Love in Action
I John 3:16-24
May 7, 2006
There was this girl who called her boyfriend one day and asked him to come over to her house because she needed some help. She had started to put together a jigsaw puzzle and she just couldn’t get it. She had been working on it all afternoon and hadn’t gotten even two pieces to fit.
So the boyfriend came over and saw the pieces all over the table. “What’s it supposed to be when it’s finished,” he asked. She replied, “A tiger, but I just can’t get it to look like the picture on the box.”
The boyfriend studied the pieces for a moment and then looked at the box. He turned to her and said, “Listen, you are never going to be able to get these pieces assembled to look anything like the tiger on the box.” He smiled, put his arm around her shoulder, and told her just to relax. After a minute, he said, “OK, let’s put all these Frosted Flakes back in the box.”
Over the past few years, I have come to know quite a few artists through my son Matt. I have come to the conclusion that artists are just different than most other people. Artists see things that most of us don’t see. They imagine possibilities that most of us think are impossible. We may see the same colors, shapes, and landscapes that they do, but they see them in ways that we would never see. Most artists, and indeed the really good artists, think outside the box.
Thinking outside the box is generally a good thing, I think. We like business managers who can see outside the box in order to generate new products, new services, and new profits. I know a teacher in northern Indiana who is constantly thinking outside the box for his students. He applied for some funds for the purchase of laptop computers for the school. Now, the kids in his class, who are mostly children of Old Order Amish families, can take a laptop home with them in the evening and work on the computer with its battery power. This is the same class that communicated with Space Station astronauts in real time using the instant messaging feature on their classroom computer. Such “outside the box” thinking is rewarded and praised.
The Gen X’ers who are out there appreciate churches that think outside the box and are able to see new spiritualities, new possibilities, and new ways of experiencing worship. Ask our tattooed and pierced children and grandchildren (and you have them, you know) or ask the tattooed and pierced friends of our children and grandchildren…and they will tell you that they are not attracted to traditional church at all. They seek out religious groups which think outside the box and look for the presence of God in new ways.
Now, I appreciate “outside the box” thinking, I really do. I guess it’s because my 1960’s rebelliousness still hasn’t worn off. I’m attracted to the different, the peculiar; to new ways of thinking and seeing reality. But sometimes, I have a feeling that we can get too far outside the box. Sometimes we can get so distanced from our roots, that we become - what does Paul call it – noisy gongs and clanging cymbals?
It’s sort of like a football team going into the Super Bowl. Say for example, that this particular team’s season has been characterized by its withering defense. Coaches and commentators all say that “ya gotta go with what brung ya’.” In other words, for the biggest game of the season, don’t go fiddling around with new plans or new strategies or an overconfidence in your offense for the big game. Do what you do best.
There are instances when the church probably ought to spend some time thinking “inside the box.” Being inside the box helps us remember what brought us here to this place. It helps us remember exactly who we are. It helps us remember exactly why we exist and for whom we exist. It helps us remember our purpose and place.
I talk a lot about a book I read last year. Jim Collins wrote this book titled, “Good to Great” (2001. New York: HarperCollins). It is a business book, but I have found that it has a load of stuff to say to churches as well. In the book, he says that good enough is not good enough anymore.
We have been able, for awhile, to get by with just being good enough. But good enough organizations and good enough churches no longer last. It is only the excellent organizations that stand the test of time. Excellent organizations are ones who are able to define their core values and mission and then do them very well.
I wonder if part of the problem that the church is having in this day and age is that we have gotten away from our core values, our core competencies, our primary beliefs and actions.
What are we to be about as Christians? The first letter of John makes it quite clear. Our core competency, our primary expertise, our greatest proficiency, our best skill is loving one another. We will be known by how we love one another. The old camp song says, “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” Elsewhere in I John, it says, “If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (I John 4:12).
I John 3:16 tells us that the model for how to love one another comes from Jesus himself who, “…laid down his life for us…”
Let’s face it. We have trouble loving one another today. For example, we find it so much easier to argue with our political opponents and demonize them. One of the things I find so objectionable about talk radio is the level of character assassination that takes place. We don’t just disagree with other’s policies or programs; we call them names and question their faith or their patriotism or their motives or their mental stability.
I got an invitation several months ago to join the Methodist Federation for Social Action, a caucus group that is on the left of mainstream Methodism. I wrote them a letter back and told them I would join when they entered into a dialogue with the Good News Caucus, a group on the right of mainstream Methodism. I said the dialogue needed to consist of finding places where we agree. I said we must take time to get to know each other and not just call each other names. I don’t even want to talk church politics. I want to know what is in each other’s hearts. I think that we have to understand that people on both sides of the political debates taking place in our denomination love Jesus equally. Until we get to the place where we can have a constructive dialogue which goes beyond name-calling, I refuse to participate. I think that is the sort of relationship demanded by the writer of I John; a relationship of love based on the love of Jesus. Knowing people on both sides, I’m not holding my breath.
We have trouble loving today. Let’s face it. It is easier and more comfortable taking a stand on abortion than it is taking care of a woman with a problem pregnancy.
It is much easier to write a check to the Rescue Mission downtown, or to the Community Harvest Food Bank, than it is to spend some time providing job counseling to a street person.
It is much easier to make pronouncements on homosexuality than it is to figuring out what gay Christians are actually saying about their faith.
It is so much easier for us to attend church, drop our offerings in the plate, and say our prayers, than it is to do the difficult and challenging work of feeding the hungry, welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned.
There was a fellow who was walking down a city street. He passed a storefront and saw a sign that read, “Pants Pressed Here.” He was happy to find such a place, so he went home, brought back his pants, and took them into the owner of the store. The owner asked him what he wanted. The man told him that he wanted his pants pressed. “Oh,” said the store owner, “we don’t press pants here; we just make signs.” What he was saying was that he didn’t do the things he said, he just talked about it.
I sometimes wonder if such a thing can be said about the church. The sign out front may say that we love people, but when they show up looking for real love, do they see it?
I think the difference is between spirituality and religion. All of the talk nowadays is about the increase in spirituality in America. There are all sorts of different spiritualities out there today. People are into spirituality but not into religion.
Check out beliefnet.com. On that website you can find links to such things as: guides and gurus, yoga, Feng Shui, astrology, Tarot, Oracles, Numerology, dreams, workplace spirituality, gender and spirituality, 12-step spirituality, men’s spirituality, women’s spirituality, spiritual poetry, spiritual writing, past lives, and spiritualism.
You see, spirituality is easy. It doesn’t really require much. Religion is hard. Religion has all of those requirements about loving others and stuff like that. Maybe the problem with the church is that we have become lazy. Maybe we don’t want to exert ourselves too much.
I really think that the church has a problem. Maybe the problem is that being the church is hard work, and we don’t always like to work that hard. Loving others is hard and sometimes just really uncomfortable. I’m not talking about a sweet, surpy sort of love that you find in teenage romance novels. I’m talking about love that is more than a nice emotion. I’m talking about love that actually does something. I’m talking about love as a verb. I’m talking about love that gets off the pew and goes out to where the needs are. I’m talking about love that requires risk. I’m talking about love that is sometimes dangerous. I’m talking about love that shakes us up and turns us upside down. That’s the sort of love I’m talking about because I think that is the sort of love the writer of I John was talking about. He talked about love … “not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
Let me be honest with you. This is a tough one for me. I have to admit to you that I am risk- averse. I’m pretty reluctant to get outside my comfort zone. I am one of those who sometimes find it much easier to talk a good game than actually get in the game. I sometimes find it easier to tell other people what to do rather than to do it myself. So you have to understand that I’m preaching to myself today…and hoping that I am listening.
So when I ask these questions, I’m asking it of all of us…me included. I wonder what it would be like if this church would get back to basics. I wonder what would happen around here if we took Jesus’ model of servanthood more seriously.
Now, we have some wonderful forms of hands-on ministry going on around here. We have tutors who spend precious hours with “Study Connection” students. We have a group of ladies who make prayer shawls to give to the sick and shut-ins as tangible signs of our love, concern, and prayers. We have volunteers who work diligently at T-ball, investing themselves in the lives of young children. We have people who go out of their way to visit our shut-ins on a regular basis. So many of us volunteer with our Vacation Bible School through which we reach many children outside of our own church family. A group of you purchased, prepared, and served dinner for a hundred low- income people down at Christ United Methodist Church just a few months ago. And I know that there are many of us who engage in volunteer activities around the community, not as part of an organized church program, but on an individual basis. I know that we would all be surprised at the number of ways the members of our church are in service to others. I appreciate all of those efforts and am proud of us.
That being said, I am going to challenge the rest of you. I am challenging myself. I hope we can look for new ways by which we make our love of Jesus concrete in the lives of others. I am going to continue to challenge us all to look for new ways to make love a verb.
In my opinion, one of the unfortunate results of the Protestant reformation is that we have come to believe in faith alone, to the detriment of action. Love of Christ requires both, in my view. It requires more than just showing up to church once a week. It requires that we take the love we proclaim and get involved somewhere so that others may understand that we really do believe what we say.
My prayer is that we might climb back in our box and remember exactly who we are and why we are here. I hope we can find new ways to love, not only in speech and words, but also in deed and action.
