“NINE”
Scripture Lesson: 1 John 4: 7-12
Dr. Matthew Brown
People, prompted by many voices and
motivations, sign up for Church mission trips that they may heed the call to
carry Christ’s love into a broken and hurting world. This they usually accomplish, but with the
added bonus of experiencing the joys of love and community in that family of
faith formed through the Spirit of a loving God.
In 1995 Donna and I traveled with a group from our church in
Lawyers, preachers, teachers, and engineers were we, given
the assignment of installing a hardwood floor.
Through the week we went about our work connecting board to board and
the Spirit of God went about his work of connecting believer to believer.
Each morning we would begin our day gathering in a
rudimentary concrete block building to feast upon the fare offered by Miss Iola
Brooker.
Melt-in-your-mouth biscuits, homemade jams, mounds of eggs and grits, a cornicopia of pork products, cholesterol calculators
nowhere in sight. The food was much more
than fine and filling, but the fellowship was simply overflowing.
Laughter and loud talk so filled the room
one morning that no one noticed the absence of a certain minister’s wife. She had certainly entered and eaten but her
loveliness and laughter had become absent from the morning chorus, not that the
clamorous cafe crowd had any clue that she had gone missing. So entertained were we with the storytelling,
jesting, and jousting that we did not realize her predicament.
And her predicament was this: Over time, doors can warp. Over time, the worn down and rusting pieces
of doorknobs and locks can cease to function.
And thus, a quick trip to the old cafe’s water restroom in the hope of
avoiding a later trip to a less desirable Porta Jon, became an unfortunate experience of imprisonment,
prolonged by the inability of a certain thick headed husband to notice her
absence or hear, much less heed, her cry for help. And she did cry out for help.
She called and no one came.
She yelled and no one came. So
caught up were we in our boisterous conversation that we did not recognize her
plight until she returned some twenty minutes later with the news that finally,
in spite of our deafness and denseness, some Good Samaritan selling watermelons
across the street, heard her calls of distress and came into the restaurant and
freed her from her captivity.
Now, she could have been angry, but she wasn’t. She had credible cause to pummel me for my
negligence, but she didn’t. You see, it
seems that any embarrassment or fear were overshadowed by the joy of recounting
the story and laughing with her fellow family members in the household of faith
who, through words and deeds repeatedly reminded her that she is a beloved
child of God. O yes, we dropped the ball
that morning, but her experiences with that group, with that congregation over
time, had been such that she would never call into question whether she was
loved.
Have you ever had one of those experiences that, though
embarrassing or harrowing at the time, becomes a
story, a tale that is told again and again among friends? These stories entertain, yes, but more than
that they amplify our shared humanity and our dependence on the good graces and
love of others. We tell and retell these
stories and we laugh and we also remind ourselves that we live by grace and we
so often survive in spite of ourselves.
Author and pastor Lawrence Wood suggests that these are
Gospel stories told by gospel characters because of the glorious truth that God
still speaks through us and the people in our lives. Each week gathering in these seats are prodigal sons, faithful widows, good Samaritans, rich fools,
struggling shepherds, doubting disciples - and the stories of our lives
have the potential of being sacred stories.
Can you believe it?
Can you comprehend it? God speaks
through us and God speaks to us through the people who populate our lives. Lawrence Wood relates the quote of a feisty
ninety year old friend who said, “The last book of the Bible is still being
written, and I’d like to add a verse or two.”
What will our verses be?
The challenge John lays before us this morning is to live so that the
nouns and verbs of those verses would be love.
“Beloved, let us love one another.”
“Beloved,” what an important name to claim. Do you know that you are loved? As Donna experienced,
the traumas of life, big and small, are moderated, mitigated, diluted when we
understand that we are loved. I don’t
know about you but I can weather a great deal when I know, feel, and understand
that I am loved, that someone cares for me.
Well, John wants to make it abundantly clear in this little epistle that
we are loved. Repeatedly, he addresses
the people as those who are loved by God.
God’s love comes to us and is active in us before we are even aware of
it.
When we are traveling to my parents
home in
Do you understand what this is saying? If we are God’s and God is love, what is it
that would signify, mark our identity?
You know the song, “They will know we are Christians...”
In the Old Testament, in the Synoptics,
in the epistles it is told time and again that all the commands of scripture
can be boiled down to four words: “Love God, love neighbor.” That is the daily to do list of the Christian
life. And if we ever find ourselves
doing something that doesn’t fit under that heading, then we’re doing something
wrong.
This Dedication Sunday follows the conclusion of a long
political season where the dominant theme has been anything but love. O, there was a lot of talk about values, but
the values I saw demonstrated time and again were hatred, bitterness,
arrogance, judgment, and avarice. The
political ads were mean, offensive, atrocious, and before we put all the blame
on the politicians we should confront the reality that we see so many of those
ads for the same reason the we receive so much junk
mail. Because it’s been discovered that
they work, they we respond to them.
Well, John has something to say about all that. He says, “Whoever does not love does not know
God, for God is love.”
Whether we’re on the national political stage or at the
office or in the school or sitting in the family room or out and about on the
streets of Charlotte, if we’re not acting in love, we’re not doing what we’re
supposed to be doing. And speaking of the
streets of
As you leave this place today I want you to carry in your
mind one number and I would ask that you remember that number and think of it
from time to time. Lori Watnee shared this number with us recently and I want to
share it with you. Do you know what the
average age of a homeless person in
I can’t help but wonder what that nine year old child
understands about love. Does she know
she is loved? Who will let her know?
The dynamic pastor Tom Tewell
relates the story of an author named Anthony who went to
What’s the old corny song? “Love’s not love ‘til you give it
away.” Well, the saying is rather trite,
but it is also true.” God, in his
wisdom, has deigned to make himself evident among us,
through our acts of love, one for another.
Peter Gomes, the pastor of the Memorial Church at Harvard University
writes, “By God’s love for us in Jesus Christ we are become in ourselves, in
our own persons, in our daily work acts of God, evidence, living proof that the
God who acted in the lives of the prophets, the martyrs, and the saints still
acts in the likes and the lives of us.”
Think about it. You
are one of the mighty acts of God. Well,
on this day let us dedicate ourselves to being an act of love. For God is love.
I’m so tired of hearing all this talk about the polarization
of society and about different sets of values.
Folks, that’s ridiculous.
We are all one people. We are all
sinners, and yet we are all loved. And
the One who loves us has placed upon us and in us and before us, one value -
Love. So make love your aim. Amen.
Resources:
We Love to Tell the Story -
One Hundred Tons of Ice -
Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living - Peter Gomes