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Sunday, May 6, 2018

“This is the Victory!”

A Sermon Based Upon 1 John 5: 1-9, NRSV
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
6th Sunday of Easter, May 6th,  2018 
(5-6)   Sermon Series: 1 John

We’ve all heard the warning:  “This show contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.”  When you hear that, that’s when everybody is going to pay attention.

“Remember what it used to be like watching Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, David Brinkley and others before dinnertime? This nightly ritual kept many busy parents "current" with current events. But for young children and teenagers, the ritual practice of turning on "the news" was about as interesting as watching paint dry. White-haired talking heads droning on boringly, endlessly, about who knows what!”   “But haven’t you noticed,” asks Leonard Sweet, “how in the past decade, television news has changed”?

“To keep us tuned in, TV newscasters have wedded, even welded themselves to a new journalistic adage: "If it bleeds, it leads." Even more, TV newscasts have focused wide-angle, telephoto, slow-motion, instant-replay cameras on the violence that mars and scars our lives. "Watching the news" is now as terrifyingly mesmerizing for 5-year-olds as it is for 50-year-olds.
Bodies lie splayed out, blood flies and flows across the TV screen. The "news" has become so grisly and graphic both in words and in pictures that many communities have clamored for and received from their local stations specially toned-down "family-rated" versions of the news that are deemed acceptable for viewing by young children.

We are a society saturated in blood.  In the movies and on the news, in our sports and on the screen, blood sells. After a hiatus of many years, where the only books with blood in their titles were books about vampires and witches and horror mysteries, "blood" has now become a hot buzzword. Even the BBC television series on microbiology has now become a book called In the Blood: God, Genes and Destiny by Steve Jones.   Any-more, unless the blood really spills and spurts, we're not too impressed.  We are as fascinated by the sight of all that vital red stuff as were our more primitive forebears.”

The close of our text today is about ‘the one who came by water and blood…. (v 6).   Many mainline denominational hymnbooks, due to the violence of our age, tend to omit songs about the ‘blood’, but the Bible refuses to clean up the ‘messiness’ of God’s redeeming work.   In the Bible, God’s love will always be ‘written in red’.  How many of you remember those Bibles of your childhood, where the words of Jesus were called ‘red-letter editions’?   In recent years, some are attempting to draw our attention these ‘red-letter’ portions of the Bible again.  In a confusing, complicated world, people need figure out, all over again, what really matters most.

In our text for today, John concludes with a reminder of what matters, citing an old formula for testing whether or not Jesus is the Son of God: ‘This is the one who came by water and blood…. Not with the water only but with the water AND THE BLOOD… (v.6). This old ‘faith’ formula represented Christ’s baptism which was by ‘water and blood’.  Jesus’ life and death prove God’s love, because Jesus not only ‘leads’ but he also ‘bleeds’.  

EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES…. (1).
Before John spoke about Christ’s ‘blood’, he made a bold statement about faith: “this is victory that conquers the world, our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4).   Everything that John means when he speaks about ‘water and blood’ is to point us to having a faith that believes ‘Jesus is the Son of God’ (v.5).  It is only faith in Jesus that gives us victory’ over the world.

The idea of gaining ‘victory’ over the world (v.4) can sound strange to us, since John has moved straight from speaking about ‘the love of God’ (v.3)   This, however, shouldn’t be understood as accidental or coincidental, but it is very intentional.  With such ‘battlefield’ imagery, we are reminded once again that God’s love is neither sentimental nor wishy-washy.  God’s love is a positive ‘power’ than conquers the negative of the world around us.  But God’s love doesn’t conquer in the sense of ‘shedding someone else’s blood,’ love conquers by giving one’s own self, as Jesus gave his life and shed his own ‘blood’ both to forgive sins and show God’s love.

Last week, we read how John said, “God is love!”  This is a true statement, but it is also serious and demanding.  The love that God has brought to the world in Jesus Christ is more than just the capacity to love, but it is a love that has the capacity to transform our lives and the lives of others.  This transforming love that changes us begins as faith in Jesus Christ.  “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God….”

The reason John combines loving with believing is because love doesn’t mean only what we want it to mean.   If God is love, then only God can rightly define what love means.   One of the major problems in John’s day was that people wanted to say they ‘loved God’ without ‘believing’ in Jesus.   But John reminded them, that since Jesus is living expression of God’s love, we can’t say we know what God’s love means, without having faith in Jesus.  This kind of ‘belief’ meant more than having a ‘feeling’ about Jesus, but it also meant following and obeying what said and is still saying through him.  

WHEN WE LOVE…AND OBEY (2)
To love God also means to trust or believe in Jesus.  Believing in Jesus means that we also obey God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ.   As the song says: “There is no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust (believe) and to obey.”   For the love of God is this,’ John says, ‘that we obey his commandments’ (v.3).  
Obeying commandments seems very out modish in our world doesn’t it?   We live in a world that often thinks that we have passed the need to hang commandments up on public walls.  Who wants to have to ‘obey’ any kind of commandment, even Christ’s commandment of to ‘love one another’?   Who dares say that one set of commandments are more important than others?  This is the mindset of our world.

Recently, I’ve been recently thinking about ‘commandments’ again.  Especially in light of all the revelations of sexual misconduct from high-level officials, prominent people, and even those terrible crimes against children committed by Catholic priests.   When you keep hearing the results of our ‘anything goes’ culture, who still thinks we have, as a society, already moved beyond the need for rules, requirements, and commandments?  Commandments and laws are not the answer to everything, as they were never intended to be, but they are the beginning of finding the right answer.  Unless a culture follows rules of behavior, conduct, and has high standards of living with others, it’s not long until we lose the ability to know what love is.  If love is ever reduced only to what we feel, then it ceases to be love.

How do we know what love is?    Let me give you an example I came across:   A fellow stumbled over the words many times. He'd even practiced in front of a mirror. But when the time came to speak he stuttered again. For months he had been dating the same girl. For the past few weeks he had been building up his courage because he wanted to tell her that he loved her. Those words didn't come easy for him. They especially didn't come easy because he didn't always get his words exactly as he wanted them to be.

Maybe something else would work. If words weren't forthcoming perhaps something else could get the message across. That night he recalled she had mentioned that her car seemed to be running poorly.  She had often said that she didn't know a thing about machines. So he picked up the car, took it to a service station, and had the mechanic look at it. She was right; it needed a tune-up. He didn't say much about it to her. But when he returned the car to her apartment she thanked him.   Later, in that same week, he remembered that she had often mentioned the fact that with all of her work and the demands of her schedule, she didn't have time to visit her mother as often as she wanted. His work was a little slow that week, so he decided that he could carve out an hour for a short visit.   Again, when they next met, he didn't say much. But she thanked him for what he had done.

After two weeks had passed, his words still stuck in his throat. He still wanted to say that he loved her, but he couldn't.  On Monday evening of the third week, after all of his practiced sentences and stuttering attempts; after the automobile tune-up and the afternoon visit with her mother, they went out for dinner.  She appeared to be uncomfortable, like something was on her mind, but she hadn't yet been able to muster the right words or to find the courage to say them.  Finally the moment came. She told him how much she appreciated all that he had done.  She went on to say that she had been wanting to tell him something for quite a while now, but that she'd been afraid to. "You know," she said, "your care and concern have touched me deeply." She paused, and then continued. "This must be what it feels like to be loved. I have known other men who say they love me. But you are the only one who has acted like this." She paused again. After a deep breath she continued, "Your actions have spoken so much more eloquently than anything you could say. Thank you for your love."

When we love God we follow God’s commands, but we must never start to think that this is just about following rules, but following the commands of love is about living for someone, and living to have a relationship of love with someone.   Think about it this way:  Have you ever had someone ask you if you love them and responded, "Yes, I love you" only to have them ask, "Why?  What is it about me that makes you love me?"  We'll usually answer a question like that by coming back with a laundry list. "Well, let's see ... I love you because you're kind, and you're smart, and you make me laugh, and you have the most beautiful eyes...." But do you really love someone for any of those logical reasons? I've come to the conclusion that there is no good reason why we love the people we do. We just love them because we love them.  Sometimes it's even their faults that draw us to them the most.   We love because we love.  

When you think about it, it’s the same way with God too.  God doesn't love us because we're in any way worthy of that love. God loves us because loving us is what God does. God is love.
And since God loves us, just because God loves, we ought to love God, just because he is God.  But what does this mean?   What does it mean to love God and show God that we love Him?
Perhaps the answer comes in a quirky short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne about a man named Wakefield.  One day, Wakefield wakes up and decides to take a little break from his wife and home in London and rents out a room one block over. He doesn't tell his wife, and he only intends to stay away for a day or two but then the days go on. He watches his wife from a distance for twenty years, never once letting her know where he is or even that he is living at all — for twenty years. The story ends when one day, while Wakefield is out walking down the street, he suddenly decides to return home and we see him entering the door to his home as if he had never left.

How many people have a relationship with God like that, and still call it love? One day we slip away and we think it's just a short break from the relationship, but the years pass and it's as if we're watching God from one street over but our lives don't ever connect. By this, I'm not talking necessarily about people who have strayed away from the church, because the church and God are not the same thing. I'm talking about anyone who has removed themselves from the loving, obedient relationship God offers. It can happen for people in the church as easily as it can for those outside the church.

I don't know about you, but when I'm in a loving relationship with someone and that relationship is in balance, I can feel it.  When it's out of whack, I can feel that, too. I suspect that we know when our relationship is in balance with God or when it's out of whack.
John tells us that one way to tell is if following Christ's commandment to love one another as he has loved us becomes ‘burdensome’ (v. 3), or it just comes naturally.  After all, when you're in a loving relationship with someone, you want what they want, too.  If Christ wants us to love one another as he has loved us, it's what we want, too. It’s shouldn’t be a huge struggle for us; because when the relationship is right, it's something that we willingly do.  We may not be perfect at loving the way Christ does, but there is no question that we're not resisting it.  What Christ wants for us is the same thing we want for ourselves.

It's tempting to become like Wakefield and say, "You know, maybe someday I'll go home. Maybe someday I'll be back in a right relationship with God." Then the days and the years pass. Of course, Wakefield did go home in the end.  We don't know if his wife was like the waiting father in the story of the prodigal son or not, but we do know that that's how our God is. God is waiting for us to come to our senses and find our way back to him.  But in the meanwhile, how much are we missing?  Wakefield missed twenty years of his life because he was a stubborn old fool.

WHO IS IT THAT CONQUERS THE WORLD?  (5).
When John says that ‘faith overcomes the world’ he means the specific kind of faith in Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God.   John also means a faith that obeys and desires to be living in a relationship with the God who loves us.   When you have faith in Jesus, and you live that faith with obedience to love, the negative pull of the world doesn’t have a chance to rob you of your life or take your hope from you, whether you live or you die, your hope and your life is in the Lord.   

How many of you know what BASE jumping is? BASE jumping is the very scary sport of jumping off Buildings, Antennae, Spans, and Earth objects. If you want to do it more than once, you jump with a parachute or perhaps a hang glider. Some of you may have seen examples of this daring sport on television.  An example: Austrian extreme sportsman Felix Baumgartner, 30, took a sunrise swan dive off the outstretched hand of the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro. BASE jumpers, who parachute from fixed objects, often run afoul of the law. So Baumgartner had to smuggle his chute and kit (including the crossbow and steel cable he used to climb the 100-foot concrete-and-soapstone structure) onto a train carrying tourists up the 2,300-foot mountain, then scale the statue under cover of night. "This was real hardcore," said Baumgartner, who survived the jump and was whisked away in a waiting car. "Now I know why none of my colleagues have tried this before." 

Ray Bradbury once said ... if we listened to our intellect, we'd never love someone, we'd never have friendship, we'd never go into business because we'd be so cynical ... But living like that is nonsense. If you really what to live your life, it’s like getting up the courage to jump off cliffs all the time and then learning to build your wings on the way down.

Sounds risky, doesn’t it?   But isn’t this what John means when he speaks of conquering the world by our faith?   The way to find life is not by building a safe place to live, but the way to give ourselves to conquering the world by faith in the one, who will catch us, if we fall.  
Isn’t this what John means, when he says that ‘by faith’ God gives us ‘eternal life’ (1 John 5:11)?  What does eternal life look like, in the here and now, as we live with a ‘faith’ that conquers the world?  Let me close with this example:  

Two brothers worked together on the family farm. One was married and had a large family. The other was single. At the day's end the brothers shared everything equally, produce and profit. One day the single brother said to himself, "It's not right that we should share equally the produce and the profit. I'm alone, and my needs are simple." So each night he took a sack of grain from his bin and crept across the field between their homes, dumping it into his brother's bin.

Meanwhile, the married brother said to himself, "It's not right that we should share the produce and the profit equally. After all, I'm married, and I have my wife and children to look after me in years to come. My brother has no one, and no one to take care of his future." So each night he took a sack of grain and dumped it into his single brother's bin.   Both men were puzzled for years because their supply of grain never dwindled. Then one dark night the two brothers bumped into each other. Slowly it dawned on them what was happening. They dropped their sacks and embraced one another*.

Those brothers overcame the negativity in the world. Pray that this week you might be led to do some BASE jumping with Jesus, the out of the ordinary, the thing you can only do by God's power, and in the process, conquer all the negatives of this world.   Amen.




(*Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, A Second Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul (Health Communications, Inc., 1995), p. 37.    


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