How We Know Love

John 10:11-18            “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

1 John 3:16-24           We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 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. 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 commandments and do what pleases him.

And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 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 that he has given us.

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There was a story told at the sermon roundtable this past week that I want to share with you.  It’s a story about a mother, who took great pride in her parenting skills.  She would tell you that she never hit her children – she didn’t believe in that, because there were other methods of disciplining children.  Then she would tell you about her method.  If her child misbehaved, the child had to sit in a chair in the corner and was not permitted to get out of the chair until she said to her mother, “I love you.”  If she would say that, her confinement would end and she would be free.

Her neighbors were well aware of her method because they could hear the child crying and they could hear the mother screaming at her:  “You have to say you love me!”  The very strange thing about it, from the perspective of these witnesses, was just how devoid of love this process seemed to be.

Saying I love you is not necessarily the same thing as showing I love you.  Hearing the words is very nice, and evidently it was very important for this mother to hear the words.  But, for some reason, she chose to withhold her love until she heard them.  Just hearing the story about this woman made us feel sad for her children, but we also felt sad about their mother.  We wondered who taught this woman that this is what love is all about. 

I have no room to stand in judgment against this woman.  I have been guilty of yelling at my kids loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear, I am embarrassed to admit.  I wish I could go back and correct all my mistakes, but I don’t know if I would be any better even if I had a second try.  I think I am going to have to lean on forgiveness.

We talk sometimes at the roundtable about our private fears that our sins aren’t forgivable, that we are not good enough.  We read words of assurance, like these we hear in John’s letter – “even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things” – and we find hope in them.  Hope that God is more forgiving than we are, less condemning than we are.

We are quick to condemn others who don’t seem to meet our standards of behavior.  They don’t support the same causes or people that we do, or they don’t use their time the way we think they should.  But, as one voice said at the roundtable, we should probably be very careful about judging the character of others by what we can see, because we don’t see everything.  We might be very surprised if we actually knew what some people are doing, thinking, feeling.

And, as the scripture says: Although our hearts condemn, God is greater than our hearts, and God knows everything. 

That’s good to remember, too, when others are criticizing us for the way we live.  When Kim and I made the decision for me to attend seminary and pursue the call to ministry, I heard some pretty harsh criticism from other mothers.  We had four children at home.  To these others it seemed as though my pursuit was selfish; to me it was more complicated than that.  I was grappling with discernment about God’s call, and God’s call is persistent.  Nonetheless, some of these others shared their opinions freely with me and it was very hurtful.

The letter from John to his flock tells us about the importance of loving in truth and action – not just with words.  Maybe you have known the feeling of hearing someone say, “love ya, brother,” or love ya, sister” through gritted teeth and eyes that communicate anything but love.  Maybe you have experienced the hearty, “I’m glad you’re here!” with a pat on the back that felt more like an assault than a greeting.

Sometimes we use loving words in very unloving ways.  I believe in the south there is a well-known saying: “Bless your heart,” by which you should know you’ve been insulted in a very polite way.  If I had been in the south, that’s probably what I would have heard from the people who disapproved of my going to seminary – “Bless your heart!”  Then they would have turned and shook their heads, saying “God love her!”  Which is another popular put down, I understand.

Words can be very hurtful, and I think John’s community may have been experiencing some of that hurtfulness.  It seems that there were those who had split off from the church and were pursuing a different understanding of being Christian.  And it wasn’t enough for them to just leave peacefully, but they had to continue criticizing the ones they had walked away from. 

My first call was to a church that had suffered that kind of split.  Several years before I got to First Presbyterian, they had divided into factions.  There was one faction that had become influenced by a Pentecostal pastor.  These men and women had been revitalized by their experience and they wanted to bring it home, to change things up in their home church.  Essentially, they wanted to turn their Presbyterian Church into a Pentecostal Church.  Others in the church resisted, and things got pretty tense.  Soon, I was told, there were some people telling other people that they were not Christian.  Some of those who resisted the changes were told that they had been possessed by demons, and there were even certain individuals running around the church performing exorcisms.  Unauthorized exorcisms, I should add.

Eventually, the congregation had divided themselves into three, roughly equal, groups: those who wanted to be Pentecostal, those who wanted things to stay the same, and those who had not chosen a side.  The ones who hadn’t taken sides got caught in the crossfire anyway and they were the first to leave.  Eventually the Pentecostals left too and started a new church on the other side of town with the Pentecostal pastor.  The remnant that remained felt like the wounded little children John writes to in his letter. 

We may not agree on a lot of things, even those of us who choose to be in community together.  We’re all unique individuals, so we are bound to have disagreements.  Our disagreements can even help us to grow, because they challenge us when we become complacent.  But the most important thing is that our disagreements be handled with love and care for one another, as we bear in mind those things that hold us together.  Because we have some pretty great things that hold us together.

We have a Good Shepherd who laid down his life for us because he loves us – all of us.  The parable in John’s gospel paints a picture of a good shepherd who will care faithfully for the flock.  Even when the hired hand flees because of danger, the good shepherd will remain.  There is nothing that can separate us from the love of this good shepherd, who knows us all by name.  This good shepherd will find us and call us, no matter what fold we are a part of. 

And John’s letter repeats the image of the good shepherd, going a step further: we ought to do likewise.  We ought to lay down our lives for one another, just as the good shepherd has laid down his life for us.  Showing one another love in truth and action, caring for those in need.  This is the way we will remember who we are and to whom we belong.

John sets the bar pretty high, and that can make us pretty uncomfortable.  There are people in our lives – teachers, coaches, parents, bosses, pastors, and spouses – who make us feel as though we can never live up to the standard they are holding us to.  They hold the bar up over our heads and then tell us, “Just try harder, just jump higher!”  That’s discouraging … disheartening.

We need to feel the love in order to want to live up to the expectation – in our personal relationships and our relationship with God.  Sometimes the church has fallen down on the work of showing the love, and we have only felt the burden of expectation.  But we’re missing a critical piece of the gospel when that happens: that God’s love abides in us, Christ Jesus abides in us.

The image of the good shepherd is one that can carry us a long way.  The shepherd doesn’t berate the sheep for not being smarter or better sheep; the shepherd loves the sheep and cares for them, providing for their need.

This is the message for us: that our good shepherd loves us and provides for us in our need.  Our good shepherd shows us what love is by his actions.  Our good shepherd asks us to love one another in the very same way.

So, then, the question we are left with is, who will you be?  Will you be a hired hand, who runs at the first sign of trouble?  Or will you be a good shepherd, faithful and ready to love? 

I might run if I feel like the task is too big for me.  But this is the good news the gospel shares with us: it may be too big for us, but it’s not too big for Jesus Christ, who abides in us.

This work of community building is not a do-it-yourself project.  We don’t build God’s beloved community on earth by being the best people, with the best skill set, or even because we have the best doctrine.  We build the beloved community of God when we realize that we are the best loved – as all God’s children are.  You know how a father might say, “I love all my children the best; each one is my favorite.” Because that’s the way a parent’s love is – abundant and full.

Open your hearts to God and the power of God’s love is yours.  Love one another, as God has loved you.  

Holy and Incomplete

Luke 24:36-48           While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

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I have a picture of my two daughters when Kira was five and Willa was just a baby.  Willa is in a baby seat on the floor and Kira is sitting next to her, wearing her school clothes and a paper pilgrim bonnet and big white collar.  Obviously, it was near Thanksgiving.  In her kindergarten class they had been remembering those pilgrims who were the first to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Every schoolchild in America must know what a pilgrim looked like, because I think we all have done this study unit.  It’s an important chapter in our American history; we learn the story and re-enact it every year because it tells us something important about who we are.  Even though we may argue about the accuracy of the story; even though we should acknowledge that the story could have been told differently, from different perspectives; even though it is only one of many possible stories about our beginnings as a nation, it is still a story that matters a great deal to our identity.

People have to have stories about where they came from and how they became the people they are.  And the stories don’t just crop up fully formed.  The histories don’t just write themselves.  A lot of time and telling and retelling and conversation have to go into the process of defining who we are.

The same is true for us as Christians - our identity.  And the first stories, the most important stories for us, are the scriptures. 

The story we hear today from Luke is like the one we heard from John last week, so it might sound like deja vu all over again, as the great Yogi Berra said.  But it’s an important story, so worth hearing twice.  In Luke’s telling, two of the disciples had just returned from a road trip. They were walking from Jerusalem toward Emmaus.  It was the day of the resurrection, but these men did not know that. They only knew that the tomb had been found empty.  And while they were walking and talking, they encountered the risen Christ – whom they did not recognize.  As they walked together he interpreted for them the things about himself in the scriptures.  And when they stopped at an inn and sat at table together, he opened their eyes to him in the blessing and the breaking of bread.  They ran back to Jerusalem to tell the others they had seen and spoken to the risen Christ.

So this is where we are when our story begins and Jesus enters the room with them.  Just as John told it in chapter 20 of his gospel, they were terrified.  And just as John told it, Jesus greeted them with words of peace.  He shows them his wounds to convince them of who he is, and in Luke’s telling he goes a step further, eating a piece of fish to prove he’s not an illusion or a hologram.  He is a real presence among them.  They might not be able to explain this but they know they didn’t imagine it.

In John’s telling of the story, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on them at that moment.  He simply breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  Luke differs on this point.  He says, in verse 49, “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”  Power from on high – the power of the Spirit of God.

But the Holy Spirit won’t be given until the day of Pentecost, 50 days later.  It will be more dramatic than the story John tells, but you’ll have to come back for that one on May 24. At any rate, the stories of John and Luke are telling us the same important things:  The resurrected Jesus came to them and, although this appearance was mysterious, it was real.  He opens their minds to understand who he is.  And, finally, they both tell us the risen Jesus has work for his disciples to do.

Luke makes it clear here that the good news of repentance and forgiveness must go out to all the nations of the world.  He also makes it clear that it is the responsibility of Christ’s disciples to proclaim this message.  And, furthermore, he makes clear that it begins here and now.  Make no mistake about it – the church has a mission that is the core of its identity.

That’s why these stories are so important for us, because they tell us where we came from and what purpose we were created for:  Faith and Action.  This is who we are.  This is what we are all about.  This is where we are going.

All good in theory.  It’s just when we try to live it we run into all kinds of problems.  If we try to live lives faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ not a day goes by that we don’t encounter trials and our own weakness and uncertainty about what we are trying to do.  The gospel sounds quite clear until you try to put it in action.  We see this reality, also, in our scriptures.  We see the difficulty of living the good news through the epistles.

In the letters of Paul to the churches he established, we see signs of conflict and confusion and faithlessness.  And in the letters of John, also, we see signs that there was trouble in paradise.  The letters in the New Testament were all written to the church of the first century in the various places it took root.  They give us one side of a conversation, from which we can imagine the kinds of problems that they were struggling with.

We can tell there were divisions among the people about how to be faithful in the midst of a world that was indifferent or even hostile toward Christ.  We can see there were misunderstandings about what it means to live in faithful Christian community, and we can see that there were even disagreements about the fundamental beliefs they shared.  There were schisms in the faith communities when the conflicts couldn’t be worked out, and then sometimes hostility toward the ones who had split from the church, who seemed to be proclaiming a different kind of gospel.  At the root of all the trouble seemed to be a problem about reconciling what they believed with how to live out that belief.  Don’t we still struggle with the very same things?

We believe we are forgiven, but we may not be sure what it means to be a forgiven people.  In some way it separates us from the rest of the world, but by the same token it demands that we remain in the midst of this broken world.  We are called to be a living witness to the message of forgiveness through God’s undying love. 

Our relationship with Christ sets us apart in some way, but it doesn’t set us apart as models of perfection – that is abundantly clear, isn’t it?  Our status as forgiven people merely shows that if it can happen for us it can happen for anyone.  We are on the road, but not far beyond the starting line.

The story of ourselves has to include these two paradoxical realities: that we are forgiven and cleansed of our sin, on the road to holiness, and also that we are everyday sinners standing in the need of God’s grace.  As John says, “We are God’s children now, but what we will be has not yet been revealed.”  We are both holy and incomplete.  We need to hold these things two things in mind, as difficult as that may be, because otherwise we lose sight of our mission. 

Christ didn’t die so we could live more comfortably in this world.  Christ didn’t die so we could be swept away into another world where we can live in comfort.  In short, he didn’t die for our comfort.  He did it for love of creation and he asks us to help in the redemption of creation.

It is in this way that we are co-creators with God.  As the Word of God became flesh and lived and died among us, we human beings were drawn into the story.  As the Holy Spirit was bestowed on us, we were given the power to be co-authors of this story.  And the story has continued for generations.  This is also part of our story: that the community of faith continued to go out farther and farther into the world to proclaim the good news of repentance and forgiveness.  And at the same time they continued to be in conversation with themselves about who Jesus is in relation to the world and the God of Israel, what it means to believe in and bear witness to Jesus Christ, and what it means to put our faith in action in the world.

We are, and always have been, a people of faith and action.

The stories of scripture tell us this, and it is important that the stories we tell about ourselves don’t disconnect us from this truth.  As messy as it is, we need to stay connected with these old stories.  As uncomfortable as they might make us, we need to see our stories as extensions of these stories.  As I said on Easter Sunday and will say again and again, our ancestors who gave us the scriptures merely gave us the beginning of the story.  It is up to us to pick up the threads and continue writing it with our lives.

The Power of Forgiveness

John 20:19-31            When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

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There is a scene in the film, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” when the three escaped convicts run into a group of people all dressed in white, singing. 

As I went down in the river to pray studying about that good ol' way

And who shall wear the starry crown? Good Lord show me the way!

They almost look like ghosts. Slowly they walk down to the river where you see there is a preacher standing in the water, baptizing.  One by one they get dunked in the water and come out cleansed, forgiven, renewed.  Delmar, one of the convicts, gets swept up in the beauty of it and runs in to the water to get baptized too.  He comes back to the other two all dripping wet, smiling, and says “Well that’s it, boys, I’ve been redeemed! The preacher’s done washed away all my sins and transgressions.”  He says, “Including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.”  Ulysses says, “Delmar, I though you said you was innocent of those charges.”  “Well, I was lying,” Delmar says, “and the preacher says that sin’s been washed away too.  Neither God nor man’s got nothing on me now.”

He’s a simple-minded fellow, and after that episode he gets the mistaken impression that the law has no claim on him anymore, even though he is an escaped convict, because his sins were washed away in the river.  He’s forgiven … and he can’t understand why the lawman doesn’t get that.  Poor Delmar.  He has an oversimplified understanding of the power of forgiveness.  But at least he’s giving it it’s due.

In some way I appreciate that, because too often I find that we act as though we have evolved beyond the need for forgiveness.  We are quick to cast it aside as something too quaint for the world in which we live.  We think it foolish to forgive someone who might turn around and hurt us again.  And we think it equally foolish to admit any need for forgiveness, lest someone think us weak.

If we think about forgiveness at all, we probably think of it as something God does.  But not us, at least not when it’s too hard. 

Jesus says otherwise.

He certainly did that Sunday night in Jerusalem when he walked through the door where the disciples were hiding, scared.  It had been a ghastly weekend; they were afraid.  John blames their fear on the Jews, but I doubt that.  That’s John’s bias coming through, writing the gospel more than half a century later, at a time when Christianity and Judaism had both changed in different directions.  The disciples didn’t fear the Jews; they were all Jews.  The only reasonable fear of the Jews they might have had is that one might turn them in to the authorities out of a misguided sense of loyalty.  The real fear, for all of the Jews, was of the Romans.  It was the Romans, alone, who had the power to crucify.

But that night, beside the fear I am sure they were feeling alarm and confusion at seeing Jesus again for the first time.  The man who had been crucified three days before now appears very much alive in front of them.  They see the nail marks in his hands and the place in his side where the spear pierced him.  And he says, “Peace be with you.”

And after greeting them with peace, he says these three things to his disciples:  First, as the Father sent me so I send you.  Then, receive the Holy Spirit. And finally … about forgiveness? That ball is in your court now.

Forgiveness is in our court now.  But, man, do we find it hard to do.

We often don’t want to forgive others.  Much of the time we would rather wallow in our resentment and nurture fantasies of revenge.  Sometimes we confuse it with justice, but they’re not the same thing.  Revenge actually tastes better than justice.

Here is possibly where we see our own inherent sinful nature most clearly – when we would rather be angry than let it go and take some of that peace he offered in the upper room that night.  It would cost us nothing, but we resist making the trade anyway. 

I admit I have a whole closet full of resentments I don’t want to let go of.  I don’t do anything with them except pull one out every now and then, poke at it and remember how much it hurt when that person did that thing to me, and how angry it makes me still. 

I don’t fully understand why we resist the act of forgiveness the way we do.  But I think it is closely tied to another resistance we have: the resistance to being forgiven.

I heard an interesting comment at the sermon roundtable this week.  Even though we know Christ forgives our sins in general, we often doubt his ability to forgive our sins in particular.  Because, as in all things, when it comes down to the particular it gets messy.

For me to accept that Christ can forgive my very particular and ugly and hurtful sins, I have to face them myself.  To have my wounds healed they have to be addressed – each and every one.

In the old Star Trek TV show Bones, the ship’s doctor, had this hand-held device he could use to diagnose medical problems just by scanning the patient’s body.  No invasive procedures, no touching, even.  It was called the tricorder.  It was amazing.  I read that someone has invented a real life tricorder now, proving again that nothing is more fantastic than reality.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could have our spiritual ailments handled the same way?  The sin-sick soul receives the spiritual scan and the instant readout provides you with a list of your ailments.  All the sins you have been sitting on; all the resentment you have been holding tightly, and all the secrets you’ve been keeping for fear that your sins are actually too much for Jesus to forgive.

I wonder; would we be willing to submit ourselves to the spiritual tricorder scan for the sake of being healed? Or would we prefer to keep on holding onto these things – our secret resentments and sins – rather than risk being exposed? 

I marvel at the trade offs we humans are willing to make – to hold ourselves imprisoned in a net of sin and unforgiveness rather than trading it in for the peace he offered us.

When I worked in college ministry, the students liked to combine weekly worship with a topical discussion about all kinds of things that were meaningful to their lives.  Sometimes it was sex, sometimes it was drugs and alcohol, sometimes it was money management.  But there was one topic I found they couldn’t get enough of, and that was forgiveness.

The first time we ran a program on forgiveness we filled the room to overflow capacity.  19, 20, 21 year olds crowded in to listen and ask their questions about whether they were really forgiven; about whether they really had to forgive others (or if there was some obscure escape clause they might learn about); and then, having their suspicions confirmed that they is no escape clause, about how they could possibly forgive the ones who had hurt them.  That first time, and every time after that, there was a lot of pain in the room when forgiveness was on the table.

It doesn’t seem to matter how old you are, or how young you are; forgiveness is a hard thing.

You thought we were going to talk about Doubting Thomas, didn’t you?  There is a lot in this passage we haven’t even touched.  Forgiveness is mentioned in only 1 of the 13 verses.  And yet I think it might be the hinge on which this story turns.

It is Christ’s work on the cross that opens the door to forgiveness.  The wounds on his hands and feet and his side are the evidence of this: the evidence that there is another way.  Even though this world is full of sin – violence and anger and greed and hatred; and it is always possible to adopt the old “Eye for an eye … and then some” philosophy of life.  Even though the conventional wisdom says to live and die by the sword, to withhold love, and refuse the hand of peace to anyone who hasn’t first proved his or her worthiness to you. In spite of all this Jesus Christ, in the flesh, provides the proof that there is another way.

There is this other way, in which forgiveness is offered even before it is asked.  And that’s what his wounds signify.  So, do you believe?

Do you see the marks on his hands and side and do you believe he did it for you?  And that he did it so that you could do it too?  Christ forgives you all your particular sins, and asks you to forgive one another.  The power is in your hands.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.  If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.

Do you believe that, because he did it first, you can do it too?