1 John 3:16-24
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng of the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco at the American Baptist Churches of Metropolitan New York on November 3, 2007
Don’t hate me for being a Red Sox fan! Born in a hospital in the shadows of Fenway Park and my father being a baseball fan after serving in the US Army during World War II, I grew up cheering for the Red Sox and I must confess, hating the Yankees! Now I wonder if you would have extended an invitation for me to preach today if you knew I was originally from Boston and not from San Francisco!
But for your information, I do love New York. Uncle Andy, my mother’s younger brother and his family lived on Elizabeth Street in New York City Chinatown where I visited annually as a child. I couldn’t sleep at night since their apartment was underneath the Manhattan Bridge. I met my wife in college in Massachusetts but she came from New York City. She is the oldest daughter of the late Rev. Torrey Shih who founded the Overseas Chinese Mission Church on Hester Street. We got married at his church in 1972 and we returned to New York in 2002 to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. I love New York but I still don’t like the Yankees.
But that didn’t stop you from inviting me to come and be a part of your annual meeting today. If we only thought of love as an emotion, something that one either feels or doesn’t feel, my love for the Red Sox would have disqualified me for being here today. But in our Scripture passage for today, the writer of 1 John speaks of love as a decision, a commitment that one makes, something that one decides to do. Without any negative regard against me for my love for the Red Sox, you still decided to invite me to come.
Determined to Love
The First Letter of John must have been written to a church that was bitterly divided. Why would this early Christian pastor talk so much about love if love and getting along together in love were not the problem?
First John simply says we ought to love one another. Christians are those who are determined to love. Not only when we feel like loving, but that we deliberately and purposely make a decision to love. Christians are those who are determined to love others.
First, we are determined by love. As Paul said elsewhere, “The love of Christ controls us.” Second, having been the recipients of the great love of God in Jesus Christ, we are to love. We are not told to feel love, we are not told to think about love, we are simply told here to love. I pray that you love me not because I happen to be a fan of some baseball team but you love me and I love you because as Christians, we are to love.
This is an odd view of love that we are supposed to embody. Christian love is not natural. It is not something we are born with. It is something that comes to us through Christ, something that we are expected, commanded to show. Don’t hate me for being a Red Sox fan. We are determined to love.
Loving Our Enemies
Commanded to love one another means not just our best friends and family but also those who have misused us. Upon hearing this, I tried an experiment in love for myself. Thinking of my enemies, those who have wronged me in the past, I tried to presuppose the possibility of love. One by one I pictured the people who had hurt me. These hurts were not imagined on my part. It was not a matter of my being overly sensitive, or making too big a deal out of a small slight. They hurt me.
There was a person who hated what I did as an editor of a book. I was accused of as being a male chauvinist and racist. My name was dragged through the mud when this person started to write negative emails about me. I was threatened with a lawsuit. This person tried to ruin my reputation.
Then when our church celebrated our 125th Church Anniversary two years ago, I was accused for being too liberal and not biblical enough. Some members of our church boycotted our celebration. I felt particularly justified in my anger toward these people because they have not only done an injustice toward me, but they also caused pain in the whole church.
Standing in line behind these two malefactors is a series of lesser enemies—enemies that I have come to know. Looking at them one-by-one, in the face, opening up old wounds, remembering their injustices toward me, I wondered how in the world the words could come so easily from First Letter of John, “Love one another.”
I could conceive of the possibility that the Scriptures might say to us, “Learn to live with each other, despite your differences,” or “Let bygones be bygones. You have got to go on; you can’t nurture your hurt or resentment forever.” But the Scriptures says considerably more than that. Love one another. It is a command, not an option.
Once a war begins, we are generally free to demonize our enemies. After all, our enemies have wronged us and we have gone to war. In war, we act as all moral bets are off. We are free to view our enemies in as negative a light as we please once the shooting starts.
Last month I had my first opportunity to visit Japan. And one of the cities we toured was Hiroshima where the United States dropped one of the two atomic bombs on Japan that finally ended the war in the Pacific. I was horrified in what I saw. One of my most favorite and heart-breaking stories is about the little 12-year old girl named Sadako who died of leukemia from the radiation poisoning that she suffered as the result of the bomb. There were pictures of Sadako and outside this peace memorial and park is a statue of Sadako with many paper cranes. The tale is that if someone would fold 1000 paper cranes, her wish would come true. Sadako prayed that she would be healed from her sickness. And I know that the Japanese first attacked Pearl Harbor.
There’s an old saying that in war we kill our enemies twice. First, we kill any shred of humanity in them, and then we kill them with bullets. The two go together.
Once someone has truly, undeniably wronged you, then all moral bets are off. You are free to abuse this person, at least in your mind and heart, anyway that you please. You are free to say the worst about them, to tell others about their bad nature. And for a people who have known 9/11 first-hand as you have, you of all people can say you have enemies.
But First John tells us to love one another. This means that when we are wronged, all moral bets are definitely not called off. In fact, according to this ethic, it is precisely when we are used spitefully and wrongfully that the true moral test begins.
Divine Act of Love
There was a woman who was a victim of a terrible crime. One evening, just before suppertime, she jumped in a car and ran out to buy a few items for supper. Returning to her car with her groceries, as she was fumbling for her keys, a man suddenly grabbed her arm, brandishing a long knife in front of her.
“Give me your pocketbook,” he demanded. “I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to cut your face with this.”
Paralyzed with fear, her mouth gaping open, she just stared at the man and trembled. With that, he shoved her into the car, grabbed the purse out of her hand and, then for good measure, he slammed her head into the side of the car. She immediately became unconscious.
He left her, to make his get away. She is convinced that if she had not gone unconscious, she would have surely been kidnapped, or worse. She got away from this horrible encounter with her life, but with nerve damage to her left ear.
Eventually the young man was apprehended, tried, and sent to jail for a few years, but she is permanently scarred, emotionally and physically.
In a few days after the trial, after she had endured the trial plus a terrible encounter with the young man’s mother at the trial, enduring the pain of her injuries, and all the rest, she began to pray.
“At some point, I knew what I had to do. God told me that I must work to love this person who had done me wrong.”
This woman who has been so terribly wronged attempted to envision her attacker as a young man who had a tough life. She thought of all his missed opportunities, his terrible home life. She pictured him, not as her vicious attacker, but as a fellow human being who had not had so many of the advantages that had blessed her life.
This did not excuse his misdeed, but it put his deeds and his life more in the perspective of love, that way of seeing others as Jesus sees us. We are commanded to love even our enemies just as Jesus, the Son of God loved. It is not natural. It is not something we are born with. Love is something that comes to us through Christ, something that we are expected, commanded to show in the world.
Last October, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year old milk-truck driver, carried a shotgun and a handgun into the West Nickel Mines Amish School in Pennsylvania. Roberts lined up 10 girls against the blackboard, bound their feet and shot them in the head, killing five of them. He then shot himself, leaving many unanswered questions and broken hearts.
This was the fourth of five recent school shootings, but this one stands out. Not because it was more violent or claimed more casualties, though both are true at that time. It stands out because the reaction of the victims set an example of mercy. It sets an example of an entire community acting just as Jesus would. The Lancaster County Amish community invited the widow of the killer, Marie Roberts to the funeral of the five slain girls, and attended Robert’s funeral in an inspiring act of forgiveness. The Amish have shown that forgiveness and love not only ease the pain of tragedy, but also connect people together.
Loving enemies, getting to that point where we expect the best from, and give the best to— is more than a super human act. It is divine. It is just the sort of action that only Jesus, Son of God, could command.
This love comes from God, not from us. We know love because Jesus laid down his life for us–that’s a truly divine accomplishment. God’s love lives in us—there’s a sacred spark inside us. He calls us to believe in the name of God’s Son Jesus—that’s a life-giving link with the Lord. And God abides in us, by the Holy Spirit that he has given us—that’s a holy partnership that we have to love as Jesus loved.
If we succeed in loving one another, the credit belongs to God. Any love we show is a sign and a signal that God’s love is working through us. When we love one another, we will also receive from God whatever we ask “because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.”
Love is Action
Our world is in desperate need of a church that puts love into action and makes it real. There are people all around us who are searching desperately for a community that actually practices what it preaches. Whether we love our Yankees, the Mets or the Red Sox looks pale to the desperate need for love from people around the world.
Over 100 years ago, the Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard made a point that Jesus was looking for followers, not admirers—he wanted people who would walk with him, do his work, and serve in his name.
One of Kierkegaard’s own parables told of a man who was walking down a city street when he saw a big sign in a window that said, “Pants pressed here.” Delighted to see the sign, he went home and gathered up all of his wrinkled laundry. He carried it into the shop and put it on the counter.
“What are you doing?” the shopkeeper demanded.
“I brought my clothes here to be pressed,” said the man, “just like your sign said.”
“Oh, you’ve got it all wrong,” the owner said. “We don’t actually do that here. We’re in the business of making signs.” We don’t do these things, he was saying. We just talk about them.
And isn’t this often is the problem of the church? We advertise ourselves as a place that is showing Christ’s love and doing Christ’s work. But when people show up looking for real love and real Christian action, they don’t see it. “Oh, no, we don’t love people here. We just talk about loving people here.”
Remember those people to whom I tried to presuppose love on? These are the people who really hurt me. They just didn’t hurt me once; they hurt me for a long time. There is something about us that enjoys resurrecting old hurts. We talk about them with other people. We love our furies.
But when I began to love these enemies, I began to think about the best in them. In so doing, their weaknesses and foibles grew small, and their virtues grew large. Love necessitates that we in a sense idealize our enemies. This compels us to look at mitigating circumstances, to devise strategies whereby we earnestly attempt to see the person in the very best light. We are compelled to ask ourselves questions like, “I wonder what was going on in his or her life that made him or her need to use me in this way?” or, “I have certain ways about me that antagonize others, I wonder how I antagonize him?” or “I have gotten lots of good breaks in my life. I wonder what bad breaks she got that have led her to view me in this way?”
I don’t hate these people anymore. I am determined by love in Christ and I have decided to love them.
Having been the recipients of the great love of God in Jesus Christ, we are to love. We are not told to feel love, we are not told to think about love, we are not told to just talk about love, we are simply told to love. We are commanded and determined by our faith in Jesus Christ to love in action.
Love Haiti
You have been invited to give generously to support the hospital in Haiti where there is great need. According to First John, the only way you can show your love in Christ when it comes to meeting the human needs in Haiti is to act out your love in action. “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 help?” Feeling the emotion of love for the Haitians is not enough. Thinking about how you can love the Haitians is not enough. Talking about how bad the situation in Haiti is not enough. The only way to love is to act in concrete and real ways.
The Christian faith makes the stunning moral demand, here it is actually a command, that we love our enemies, the stranger, the foreigner, the people who are different from us, the Haitians. In order to love others and especially those who have hurt us, we must presuppose the best about them; we must attempt to see their lives lovingly, with charity, setting aside our hurts, and in an act of daring love, show our determination to love them no matter what.
How is such super-human effort possible? Well, Christians are those who realize that we were once enemies of God, and yet God in Christ has loved us. This God not only forgave us in the death and resurrection of Christ, but actively loved us. God not only put up with us, but came to us and embraced us, believed the best about us, called forth thereby the best in us. This God therefore is not only able to love us but this God commands us to love. Time and time again, God said to us, “If I have loved you, then you should loved others.”
Out of God’s love for us and our love for God and our love for one another, we can’t help but to express this love in concrete and real ways such as giving generously to support the building of the surgical theatre and a recovery room in the hospital in Haiti. Like many of you, I have been blessed with a lovely family. From our son and daughter’s families, we have 4 beautiful grand children ages 7 months to 5 years old. But if we lived in Haiti where 1 out of 4 children dies before 4 years old, one might be dead now. I cannot bear the thought of losing one of our precious grand children right now. If I lived in Haiti where the average life span for a man is only 51 years of age, I might be dead now. If all of us lived in Haiti where the life expectancy is low and only 1.6 doctors and 1.3 nurses, and only .4 dentists treat 10,000 people, most of us may be on our deathbeds. How can such poverty exist just off the coast of the United States!
The writer of 1 John said, “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 help?” God’s love doesn’t abide in us unless we love by our generous giving to help our Haitian brothers and sisters today!
As Christian, we are not told to just feel love. We are not told to talk about love. We are not told to think about love. We are commanded by Jesus himself to love our neighbor in concrete and real ways.
Not only do I love New York, but God loves New York. God loves New York because you love one another and you want to live out that love in action in the world through your giving. Your love was not earned from any achievements that you accomplished but is a gift from God in Jesus Christ. God loves you because you are showing your love in the action you will take as you support his work in Haiti.
In the end, even as a Red Sox fan that I am, I am determined to love the Yankees at least until the beginning of the 2008 season!
Let us pray.
O God, forgive us when we have not demonstrated our love toward others. Lead us to transform all of our caring and concerns into concrete examples of love that will begin to make a difference in people’s lives including sisters and brothers in Haiti. Teach us not to continue to harbor hatred that we have toward others but to seek after the divine nature that you have created in every one of your children. Lord, thank you for this time of worship and celebration as we continue to be an American Baptist people of peace and compassion. We pray in the name of Jesus the Christ, Amen.