commandment scares me a bit. On the one hand, one commandment seems a lot simpler than 10 or the entire Jewish law of commandments with thousands of rules, but this one commandment is extremely important and hard. The standard for knowing Jesus and being in Jesus is living out the same love for others that he showed us. This is the same man who was executed by people who hated him for no good reason. He laid his life down for those who were acting out as his enemies. He willingly died to save people who demanded his death. That is a hefty kind of love that does not just come naturally. We saw that in our Moton Museum tour yesterday as a harsh reminder of what love has to wrestle with in this world. It is easy to feel that my love might not be loving enough to really know Jesus as I ought. Maybe you have wondered, also. It is easy to wonder if my heart is wired with that same kind of love to honor our Lord.
One of the great things about John’s writing, though, is that it is actually very practical. While it is not always super easy to understand, it is always very practically minded. It is about what we should do. The test about whether we are keeping Jesus’ commandment is whether we love our brother or not. No, this is not just about actual kinfolk family (though they are included), but it is about all others in the family of God. There is so much in this chapter that is about relations. We are called little children who are learning and growing and don’t have everything worked out, yet, but there is hope for us. We are learning. Some of us are parents; some of us are young people; some of us are children. We all have a perspective into God based on where we are in life. Someone who has lived a great number of years will experience the presence of God differently than a young person, but we all still have a place in that family, and how we love each other will show whether we are truly living in the family or not.
That is where we get to the antichrists. Please do not get hung up on the term: it is those who reject that Jesus is true. The one who is ANTI-Christ rejects Jesus’ place in the life of God. That person will never know the full expression of God’s love because they will never see Jesus as the center of that love, and through Jesus, we are all loved. The antichrist is not a boogeyman or monster but someone who just gets Jesus wrong. They might know a little bit, but they do not have the whole picture, and so they will mislead others about God and Jesus.
It is the rare person who would rather knowingly live a lie, given the choice. Sure, we might rather not know the truth sometimes because the truth is hard, but the truth is also solid and trustworthy and authentic. We can make better decisions with the truth. We can lead better lives with the truth. So much of the world is not about the truth, though. This is where the truth has its home – every sister and brother is worthy of love. If we deserve love, so do they. It is that simple. And yes, we deserve love, too.
But it is hard to live that truth. It has always been hard to do because it is not natural. It is not the natural order of things. The natural order is to make some worth more than others, to love some more than others, and to put others in their place. The natural order makes ourselves worth the most in our minds, usually even worth more than God. This is where Jesus comes in.
Who can stand in front of the cross and say, “I’m the best. I’m the most wonderful. I’m the most special. I’m the most righteous?” Jesus brings us back to earth before the cross. We nail our pride, our self-righteousness, our need to be #1, our self-worship, our delusions all to the cross. Everything falls away before Jesus, and we face the truth. There is only love. Everything comes from that.
Our faults and failures to love will haunt our past. Our faults and failures to love as a people will haunt our past. Those faults and failures will undermine our ability to grow and thrive if we cling to them. They will keep us in the dark, in dark places, in dark living. If we make divisions, race, hate, fear, and greed our commandment (any one of them), then we will be doomed to repeat a legacy of failure. We will return to the dark. So much of history swings in this direction, even American history – certainly, church history. But there is another swing, too. You heard there is forgiveness for us. There is healing for us. There is hope for us. There is life for us. There is a future for us in a better world as we make a better world here, right here, and in a better world to come. There is one command, one truth, one way, one family, one Lord, and one God in whom we will stand. We will live by love as we try. We will live in the light with this love as we try because Jesus is with us, to whom be the glory. Amen.
To know the truth is to walk in love with God.