(1 John 4 28th April 2024) (photo is of my son’s car after i’d washed it!)
Today’s take home point is Love One Another.
You should be thinking – ?isn’t that what Derreck preached last week, and ?isn’t that what I preached the week before that. Good, well done.
St John said in his first letter – I’m not going to teach you anything new, I’m going to remind you of the old commandment.
Love one another.
So what does Love do? And How does God show His love? And how are we supposed to show that love? And how do I connect to that love?
John says that what this love does is it drives out fear. Perfect love drives out fear.
There’s a lot of reasons to be fearful. Watch the news. We listen to each other and discover a little of the burdens that we carry. And we have our own worries.
But perfect love drives out fear.
So if I can focus on the Love that God has for me, the Love that God has given me, then maybe I can have the courage to face the fear, to drive out the fear, to keep going.
Perfect love drives out fear.
So your response to that should be: That sounds good, I need some of that perfect love in me.
St John says that God’s love at work in us, gives us confidence, the sort of confidence that isn’t afraid even of the day of Judgement.
Having God’s love at work inside of us drives out our fear, brings healing to our souls, to our sins and regrets and sorrows.
That doesn’t make life easy – don’t get ahead of me on this – the call to love one another is not a promise that life will flow simply and smoothly –
Alas there will be bullies and burdens, bones will get broken –
and that will want to reduce us to living in fear –
but God’s love says There is another way to live. And that way is with the Love of God inside of us.
And that will lead to the love of God working out from us.
St John says remember what Jesus said: Love one another.
When we apply that love to our Brothers and Sisters then the act of living the life of love has an odd affect – it encourages our own faith,
and it opens us up to knowing God’s love more,
and it helps us to remember that we are born of God – that this hope and joy that we do have – that is solid, that is the love of God at work in our hearts.
There’s a Charlie Brown cartoon in which he says I love mankind its people I can’t stand. Aint that the truth.
We are good with theory. This is an easy sermon to preach. Its not so easy when you’re doing Toddler group, or Sparks or Ignite, or Lunch Club or whatever aspect of Life you get up to – there will be – in any of those moments – many of which are wonderful and lovely
but every now and then you think ‘Oh dear God help me!’ because something or someone is pushing all your buttons and you’re fit to burst.
But the application of living God’s love has a circular affect of feeding into our faith.
Mostly. I’ll come back to that.
How then does God show His love to us? There could be lots of different answers to this – if only we would count our blessings.
But St John focuses on Jesus, on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God shows His love for us in coming to us, in Jesus, living among us.
I remember when my/our kids were very small and they were playing on some swings in the park, and there was a Dad with his son and the Dad was walking along a plank saying If I can do it, you can do it. And I thought – No. You’re an adult with a developed sense of balance, and he’s a toddler and there’s a reason we call them toddlers.
Jesus doesn’t come among us and say ‘Cmon if I can do it you can do it’.
Jesus comes as a baby, as a toddler, a teenager, an adult. He knows something of our growing pains, of our struggles and our sorrows, our hopes, our fears.
God shows us His love in Jesus, through Jesus, so that we might live a life of love through Jesus.
There’s more – God shows us His love in Jesus through His death on the cross – an Atoning sacrifice says St John – reconciling us to God by the removal of our sins, our cleansing, our purification, so that we and God, we can be At One with God.
There is something very powerful and special when you are At One with someone, all the more so when you are At One with God.
And there’s still more – God shows us His Love, says John by being the Saviour of the World.
This is good news and its liberating.
Its good news because – Hurrah – Jesus is the saviour of the world.
And its liberating because that means that I am not the Saviour of the world.
Its not my job to save the world. It is my job to live like Jesus, to love like Jesus, but I only have to apply His Saving Love right here right now. All that we have to do is do the little bit of good that God puts in front of us, help those that we see in front of us.
This leaves the Church as a worshipping community – we are to be a slice of what that Love looks like in how we care for each other and love each other – and if you read our APCM report you should be able to pick up quite a bit of that love.
Here in the family of the Church – be it in Home Groups, or Choir, or the Bells, and so on, I hope you find some experience of that Divine Love.
That’s why its so important we keep on top of our Safeguarding.
That’s why this Church runs on your kindness and generosity in time and money, in Rotas and the Parish Giving Scheme.
And that enables us to be a House of Healing. A safe place where people can come and be themselves and bring their hopes and fears and connect somewhere with the love of God.
There’s a church in Seattle that Lucy and I once went to where around the side of the Church there are boxes of tissues, walls of boxes of tissues and bottled water. There is an expectation that in coming into a place where you can safely allow God to minister to the burdens you carry, that that might lead to a moment where you might cry. And that’s okay. Its good. Its honest, its safe, and God will meet you in those tears.
We are called to Love One Another. The application of that love in our own lives – it increases our faith.
So as we show the love of God, so that helps our faith and gives us hope – as we serve and bless others. But.
But its really important that we pause to receive. If we give and love and serve without pausing to be refilled with God’s love then we will start to get a little grumpy, resentful, bitter, and after a while that will start to show.
But if we will allow God to pour His love afresh on us – that rejuvenation of faith and love – that comes through worship, getting lost in wonder love and praise,
it comes through the sacrament imbibing the body and blood of Christ – these tokens of God’s love for you –
it comes through being silent in prayer, perhaps even in letting someone else pray over you and for you (And there’s scope for that in the Holy Spirit Chapel during the distribution of Communion).
If we are to live this life of love then we need to
allow God’s love to live in us.
We help God to do that in the way that we serve, love and bless others,
but also in taking time in worship – to allow God’s love to draw close to us, to drive out our fears – to fill us with His Love.
And that’s what empowers us to Love one another. So go to it. Love one another. Amen.