Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year B)

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 1 John 4.7-21 (TIB; adapted):[1]

Beloved, let us love one another because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten of God and has knowledge of God. 8Those who don’t love have known nothing of God, for God is love. 9God’s love was revealed in [us] this way: by sending the Only Begotten into the world, so that we [live] through the Anointed One. 10Love, then, consists in this: not that we have loved God, but that God has loved us and has sent the Only Begotten to be an offering for our sins.


11Beloved, if God has loved us so, we must have the same love for one another. 12No one has ever seen God. Yet if we love one another, God dwells in us, and God’s love is brought to perfection in us. 13The way we know that we remain in God and God in us is that we’ve been given the Spirit. 14We’ve seen for ourselves and can testify that God has sent the Only Begotten as Savior of the world. 15When any acknowledge that Jesus is the Only Begotten, God dwells in them and they in God. 16We’ve come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.


God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them. 17Love will come to perfection in us when we can face the day of judgment without fear — because our relation to this world is just like Christ’s. 18There is no fear in love, for perfect love drives out fear. To fear is to expect punishment, and anyone who is afraid is still imperfect in love. 19We love because God first loved us. 20If you say you love God but hate your sister or brother, you’re a liar. For you cannot love God, whom you have not seen, if you hate your neighbor, whom you have seen. 21If we love God, we should love our sisters and brothers as well; we have this commandment from God.


Other Readings: Acts 8.26-40; Psalm 22.25-31; John 15.1-8


Gathering Prayer:

Christ of the new covenant, give us the happiness to share — with full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over — all that you give us. Hear this prayer for your love’s sake. Amen.



                                   



If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll know that I generally use the Gospel Lesson for my reflection. But since I just wrote about that passage, I chose the New Testament reading instead. And what a good section it is!


There are really only two sets of glasses people wear when reading the Bible — the Law glasses or the Love glasses. For most of us, we’ve been taught that the Law glasses are the only proper glasses to use when reading the Bible. The Law glasses help us to see that things are really simple — black or white, good or evil, right or wrong. There are no grey areas when one uses the Law glasses. The lenses of the Law glasses are God’s Holiness. Everything is weighed over against God’s Holiness on the scale of God’s Law, which is the best expression of who God is.


When we read something about God’s Love or Mercy, it must be viewed through the Law glasses to obtain a “proper” perspective. In other words, we’re too emotional to see rightly so we need the Law glasses to show us God’s Love and Mercy is metered out through God’s Holiness. God’s Love, then, can only be given when the “righteous requirements of the Law” have been met.


When we read about the crucifixion, it’s because of God’s Holiness that Jesus ultimately had to die. God is obligated by Holiness, expressed through the Law, to have something or someone killed before God’s Love and forgiveness can be given. God loves “us” because we’ve accepted Jesus’ sacrifice. If someone doesn’t believe in Jesus, God will sentence them to “hell” for all eternity because their very existence has offended God’s Holiness.


My close friends and I were just discussing the nature of God as revealed by God versus what we’ve been told God’s nature is. One friend wrote —


I was just thinking about how the filter for everything in scripture has to be the one God uses [through] John to describe himself: God is love. 


God is a jealous God (insert scripture reference that we all know and no one is going to look up anyway). He is a God of wrath (ref). He is a God of justice (ref). He is a God of blah blah blah, whatever other characteristics religious controllers pull from scripture to frighten children (ref). Yet he defines himself not as any of these but as Love. So all of these characteristics are subservient to love. 


I stated that I see God’s attributes like a pyramid with Love as the base and everything else is built from Love. Or, keeping with the Gospel Lesson today (John 15.1-8), Love is the vine and all of God’s other attributes are the branches. In other words, everything God does is rooted in Love and is carried out through Love.


Jesus is the lens used in the Love glasses. That is to say, when we read scripture, we read them through the life of Jesus. That also means, for some of us, when we read stories or poems or passages that don’t line up with what we see in Jesus — that don’t line up with Love — we have some serious questions with which we’ll need to wrestle. 


But what does reading with Love glasses look like? 


For some of us, we’ve been taught that God’s Love can look like God torturing people for eternity. While they’re conscious, I might add. It’s God’s version of “tough love,” we’re told. We’ve been taught that God’s Love can look different from our love since God’s “thoughts are not [our] thoughts, neither are [our] ways [God’s] ways” (Isaiah 55.8; NIV[2]). Sometimes, we’re told, God’s Love can look like cancer or war or a “natural disaster.” That God’s Love looks like some form of wrath or judgement where millions of people are slaughtered. We’ve been told that something we would say is “evil,” is actually “good” since it comes from God (Isaiah 5.20).


But that’s all a lie.


God’s Love does not look like a domestic violence situation — one minute we’re told we’re loved and the next we’re getting the stuffing beat out of us. God’s Love does not demand we literally sacrifice our children or slaughter people or hate others (verse 20). God’s Love is never less than our love nor different than our love; it’s always more than our love. Since we’re made in God’s image we can expect our best expression of love to be godly. And the best expression of our love is giving of ourselves for others, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus [the] Christ died for us. And we, too, ought to lay down our lives for our sisters and brothers” (1 John 3.16; TIB).


That’s exactly what the passage above teaches us. And it’s not just “Christians,” it’s everyone. “Everyone who loves is begotten of God and has knowledge of God” (verse 7). There’s no limitation on this. Anyone who loves is God’s child and part of God’s family. If we love God, we have to love everyone else, too. And that love does not stop at humanity. No. It extends to all of creation. Love looks like sacrificing our own wants and desires for the betterment of everyone else, including the planet. It means setting aside our own “inconveniences” and comfort to make sure others get what they need and deserve. Loving the way God Loves means “[putting] others first and [viewing] others as more important than [ourselves]. [Abandoning] every display of selfishness [and possessing] a greater concern for what matters to others instead of [our] own interests” (Philippians 2.3-4; TPT[3]). If we live this way, the Way of Jesus, then the world will change for the best.




~~~

In the Love of the Three in One,


Br. Jack+, LC


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[1] Scripture quotations marked (TIB) are taken from The Inclusive Bible. Copyright © 2007 by Priests for Equality. Used by permission.


[2] Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.


[3] Scripture quotations marked (TPT) are taken from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com.

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