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.

+++

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.