a reading from 1 john (2:7-17)
7Beloved,
I
am writing you no new commandment,
but
an old commandment
that
you have had from the beginning;
the
old commandment is the word
that
you have heard.
8Yet
I am writing you a new commandment
that
is true in [Jesus] and in you,
because
the darkness is passing away
and
the true light is already shining.
9Whoever
says,
“I
am in the light,”
while
hating a brother or sister,
is
still in the darkness.
10Whoever
loves a brother or sister
lives
in the light,
and
in such a person there is no cause for stumbling.
11But
whoever hates another believer
is
in the darkness,
walks
in the darkness,
and
does not know the way to go,
because
the darkness has brought on blindness.
12I
am writing to you,
little
children,
because
your sins are forgiven
on
account of Jesus’ name.
13I
am writing to you,
fathers,
because
you know him
who
is from the beginning.
I
am writing to you,
young
people,
because
you have conquered the evil one.
14I
write to you,
children,
because
you know the Father.
I
write to you,
fathers,
because
you know him
who
is from the beginning.
I
write to you,
young
people,
because
you are strong
and
the word of God abides in you,
and
you have overcome the evil one.
15Do
not love the world
or
the things in the world.
The
love of the Father is not
in
those who love the world;
16for
all that is in the world—
the
desire of the flesh,
the
desire of the eyes,
the
pride in riches—
comes
not from the Father
but
from the world.
17And
the world and its desire are passing away,
but
those who do the will of God live forever.
word of god, word of life.
-----
one of my friends at the lutheran school of theology at chicago was talking about preaching the other week and she told me about this
professor who says that everyone has pretty much one sermon that they always
preach. i thought about what my
one sermon was and easily realized that it was “god loves you, you are a
beloved child of god.”
when i realized that, i promptly geared my next sermon
towards communion and the welcome that we find there…because god loves us. to be completely honest, this has been
my one sermon long before i took my first preaching class.
when i was the worship volunteer coordinator here at luther,
i used to leave notes for people.
always the same note, really: you are a beloved child of god. once i took hebrew from professor
swanson, i got fancy and even used hebrew to write out god’s name!
that is the beauty of today’s reading. not only is the address fitting,
“beloved,” but it’s also about an old commandment—about telling the old, old
story anew. the author of first
john is writing again the old story, that one sermon, of god’s love for you and
me and all of creation. it’s the
story as old as time and as true as it was in the beginning of creation when
god saw it all and called it very good.
just as god did with the day-old humans, god, through the
writer of 1 john’s words does it with us.
“you are strong and the word of god abides in you, and you have overcome
the evil one.” the word of god,
the spirit of life, is in you.
during j-term this year i took a course called "community
organizing: leadership development for public life." as we explored community organizing from the perspective of
faith leaders, one of the biggest themes that kept coming up for me was:
relationship. it’s throughout the
bible and our shared history.
relationships change people.
relationships connect people so that we realize that what affects one,
affects us all.
this, i think, is what the writer of 1 john is getting
at. the light is only the light,
when all of the colors are present.
when they separate out or are missing through hate or neglect, then it
is darkness, it is no longer the full spectrum of light. to be the light, we need everyone. i need people who are different from
me.
my classmates in seminary come from different
backgrounds. they have different
experiences…of cultures, of language, of relationships, and of injustice. some have dealt with racism while i try
to figure out what white privilege is.
others have had harder economic barriers to overcome to come to seminary
and others have had fewer. people
come from towns and cities, big churches and small, and yet it is only when we
are together that we are actually in the light and the full spectrum of the
light itself.
if your time at luther has been anything like mine, i’m sure
you’ve all heard the parker palmer quote about vocation being “where your deep
gladness meets the world’s deep needs,” but there’s one i like better.
after graduating from luther, i spent a year in slovakia
with the elca’s young adults in global mission program. from slovakia i went almost directly to
seminary at lstc and in my first weeks there, a fellow seminarian shared this
quote by parker palmer:
"vocation at its deepest level is not, 'oh, boy, do i
want to go to this strange place where i have to learn a new way to live and
where no one, including me, understands what i'm doing.' vocation at its
deepest level is, 'this is something i can't not do, for reasons i'm unable to
explain to anyone else and don't fully understand myself but that are
nonetheless compelling."
there
is something that pulls at us. it
pulls me into the world. god pulls me into relationships with others where i experience
first or second hand the injustice that exists. engaging in work to end injustice is something i can’t not
do,
for
reasons i’m not always able to explain even to myself,
and
yet, it keeps coming back
to
this god who loves me
and
you and every person on this earth,
and
if that god loves everyone,
how
can we not also love everyone
and
love the world
into
being a just place?
amen.
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