Through Love and Service - 1st John 3:11-14, 1st Corinthians 13
“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.”[i]
A different reading of a very familiar passage. Paul was writing the church in Corinth and pretty much confronting them for being all the things that this passage says love is not. There were members of that church who thought very highly of themselves. They were determined to do what they wanted regardless of what it meant to others. We know that attitude, “It's about me and what I want, and I’m going to do whatever I want to do.” The church in Corinth was filled with folks who exhibited Spiritual gifts—folks who could proclaim the word, folks who spoke in tongues, folks with the gift of prophecy, others with the gift of wisdom, and finally others with the gift of generosity. However, evidently from Paul feeling the urging to write this chapter (because as I’ve mentioned before, it was not written with weddings in mind), they lacked the greatest of all Spiritual gifts, a gift that is essential to the life of any church, of any disciple. Evidently, they were missing love…And Paul tells them that regardless of everything they are and everything they do, if they do not have love in their midst, they are nothing, they are worse than nothing, they are just a gathering of folks making aggravating and annoying noise.
On the other side of things, we have the church to which John wrote. While the church in Corinth did not seem to place much of an emphasis on loving, but focused in what things they did, the congregation that John addressed (we don’t know the specific location, but many scholars suggest that it is most likely a church in the orient) seemed to claim that they had plenty of love. The only problem, as John points out, is that that love cannot be seen. John points out that something is wrong with their understanding of love:
“All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murders do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
Where Corinth had a lot of work going on but evidently lacked in love…John seems to be facing a church that claims to love…but it can’t be seen…they talk love, but all that love takes place in their minds, and not in their hands, arms, feet, and faces. Paul says your actions have to be backed by love or they are worthless, John says your love has to be backed by actions, or it is a lie.
We have to watch out for worthless work and lying love, both need to come together in the life of the church. It is this coupling of love and action that bring us to the conclusion of our biblical understanding of the new purpose statement of St. Paul’s: “To make ALL disciples of Jesus Christ through love and service.” We remember that having a purpose gives us direction; the ALL we reach out to make disciples of stretch to the ends of the earth, but begin right here with ourselves; that we are called to cease simply being pew-warming, arm-chair Christian-complaining, church members, and start being Disciples of Jesus Christ, who place the call of God on our lives above everything else we encounter from our family to our fun, from our careers to dreams.
How do we make ALL Disciples of Jesus Christ? We do it by being different from the world, different from the rest of what we see around us, different from everything else…we do it through love and service.
Jesus once was asked, “‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’”[ii]
Jesus also said, “By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”[iii] Jesus said this to those who would follow him after having washed their feet, saying to them, “For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”[iv]
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ and making disciples of Jesus Christ is about living out this dual action of love and service…In means loving in the same way that God loves…
God tried telling the world how much He loved the world…He called Abraham and promised Abraham that from His offspring would come a people that would be more numerous that the stars in the sky and that this people would be a light to the nations.
God showed His love to His people by freeing them from their slavery.
God showed His love to His people because despite their continued rejection of Him, He sent prophet after prophet to deliver His call to repentance.
God showed His love to the world, most of all, by sending His Son, the very image of the invisible God, to show us what that love looked like. It was love in action…It was love and service. It was love that touched the untouchable leper…it was love that ate with the sinful tax collectors and prostitutes…it was love that healed the blind and cast out demons…it was love that cleansed out the temple from those seeking to take advantage of the people…it was love that went to the cross for those crucifying Him and for you and me and everyone else who has ever lived…
We have seen God’s love…and we are here.
How has that love changed us?
How will the world see that love in us?
Again, John writes, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”
Who does God call us to love and serve? Of course we are called to love those sitting beside us and all around us, but we are also called to love and serve all those who God loves.
We are called to love and serve our spouse, our parents, our children, our siblings.
We are called to love and serve our fellow Christians around the world.
We are called to love and serve that neighbor who never smiles and has never spoken to us.
We are called to love and serve that person in the Express Lane in the grocery store with forty-five items in their cart.
We are called to love and serve the driver on the interstate that just cut us off and flipped us off.
We are called to love and serve the hungry and unemployed, whether or not they have looked for a job this week or not.
We are called to love and serve the drug dealer in the house two blocks over from us.
We are called to love and serve the homosexual couple on one side of us and the adulterer and his mistress on the other side.
We are called to love and serve the death row inmate.
And when we do, our family is going to ask, “Why, don’t you know it’s dangerous?”
And when we do, our friends are going to ask, “Why, don’t you know we have some better things to do?”
And when we do, our employer is going to ask, “Why, don’t you know you could make a little bit more money if you put those hours in here?”
And when we do, the community and the world will ask “Why, don’t you know who those folks are…what those folks have done?”
And we will answer, “Because Christ first loved me…and He showed that love to me by giving His life that I might be free even in the midst of and face of my sin.”
My brothers and sisters, Christ has set us free that He might use us to set others free…that they may truly see and feel the love of God in their lives, and enter a life-saving relationship with Him. He has made us disciples that we might make ALL disciples…by loving and serving…just as He did for us.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…Amen.
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