Not Settling for Less

A Sermon Based Upon 1 John 1: 1-2:2, NRSV

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

2nd Sunday of Easter, April 8th, 2018 

(1-6)   Sermon Series: 1 John

Have we been settling for less in our lives?    

Late last year, when many women were declaring abuse from notable men, my first immediate thought was ‘what took them so long’?   I’m not saying anything against those women.  I’m upset about what happened to them.  I don’t blame them.   I think it is unfair how our society has been dominated by powerful and abusive men. 

But can’t you also imagine how many years those women lived their lives while denying to themselves what had happened to them?  Can’t you imagine living all those years knowing you were treated unfairly and wrongly, even abused, but to you feared to say anything?  Can’t you also imagine how long our society has been satisfied to sweep such bad behavior under the rug, to be less it ought to be, even pretending to be something it isn’t?   Beginning with Bill Cosby, and continuing with Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacy, Roy Moore, Charlie Rose, and also recordings revealing this same mentality in the President of our United States, we are very much a society that lives beneath its aspirations and claims of goodness and greatness.

So, what’s new?  Haven’t we always been people like this—people living beneath our potential and possibilities?   Isn’t it part of the human struggle to be people who will, if given a chance, settle for less than who we have been created to be?    A blog at Psychology Today warns that if we aren’t careful, “we can become an accomplice in our own dissatisfaction with our lives when we settle for less...”   But “when you begin to make decisions that reflect what your desire and need from your life and your relationships, you will begin to feel better about yourself.  The better you feel (about yourself), the easier it becomes for you to reject mistreatment.  When you resist the need to settle you will be rewarded with (new) opportunities.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/having-sex-wanting-intimacy/201701/5-ways-stop-settling-less-you-deserve

Those are good words, not just to help women know how to resist being mistreated by others, but they are good words for all of us.   We all need to make decisions and live our lives in ways that we receive what we need in both life and relationships.   We need to learn to live so that we can feel better about ourselves; so we can stop settling for less than the ‘the life we deserve’, as the psychologist says.

…SO THAT OUR JOY MAY BE COMPLETE  (1:4)

Interestingly, long before we had modern psychology to help free us from human shortsightedness, we had, and still have, the Bible.   Today we begin a series of messages from one of the most eloquent parts of this Bible, the letter of 1 John.   This small book will be out guide through the remaining six weeks of Easter, until Pentecost Sunday. 

The Bible, particularly these opening verses of First John, has a very important angle on this psychological reality of living beneath oneself.   The Bible labels this ‘sin’.  “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us”(1:8).  

Now, let’s all take a deep breath!  This is some very strong language, especially in a society that thinks that it has outgrown the need for such direct language like this.    What I must say here, in light of all that has been being revealed about our society these days, ‘Welcome to the real world?’   It is exactly the real world, that the Bible hasn’t been hiding from us, and was written to keep us talking about all along.   This is the real world of human falleness, human brokenness, and yes, even human evil, and “sin.”   “For all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory” (Rom. 3:23).   This may be the important, and most realistic assessment of human existence.   We are all sinners.  “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).  Sin can, and will, kill you.  This language is the most fundamental, observable, and realistic declaration of the Bible.  

Such honest, candid, and direct talk is difficult for many people today.  Especially when people suffer great emotional and relational pain, people may try to avoid any kind of difficult, painful talk.  We can imagine this like when we were children, and wanted to avoid having our mother’s put healing ointment on our cuts or wounds.  I said: “Mom, please don’t get the red stuff!”  But there is healing power in this ‘burn’, by mother would remind me.   I still didn’t want it.  I didn’t want the hurt.  That’s our natural, human resistance to pain, even the pain of doing what it takes to bring healing. 

Back in 2009, when I had several surgeries on my foot and it became infected, there was a large hole that would not heal on the side of my foot.  It was infection.  It was resisting the antibiotics and would not heal over.  The doctor took a small swabbing stick, and stuck it directly into the large whole and stirred.  It looked like he was stirring cake batter, but this was inside my foot.   The pain was almost unbearable for a few moments.  He told me this ‘stirring up’ of everything, would promote healing.   It did, but hurt.  It made mom’s ‘red stuff’ like a ‘walk in the park’.

Even among those of us who hold up the Bible as the most important, painful, but also healing revelation of truth, still find it easy to avoid the truth and denial such a plain and simple appraisal of human life.   But ‘we’ need to realize, John was writing to churches.  He was not writing to perfect people called Christians, but he was writing to real people, people who were still sinners, but were trying live better, to become Christ-like, so they needed to be reminded again, that even in the most painful place and most painful truth,  this is exactly the place we can also find our greatest place of healing and hope.    

It can be hard, very hard, in a society that has gotten so used to pretending to be something we aren’t, where people can hide their private lives and flaws behind their public lives and successes, to go to this painful place of truth, and receive this biblical message that ‘sin’ is in any and all of us.   But we need to also see that John is not offering us a pity party, nor is he trying to create emotional distress, for the sake of inflicting pain and suffering.  No, the primary message of John is that he is preaching a message of ‘cleansing’ hope.   Before he unloads the world ‘sin’ on his readers, he tells them that there is healing and hope.   He says, “the blood of Jesus….cleanses us from all sin (v.7a).”

The ‘cleansing’ of our hearts from ‘all sin’ and brokenness, is the main reason John is writing this letter.   John says, “We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete’ (v.4).   The expression we would use today might be that he writes so that we can find ‘joyful fulfilment’ in our lives.   It is only by acknowledging exactly what our human problem is, that we can deal with the problem, and understand, even today, what Jesus has done, and what the death and life of Jesus still means, to help us get clean and find redemption from the sin that can still destroy us.  Just as we can’t avoid talking about sin, all our sin, when we talk about the sins that still destroys lives, we also shouldn’t avoid talking about what Jesus’ death and life means for the ‘cleansing’ and the ‘conquering’ of, what the Bible names as ‘unrighteousness’ (9).  

Strangely, and I mean very strangely to us----because of how our world, and even how we too in our church, often avoid the truth---the Bible starts bringing us ‘joy’ and ‘fulfilment’ by taking us to the hardest, most painful, but also this most realistic place.  It says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.”   It says even more strongly, “If we say that we have not sinned…his word is not in us.”   But it also says, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. (9)   

What the Bible means here is that you can’t take a great step forward, until you first take some difficult steps back.  You can’t find healing without some pain, and you can’t find great joy, until to face and find the truth.  And the greatest truth is not your sin, nor is it my sin, but the greatest truth is that ‘he who is faithful and just will forgive….and cleanse…’ (9).  We must never forget that this is the greatest truth.    The reason sin must be admitted, is not condemnation in us, but it is commendation of the Christ is for us, so that no one, and nothing can be against us.   This may sound to good to be true, but you can’t receive God’s great healing truth, without honest facing of the hard truth.  This is what both the Bible and the psychologist mean, when they say,  ‘our joy’ should be complete’ or we must ‘resist the need to settle for less.’   The ‘more’ life has for us, can still be found, when we God’s ‘more’ given to us,  God’s ‘all’ given to us,  yes, even strangely ‘expressed’ as given to us  in ‘the blood of Jesus His Son, who ‘cleanses us from all sin’ (7).

THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST…CLEANSES (1:7b)

Do we still need such violent ‘language’ like this to help us understand how much God loves us and wants to cleanse and heal us from our sin and brokenness?   This is part of the discussion that is currently going on in theological schools and universities in America and around the world.  Can the violence that Jesus suffered at the cross really be part of what God has done to reveal his forgiving and redeeming love?  

If John were to answer the question as to whether Jesus’ suffering, pain and death can bring healing and life, John, and the gospel, would answer, without hesitation, ‘yes’.  What about us?  How can the church still say, preach, and promise, in a world that remains just as sinful and violent as ever, that there has been and still is, healing and salvation in the terrible ‘pain’ and ‘dying’ that Jesus suffered on the cross.  How can we preach, ‘by his bruises (stripes), we are healed’ (Isa. 53:5), when people even think the Bible has settled for less, and when the healing doesn’t seem to be here, even in the Bible?  

Even among those of us, who take the Bible at its word, how do we explain such language in a world that believes it has moved beyond the need for all this violent, bloody religious language?   How do we talk about ‘the blood of the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1:9) when the dominating world thinks it has moved beyond talking about sin and talking about God demanding blood, the killing of lambs, and even God the Father murdering his own Son, so that we can all be saved.   The world now thinks it is nicer, better, and kinder than the God would establish a plan of world salvation, though the violent death a man, we call God’s Son.   Who would want to believe, accept, or settle for any religion that has at its center such an ugly, cruel, agonizing, violent loss of blood, and death?

While it is a ‘hard’ discussion to have, it is still the hard truth, the Bible does not avoid.   John’s letter does not try to hide the hard truth, and is even bold enough to name this  ‘hard truth’ ‘the word of life’ (1:1).   John says ‘we declare to you’ not what we ‘made up’, but ‘what we have seen and heard’ (2:2).   Even in ‘what we have seen with our eyes, looked at, and touched with our hands’, we have ‘fellowship’ with the ‘Father and with this Son Jesus Christ’.   Even in this ‘blood of Jesus his Son’ and in this violence in Christ’s cross,  there is ‘the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’ (2:2).

Now, there is something very ‘real’ about this kind of Jesus, and this kind of talk, even if we don’t like it, and we shouldn’t like it.  If you learn to like this biblical talk of ‘sacrifice’, of ‘blood’ and of ‘suffering’ at the cross, we are taking it the wrong way.   The salvation is not in the violence.   God did not do the violence.   God did not murder Jesus.   This is to understand what the gospel says all wrong.   You mistunderstand the ‘blood of Jesus’ when you take it as a demand for violence (redemptive violence), so that God can or will forgive sin, and you can also misunderstand the ‘blood of Jesus’, when we start to celebrate this language as good, great, and saving, without understanding that it is not God, but ‘human beings’ who also have the ‘blood of the innocent’ on our hands.   John is celebrating the cleansing power of the blood, but there is no cleansing in blood, without confessing ‘our sins’.   The blood is shed, because of human sin, not because of God’s wish.  God gave his Son as a ‘sacrifice’ only because humans life and human sin, puts this demand on a loving, forgiving, and faithful God.

There is, of course, much to be discovered in the biblical message of sin, confession, forgiveness, and cleansing through ‘the blood of Jesus his Son’.  There is as much truth about humanity to be discovered here, as there is truth about God’s faithful love.   What John wants us readers to know, and what we must never avoid, is that at the center of our redemption, our saving, and our cleansing, is the real, difficult, hard, and unavoidable truth.   Jesus died.  Jesus suffered.  Jesus bled out.  But because our God is ‘faithful and just’ he will ‘forgive our sins’.  Just as God gave forgiveness, and revealed his forgiveness and the atonement of all sin through the death of Jesus, God still reveals his forgiveness and the atonement of any sin, even while we are sinners, because, ‘Christ died for us!’

Again, what John wants us to know, throughout this letter, is that this is the ‘real Jesus’.  We must never settle for less than the real Jesus, is we want find God’s cleansing and healing.   I had a professor in college, who could not stand to hear songs in Baptist hymnals about the ‘blood of the lamb’ or about the ‘sacrifice’ of Jesus on the cross.   He thought that we needed to move beyond this language.  He sincerely believed that this kind of language could cause us to continue to promote violence, hate, and demand pain and suffering, so that God would love, God could save, and God might forgive.  When I first heard that professor, going after the language I grew up with, I was shaken and confused.  I wondered,  “Why would this guy not like a song, like ‘There’s Power in the Blood’?   How could he be a Christian professor and strike out biblical language and songs about Jesus’ blood and sacrifice?

What I have since realize, is that that professor, was not so much against the language of ‘blood’ and ‘sacrifice’, but he was trying to help us see how we can misunderstand and misuse it.   It’s kind of like misusing sex in our world.   Sex is not bad, and we must never make it bad.  But sex is sacred, just like our talk about Jesus’ sacrifice and Jesus ‘blood’ must remain sacred, special, language.  

If we want the real Jesus, and not to settle for less than the real, true, suffering and saving Jesus, we have to continue to talk about the ‘hard’ stuff, like the blood, the sacrifice, and the violence of the cross.   But, at the same time, my professor’s approach was mistaken, but his warning was right.   We must be careful to respect, understand, and not misuse this very sacred language of the cleansing ‘blood of Jesus’.  

When John speaks of the ‘blood of Jesus’,  we must realize that this does not mean that Jesus had to die so that God could ‘use’ or ‘abuse’ Jesus in our place.   The Bible does say that Jesus died for us, and took our place and died in our place, but Jesus Jesus did not suffer a violent death because God wanted this.   God did not make Jesus’ suffer to love us, but God was in the suffering and dying of Jesus Christ, making his love, the love he already had for us, clear and plain in Jesus Christ.   “Even while we are sinners,  Christ died for us.”  “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.”   The language of this cruel blood sacrifice not the language of what God did to Jesus, but it is the language of what God was doing in Jesus; it is the language of suffering love, not because God demands the violence, but because God’s love does not stop, will not stop loving us, even when we hurt him or we hurt each other.  At the cross, God reveals to us that his love does not stop,  even when we reject this love or when we reject God’s truth.  God’s love does not stop, but can be revealed, even in the ‘blood’ of Jesus’ cross, ‘if we will confess our sins’.   The blood works, because God is in the Christ of the Cross, and this God is ‘is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanses us from all sin’ (7). 

    

WE WALK IN THE LIGHT (1:7a)

This is still ‘hard’ and ‘painful’ language, but is the ‘truth’ of what happened in Jesus’ death and sacrifice.   Jesus did not die to start a religion of ‘blood’ spilling and violent sacrifice, but Jesus gave his life, shed his blood, and met the violence in the world head on, for being the final, last, and ultimate ‘blood’ sacrifice, ‘once for all’ (Hebrew 10:2,10). 

This is what John means when he says ‘the blood cleanses us from ALL sin’ (7).   Notice that John does not say that Jesus’ blood excuses us from our sin(s), but John says that ‘if we confess our sins’,  this God ‘who is light and in him is no darkness at all’ (5), will ‘forgive’ and will ‘cleanse’ us ‘from all unrighteousness’.   The point John now makes is that, if we don’t want to settle for being less, that we can be, we must not settle for any less Jesus, than this true and real Jesus who suffered, and for any less life than the life that does not settle for the right kind of life.

It to declare the message of this ‘right’ kind of life, for both the church and the world, that this letter of John has been written, and can still be read, understood, and be challenging to us.   John opens his letter, declaring, ‘the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us…’.    ‘We declare what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us….’   ‘We right these things, so your our joy may be complete.’  Then, after all this amazing, bold, language, John gives us the most practical outcome of his message, ‘If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking (or living) in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true.’   In other words, when we lie to God, we are lying to ourselves, and we are living a life that is less than ‘what is true’.  “But,”  he concludes, ‘If we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin’ (7).  

I find it most interesting, most revealing, not what this text says, but what it doesn’t say, and how it doesn’t end.   John does not major on that when ‘we walk in the light, as he is in the light’  we will have fellowship with him, with God, or with Jesus.   John is not this, because God has already done, what needs to be done, to establish fellowship with us.   No, the great problem that remains in this church, and in many other lives too, is that we still need to ‘have fellowship with one another.’   It is the life in the light that is the real life that we should aim for, and we must never, ever settle for living any less kind of life, than the kind of life ‘confesses’ our sins, both to God, and also to each other.  Any life without confession of sin, is a life also lived without forgiveness of sin, and this is always, settling for a less kind of life.

When the news about North Carolinian news reporter, and Duke graduate, Charlie Rose’s sexual misconduct became public, it was astounding to watch his female co-hosts struggle to reveal and know the truth about their co-anchor.  Charlie Rose had helped to bring ‘real news’ to America on CBS This Morning.   But now, the ‘real news’ was coming out about Charlie Rose.   His co-anchor,  Gayle King, expressed her feeling,  “I’m not OK”.  “This is not the man I know, but I’m on the side of the women!... “Charlie Rose does not get a pass!”  “What do you say when someone that you deeply care about has done something that is so horrible? How do you wrap your brain around that? I’m really grappling with that.”

We are all, always grappling with that, and with the reality of human sin, failure and brokenness.   But John challenges us, instead of denying our sin, to confess our sin, and to allow God’s healing ‘faithfulness’ and ‘justice’ to bring God’s life-giving ‘word’ of ‘light’ and ‘life’ to us.   I could imagine that even Charlie Rose, who was a world-renowned reporter, after what was done in darkness came to light, was not just trying to ‘wrap his brain around it’, but he was also trying to find a way to unwrap his heart from it.   The only way through the pain of sin, is to confess and to be cleansed by God’s heart of love for us, even while we are sinners.

Do you want ‘walk in the light’ as ‘he is in the light?   Do you, do we, settle for a life of not doing what we know we should do, and not doing what we should do?   To begin to walk in the light is to stop deceiving ourselves.   Self-deception never leads us to life.  When we settle we settle for less than the love and forgiveness God has to give, and when we settle for less than the life we still have to live,  this is to miss the ‘joy’ that will make life full again.   Amen.