INSTANT REPLAY – The Practice of Posting Last Week’s Sermon Manuscript
“THE PUNISHER” – August 23, 2015 – Shawnee Church of the Nazarene
Author: Jason T. Rowinski
Calendar: Ordinary Time
Sermon Series: “LOVE LETTERS – Lessons from 1 John”
Sermon Text: 1 John 3.14-24
Homiletical Method: Eugene Lowry’s “Homiletical Plot” Post 1997 version
Note: (1) The small variances between manuscript & live sermon is because I preach from a one page outline. Consequently, I don’t say everything exactly the same. For my personality, it’s just as important to be physically engaged and relational in my preaching disposition. (2) The images you see here are the visual media I use with the text on screen as I preach, similar to a Ted Talk.
1 John 4:7-21New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
CONFLICT
Last week, John dealt guilt a decisive blow with these words: “Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything.” This week, Old John the Apostle he takes aim at another, perhaps more deeply rooted, human problem: FEAR. While guilt might in some sense be related to wrongdoing, fear seems a bit harder to pin down and a bit more incapacitating. People have phobias about almost anything that exists – spiders, clowns, technology, pillows – and we can turn anything we think about into a fear. The other day I heard the Glenn Miller Orchestra on the radio and it made me think of my grandparents. That was their music – the music of their youth – which they enjoyed the most even into their later years. It’s generally true that as we get older our fondness for things from our youth grows.
Then I thought about the music of my youth and shuddered when I realized that instead of happily humming “Chattanooga Cho-Cho”, my grandchildren will hear me rapping the word to Bell-Biv-Devoe’s “Poison.” Now THAT is a FRIGHTENING thought.
Old John the Apostle says, “perfect love expels all fear.” But what about those fears that are legitimate? After all, didn’t God make us with a built in “fight or flight” system that helps us avoid very real danger like avoiding an ominous dark alley or bungie jumping at the country fair? John has something in mind more than our run-of-the-mill phobias and normal fears. He says, “If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.” We pull back the curtains a little bit and we see the PUNISHMENT problem. It’s even a harsh sounding word, isn’t it? PUNISHMENT IS FRIGHTENING. In my childhood home, on the wall in the kitchen on the left hand side of the stove hung a leather paddle with these words inscribed upon it: “DO NOT SLAP THE FACE. THE LORD HAS PROVIDED A BETTER PLACE.” Those spankings are memorable. This was no mere “time-out.” Kids these days think they have it hard.
COMPLICATION
As we learned last week, Old John the Apostle can be quite repetitive his old age. “My little children,” he says, “let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.” And it sounds nice. We know we ought to love one another – but we’re experienced – EVERYONE ONE IS NOT EASY TO LOVE. You have your needy types, your untrustworthy types, and your difficult types. We’ve all experienced punishment from loving these folks. Time is soaked up. Bank accounts run dry. Some people leave bruises. Vulnerable love sounds like a grand idea but sometimes the best we can hope for is to not crack these eggshells we’re walking on and invoke any more “punishment.”
Old John the Apostle says, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (Thanks! I thought we covered guilt last week, Juan!). God is love, he says. Most of us here loudly proclaim this bedrock truth. Yet, we’re also familiar with sin in the world, others, and ourselves. We know that God is holy and doesn’t tolerate sin. We know the scripture stories:
Second Samuel tells the story of UZZAH, who once when the Ark of the Covenant was transported by ox-drawn wagon through the Holy Land, it hit some bump in the road and the Ark almost fell off the cart. UZZAH reached out his hand to steady it, the scriptures say the Lord’s anger burned against him and struck him dead right there on the spot. [With friends like God, who needs enemies?]
In case your tempted to think, “Ahhh, that’s the Old Testament God” (which would make you a Marcionite and not a Christian), let’s recall the story of ANANIAS and SAPPHIRA who sold some property and decided to give the offering to the early church, who “had everything in common.” They agreed to keep some of the profit for themselves, but they told everyone else their offering was the full amount. The lied, something we’ve all done. Peter says to them – you lie, you die! [And now we’re going to receive this morning’s tithes and offerings.]
These aren’t the only stories of punishment in the scripture. We may want to believe that God is love – but in the back of our minds, we wonder: Is this love just conditional? Is this love healthy? This fear of punishment affects our understanding of God putting this right in the world. John continues to say, “This is real love—not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Some Christians, past and present, hear those words “an atoning sacrifice for our sins” and believed that Jesus’ purpose was to take our punishment – the idea being that God’s honor or justice needed satisfaction. In this view, God couldn’t just forgive us – but He needed to punish someone – so Jesus was punished for us as a substitute – Jesus is God’s whipping boy. It’s as if our older brother Jesus jumps in front of our abusive father so he doesn’t hit us for something we’ve done wrong, taking the punches for us. Sometimes one of my sisters would break something an lie about it, but because we were all in the same room at the time, mom would just punish ALL three of us. My response: THAT’S NOT FAIR. While it might be a RELIEF to us that we are not the objects of divine wrath we must ask: IF God cannot live up to even basic human fairness, how can we trust that God is just? Can we trust a God for whom we forever remain, in John Edwards words: “Sinners in the hands of an angry God?” If the work of the cross is Jesus as a substitute that satisfies God’s angry wrath, God is not love – God is “THE PUNISHER.”
How do you love THE PUNISHER? You can’t. You fear THE PUNISHER. And of course, as we see with the cycle of abuse, those who are abused most often become abusers themselves. We observed last week that people disrupting John’s community worked to convince them that they were getting their relationship with God wrong – that they were missing the “enlightened and evolved faith” altogether – and their “entitled” faith became destructive. Theologies deriving from fear of punishment always draw lines to determine who’s in (me) and who’s out (you) – so as to satisfy their anxious minds that we will escape God’s wrath. This happens all to often under the banner of Christianity to this day. Just this week, President Jimmy Carter announced he had brain cancer and that it was spreading. Many self-proclaimed Christians rushed to the internet to say “This is punishment for your liberal ideas” and worse “you can’t die soon enough.” Those who fear punishment will always in some ways become punishers. It should come as no surprise to us that our K-Love songs about God’s love fall on deaf ears of people whom we’ve made the objects of God’s wrath.
The cycle of abuse sheds light on Old John’s the apostle’s oft repeated command: “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” There is a real connection between God as THE PUNISHER theology and destructive and abusive “Christian” behavior. This is complicated by the fact, as John says, that “No one has ever seen God.” Well, there was that one time when God hid Moses in the cleft of the rock and covered his eyes until he passed by, allowing him the see the name YHWH on the back of his jersey after he passed by. The word John uses for “seeing God” means to look upon, gaze intently, our visit in the sense of spending extended time. I don’t know too many people who’ve spent time hanging out face to face in the physical presence of God, do you?
SUDDEN SHIFT
You might be thinking at this point that God as THE PUNISHER sounds a lot more likely than GOD IS LOVE. How do we know God is love? Do we need to see something to know it’s true? We come to know God is love in the love of the community. John goes on to say, “if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” What is the evidence for God as love? Love can only be perfected in relationships. The word “perfect” doesn’t mean flawless or without error (Trust me, we WILL err in love). Perfect here means complete and mature – “love fulfilling it’s purpose.” God’s love is completed and matured only by continually offering it to one another. Love is our apologetic. Love needs somebody to love. The purpose of the Church is to be a people called out of the world to love one another.
UNFOLDING
Old John the Apostles says, “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” People often reduce the Spirit to the goose-bumps they get when they sing OCEANS or IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL. The Spirit reveals the unseen God – the God of love who gave life at creation and gave his life in Christ is the same God who takes up residence in us and shares his life with us. We may not see God but we know him through each other in relationships. God doesn’t care about our differences like our politics, our skin color, our gender, our histories. He brings us together around his love incarnate in Christ as says “you are family,” “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” says John. God is not THE PUNISHER, God is THE LOVER.
The SPIRIT in us makes the church the incarnation of God’s love in the world. The fruit of the Spirit within us – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control ONLY have meaning in the context of relationships. Who would be afraid of a love like that? <“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” Old John the Apostle says,“We love because he first loved us.” LOVE IS THE CREATIVE FORCE that brings life into existence and creates NEW POSSIBILITIES.
This life is made possible because of God’s initiative, his own risk taking love. Sacrificial love drives out “fearful” competitors: condemnation, bitterness, gossip and offers instead the possibilities of grace, forgiveness, and hope. “How can we say we love God”, John wonders, “whom we haven’t seen if we can’t love the people we see?” That is not possible. GOD IS LOVE – not THE PUNISHER. The way that we see and know God is by loving one another. Let’s offer our lives to the God-Who-Is-Love; Not in resignation that he has finally beaten us, but in a relinquishment that says, there is no better life to live than the life of love in community. AMEN.