Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | August 18, 2024

1st John 4:7-21

One day a guy came to the door looking for work. I told him the work he was looking for was covered by another contractor. I said, “This house is a church manse.”

He said, “Oh, are you a Christian? What’s your favorite bible verse?”

My favorite bible verse tends not to be a topic of discussion with doorstep solicitors. In fact, I don’t think of the bible in terms of narrowing the whole thing down to one favorite verse. The bible is a big book. It’s full of stories and poetry. It has recipes and shopping lists. It is drama, adventure, comedy, tragedy and horror.

So how can you narrow it down to just one verse? What would it be, that if I had to live on a desert island for a year, that one desert island verse?

And then it came to me. It’s not even a whole verse, but a half of a verse. It is found in a book of the bible called “The First Letter of John.” There is a second and third letter.

In the 4^th chapter of this first letter of John there are 21 verses. The one that stands out for me, if I had to claim a favorite would be the second part of verse 16. It reads:

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” I could live on that. I could survive on that. If that was the only thing I could ever know about God, if that was everything there is, my soul would never go hungry.

The problem with religion is we think it needs to be more complicated than that. By religion I mean any and every religion. Christianity is no better or no worse than any other religion when it comes to needless complications.

Why does that happen? One reason is because we like to be in charge. By making religion more complicated than it needs to be, we assert our control. We put our rules and our conditions in place. We can say who is worthy and who is not. Who gets in and who must stay out.

Somewhere along the pathway of making religion more complicated than it needs to be, we start to think that because this is the way we think, then God must be thinking the same thing. And then we start saying things like, “Let me tell you what God thinks,” or “I know the mind of God,” or often, “God is on our side so whatever we do has God’s blessing.”

On the one hand it seems fairly silly. We get into arguments about obscure stuff that nobody in the real-world cares about. On the other hand, it seems dangerous because some people take their religion to the extremes of violence.

If God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them, then that means anybody can experience God. And the irony is, whether they know it or not or even believe in God or not.

One of the two Iowa churches I served was in the town of Dows. At the last census Dows had a population of 538. I was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Dows for eight and a half years. The folks there taught me a lot about what it means to be a follower of Jesus, mostly because they were kind, generous and loving.

Across the street from the church there was a house with a garden in front. In the garden there was a wooden bench. Painted on the bench were the words, “Bide a Wee.” The invitation was to anyone passing by. Stop, sit, bide a wee.

That’s the image that comes to mind when I think of God’s love. All that love demands of us is to “bide a wee.” It’s as if God’s love is the bench upon which we rest our souls.

I wanted us to hear that reading from 1^st John today because it tells us a lot about God in a short space –

No one has ever seen God.

Love is from God.

Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

We love because God first loved us.

Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

One time someone asked Jesus what the most important commandment. That was a fair question. It would be like asking any great teacher to define the essence of his or her philosophy. If you were given an audience with a person like the Dali Lama, and told that you could ask one question, your obvious choice might be along the lines of “what is the most important thing, what is the core essence, the one thing that a person needs to know.”

I believe that the closer a person is to the truth, the shorter their answer to that question would be. The truth is not some complex reality that requires a lot of explanation and elaboration. Jesus said the most important thing is to love God wholeheartedly and love your neighbor as yourself. Those two things are like one thing. It means that if you really love God, you’ll show it by loving the people in your life.

When you think about that, that’s a radical statement from someone who walked on water. You might think that Jesus would say something like, “Be like me. Learn how to walk on water.”

Jesus didn’t come to show anyone how to walk on water. He showed people how to walk on the ground, in the pathways of everyday life. He didn’t come to show anyone how to be like God; he came to show us how to be ourselves; how to be the people God created us to be.

That’s a big part of what alienated him from the religious elitists of his day. That alienation wasn’t really about the particulars of his religion, Judaism. Jesus could have been any religion and his message would have been the same: Love God and love your neighbor. It’s not so much about what you think, about the religious dogma that you believe. The core of it is what you do.

A few years ago, I was in a grocery store in North Carolina and I encountered an all too familiar scene that could have been playing out anywhere in the world. There was a woman shopping with her trolley and a young girl who seemed around three years old sitting in the shopping cart.

Picture it – mother and child out shopping for groceries. Now add to the picture mom talking on the cell phone.

The girl says, “Mommy!”

The girl repeats, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”

The mom says, “What honey?! I’m talking on the phone!”

The girl keeps going, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” While the mother ignores her and continues her phone conversation. In the meantime, because she isn’t paying attention, she runs her cart into me.

Ellie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

Maybe if the author of John’s letter were writing today, he or she would say, “Those who say, ‘I love God’, and are indifferent their brothers or sisters or children, are liars; for those who do not engage with brother or sister or child whom they have seen, cannot engage with God whom they have not seen.” 

God is love. God created you in love. God created you to be a loving person. When we make that connection it’s like we complete the divine circuit. We are complete then, because through love we are connected to God and the meaning of life.

Lord, save us from people who want to walk on water and give us people who are firmly grounded on earth. Lord save us from people who tell us what we should believe and give us people who simply live what they believe. Amen.