A Sermon Based Upon 1 John 5: 9-15, NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
6th Sunday of Easter, May 13th, 2018, Mother’s Day
(6-6) Sermon Series: 1 John
Today is Mother’s Day, a very special day in the life of our churches when we honor and remember our mothers. Of course, our Mothers are special for many reasons, but the main reason mothers are special isn’t really about our mother, but it’s about us. We love our mothers because most of all, they are ‘our’ mothers. They are the mothers who loved us more than anything else in this world. Our mothers taught us, by actions more than words, what love means. We know how to love through the love of our mothers. To put it in the vernacular of this Letter of John we have been studying; We love our mother’s, because our mothers first loved us and taught us what is love.
As come to this final message from John’s epistle, John tells us exactly why he wrote this letter: “ I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life” (13). It shouldn’t be surprising that this letter, which has so much to say about God’s love for us and our love for each other, is really a letter to help believers ‘know’ they have eternal life. Just as our mothers love is a gift to us, this love also actually gives life to us.
In much the same way, it is also God’s desire is to give us eternal life. Just as our mothers try to teach us to live the best kind of life we can live and should live, God wants us to overcome our human tendency to live in sin that leads to death, both a premature physical death, or a spiritual, second or eternal death. And just like our mothers made us get along with our brothers and sisters, God also wants us to love each other, as God loves us. When you think about it, God and mothers have similar concerns: to give us life and to give us love. To be a mother, is to be like God, and to be God is life-giving love of mothers.
THE TESTIMONY OF GOD (9).
Today, we want to compare closely how our mothers are like God, and how God is like our mothers. But first, follow John’s discussion, we should consider what John says about ‘God’s testimony’ being greater than human testimony” (9). This ‘testimony’ that is greater, which John alludes to throughout this letter, is clearly the ‘testimony of life and love given by God through the gift of his Son, Jesus Christ. “Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts” (10). The Son, is God’s testimony to God’s life and love.
When I was growing up you often heard that nothing could stop a mother’s love. In recent years, we have all learned that even the greatest human love can still be limited, whether it came from our mothers or anyone else. As we grow up, we might also begin to realize that even our mothers were not perfect in their love either. What makes a mothers’ great, however, is not that our mothers were perfect, but that they, our own mothers, are perfected by the love they had, and have for us. It is not we who are perfect in loving, but is in our loving that love perfects us.
Love perfects us because all love comes from God because, as John reminds us, God is love. This is why God’s testimony is ‘greater’. This ‘greater’ is not necessarily because God’s love is better than ours, as love is love and is always the greatest, but God’s love is greater because God’s love is the source and example of what love means. This ‘testimony’ comes to us direct from the source, because God’s love has been perfectly revealed in the life of Jesus, God’s son. John says that when we believe in God’s son, we have the ‘testimony’ of God’s love for us that leads us to and gives us God’s life.
I don’t think any of will doubt what it means to have had a mother, and parents, who loved unconditionally loved us. The first years of a child’s life determines most of the capacities and capabilities that we will have for the rest of our lives. Our successes and our failures, can be reduced to whether or not we are able to experience and know love in the first days, weeks, and years of our lives. In other words, whether we are loved, cared for, and are bonded to love in those earliest moments of life, days that we now cannot remember, determine most everything about who we become and how we live the rest of our lives.
So, now, as we live our lives, everything we do, can achieve, might accomplish, or will obtain in our lives, points back to the ‘testimony’ of love that we have been given. As a mother, perfected by love, points us back to the love of God revealed in Jesus, we have yet another testimony to God’s love that nourishes us for living or life and for knowing God’s love.
WHOEVER HAS THE SON HAS LIFE (12)
This ‘testimony’ of love, given to us either from our mothers, our parents, or from God, is a testimony that aims to give us life, not just now, but forever. John says: “And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life (11-12).
We live in a world where we are free to be and become whatever we desire to be or become, and this is a great blessing. The blessing of freedom only becomes a curse when we forget where our freedom and the blessing comes from. Freedom becomes a curse for a child when the child forgets who loved and raised them. In much the same way, freedom becomes a curse for God’s children, when we forget the source of love that gives us life. To fail to acknowledge the source of love and life, is to loose life itself. If you fail to acknowledge the gift of life given to us through God’s Son, we cut ourselves off from God’s life giving source, who is Jesus Christ. As John says plainly, “The one who has the Son has life. The one who does not have the Son does not have life.” When you cut yourself off from God’s love, you also cut yourself off from God’s life giving source.
There is nothing more tragic in life, than a thankless child. What John is telling us here is that will be no thankless children in heaven. Eternal life is only given to those who acknowledge God’s love and who have God’s Son. Since God gives life and love only through the Son, eternal life is a gift only given through this Son who gives life.
Now, this sounds restrictive and narrow to say that God only gives life through the Son. But the gift of God’s son is not to restrict, but to release God’s love into the world. In much the same way that a mother loves us to release us, God’s love isn’t restrictive, but redemptive. As John 3:16-18 says , God so loved the world.., not to condemn the world. The world is condemned already, the gospel says. The gospel is a call to salvation, not condemnation.
So if we are called in this gospel of love to commend people to Jesus, but we don’t condemn people with Jesus, how are we to take John’s statement of faith which says those who don’t have the a Son, don’t have life? How do we approach the exclusive claim of the gospel with the exclusive message of Jesus Christ as the only way to have eternal life?
I believe that we preach God’s life giving love in Jesus without having to play God, that is, without trying to determine who has the son and who doesn’t, who is in or who is out. Would a mother teach her child who not to love, or does she teach the child how and who to love? In the same way, God’s selective Love is to commend, not to condemn. The life and death of Jesus is meant to commend God’s Love to the world.
As the church of Jesus Christ, our own life is in the love of the God who loves through the Son. We only preach salvation through Jesus because Jesus is how God revealed His love that gives us our life. In exactly this way, the love and life God gives us, now and forever, is like the life and love my mother gave and still gives me, because I forever carry her love in my heart. For as long as I listen to, obey, and live in harmony with the heart and love of my mother, I have, keep, and continue to receive the her love and her life. But if I go against the life and love she gave me, I not only go against her, but I also lose all the love and life she gave to me. In other words, echoing John, when I remain in her love, I remain in the love that gives me life. If I don’t remain in her love, I don’t have the life only her life can give.
In the moving and powerful story of the Russian Jewish literature professor there is a testimony to the enduring, even eternal, spiritual life, God gives, even in the darkest night of the soul. Evgenia Ginsberg was falsely accused of conspiring against Stalin’s regime, simply because she told the truth Stalin did not want to hear. Even her friends, colleagues, and her husband turned against the truth she held on to. They tried to get her to tell and teach the lie, but she would not go against the truth. Even when tortured her, convicted her, and sentenced her to 10 years hard labor in Siberia, she stayed true to her heart. During the torture and darkest night she quoted great lines of the most honest literature in head and heart to overcome the pain she had to endure. She would quote over and over to herself a Russian poem of determination and defiance saying something like, “I have a body…who should I be thankful to…. I will leave a mark that I was here.” Those who lied about her, and lied to Stalin, including her husband who divorced her, where eventually murdered by Stalin, but she, the one who told the truth and suffered for the truth, survived. Perhaps Stalin eventually felt he could isolate and allow those who believed and told the truth to survive, better than he could stand those who lied to him.
Ginesburg legacy to live for the truth, against Stalin’s lie, reminds us that the only truth worth living and dying for is the saving and promising power of the kind of love that gives life. This is the kind of love John’s letter assures can be found in the life and Love of God’s Son. The love of the world can only promise death, but God’s Love promises eternal, enduring, love and life.
THIS IS THE BOLDNESS …. (14).
Given that we preach Jesus, without having to play God, means that I can be bold in who and how I preach and live God’s love. Since God is love, and Jesus reveals God’s love, there is really no other choice for me, or for you, other than the offer Jesus offers of the love and life which Jesus reveals. A mother’s love can give us life and love now, but only God’s Love can assure us of life to come. This is the boldness of God’s Love, which alone promises eternal life in God’s Love and God’s life.
In 1922, a marvelous treasure was unearthed in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. The tomb of King Tut, a nineteen-year-old pharaoh, was discovered. He lived 1,300 years before Jesus. One of the valued artifacts that was brought out of this ancient tomb was the figure of "The King upon a Leopard." The leopard was black, the shade of death. The pharaoh was clothed in bright, gilded color, riding regally upon the leopard's back. This figure of "The King upon a Leopard" symbolized the belief that King Tut would traverse the darkness of death, emerging into the brightness of a new day. Oil lamps and candles filled the tomb, which was dark as death. These lamps and candles would provide a light for King Tut to see his way through the darkness. There were other treasures also surrounding the mummified remains of the Egyptian monarch, treasures which would assist him on his journey. Of course, King Tut remains mummified, dead as darkness, and his candles are still waiting to be lit.
What a contrast to the simplicity of God’s promise of love and life given to the Life, death and resurrection of Jesus, where only the folded grave clothes were found. Jesus, of course, was not there. He had risen. The darkness did not hold him captive until some archaeologist unearthed him. God the Father unearthed Jesus on the third day, raising him to glory because of his obedience to love unto death, even death on the cross. The scripture had been fulfilled where it was written, "Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you."
What difference does this promise of eternal life make? This is the question John has been answering since the very beginning of this letter. To answer what difference the revealing of eternal life in Jesus makes is like answering in our lives what difference does Love makes. We don’t always recognize or realize this difference until we need it, or live it out in our own children. I never realized how much my mothered loved me, until I started living that kind of parental love in my own life. When I had to begin to pay out the Love I had been given, was when I finally realized how much love is worth in life, and to life.
Without Love there is no life worth living, but with love, even the most difficult becomes not just live able, or survivable, but with love, especially with God’s Love, everything and anything becomes redeemable. It is redeemable because this God who has enough love to give us all, also gives us eternal life though His enduring, unending, conquering love. This is the testimony we have to live. It is this testimony to love that our mothers lived to give us life. It is testimony to God’s Love, that when we live in it, and we live our lives as testimony to God’s Love that promises us eternal life. Amen
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