take me now, baby

here as i am

A sermon on 1 John 4:7-21

Here we are, at the end of First John. 

I don’t know about you, though, but I loved working though this book. 

First John was a sermon first delivered to a church in the first century. And, it turns out to be just as applicable for us, in the twenty-first! 

Apparently preaching on how to be church when it isn’t easy, doesn’t lose its vitality over the years…

But, as much as I hate to admit it, as we come to the end of First John I can’t help but feeling like the preacher squandered the end of this sermon! 

This sermon just fizzles out with all its confusing and redundant repetition…

And it’s too bad, because First John is a great sermon. It’s honest and faithful. It pulls no punches. It refuses to rely on anything other than the Good News. 

Only to, here at the end, break one of my most cherished rules: subtly.

When I’m working on a sermon, if it feels like I’m being heavy-handed. Like I’m gracelessly, bludgeoning y’all with some lesson or another, I try and go back to the drawing board. 

More than just telling you, you should love - I prefer to depict the love of God in such a way that you, like Elvis, can’t help but falling in love. To inspire you to go and try to love.

Our preacher, though here at the end, just drones on and on. He goes in circles about love. But after a certain point, it’s like, “Okay, I get it!

Love comes from God. And, as God’s people, we ought to LET God’s love flow through us… Let’s move on.”

…Which, truth be told, is how the folks who left the congregation felt, too…

The trouble that brought on this sermon was, some folks had left the congregation. They left because for one reason or another, the congregation didn’t meet their expectations.

Their preacher would give sermon after sermon on love. And as nice as that was, after a while some of the folks in the pew got antsy. Antsy for something else, something more… 

Sure, love is important, they acknowledged. But they wanted to move on to the more advanced stuff. To level-up their faith. To go to a service that could really stun you. 

But THIS meager congregation and their repetitive pastor, weren’t cutting the mustard. And so folks made plans to leave and form a more serious congregation. 

The irony, though, was their impatience, their searching, only served to prove their former pastor’s wisdom! 

The very fact that they were willing to leave their old congregation in search of something more suitable to them, only revealed how little they actually heard from the sermons in the first place!

It’s like the movie that came out this winter, “Lady Bird.” Lady Bird was nominated for a raft of awards, although it didn’t win any…

It’s all about a high school student, living in Sacramento; Christine. 

Christine insists upon being called Lady Bird. As you might suspect, Christine, or Lady Bird, has a proclivity for the dramatic. 

As far as she is concerned, her life is tragically devoid of anything worthy of drama. Her parents are too hum-drum. Sacramento too boring. And her friends too ordinary.

Throughout the movie Christine does everything she can to drum up a little excitement. She secretly applies to colleges out east; “where there’s culture.” She throws herself into high school relationships. Finagles her way into the popular crowd. 

She does everything she can to get away from the life she had been living. 

Only to, as the movie progresses, realize she actually loved all those things she been trying to get away from, all along. 

It’s a nun who first points this out to her… 

The nun observes Christine must love Sacramento. Baffled, Christine asks why the nun thinks that. To the nun, the care Christine took in describing Sacramento in her college essays, betrayed a fondness.

“You write about Sacramento so affectionately and with such care,” the nun says. “I was just describing it,” Christine shrugs. “Well,” says the nun, “it comes across as love.” “Sure, I guess I pay attention,” Christine concedes.
“Don’t you think,” asks the nun, “maybe they are the same thing, love and attention.”

The movie ends with Christine at college in New York. Only now, instead of introducing herself as Lady Bird, she uses her christian name, Christine. Because although she left Sacramento, she didn’t leave it behind. 

And our preacher, who is preaching himself in circles, is trying to get the folks who are thinking about leaving the congregation to see the same kind of thing! To realize if they can’t love what’s right in front of them, they’re not going to have a chance at loving anything else!

Because that’s they way real love works.

Especially the LOVE of God.

It turns out, what’s really brilliant; incredibly subtle is God’s LOVE!

Because God’s LOVE doesn’t wait for all the conditions to be just right. God’s love just comes! Even, and especially, when life isn’t lovely OR dramatic! 

The Love of God lives IN the warp and woof of life we spend 99.9% of our lives living!

*How’s THAT for redundant struggling to make a point?

I don’t know about you, but I spend so much of my life imagining the future. Thinking about how I’ll handle life when it finally comes along. 

When it comes time to make a grand and dramatic stand for the faith. When the pieces finally come together and I can give the articulate, thoughtful and masterful sermon I’ve been working toward for so long. 

The irony, of course, in the mean time, life is passing me by! 

Every time I interact with you, you’re like me; waiting to hear the sermon that will change everything. And every time we gather as “church,” we’re making a stand for the faith—one way of the other…

The thing about the LOVE of God is, it lives in every moment of life.

Real life. Actual life. The life you’re living at this very moment. 

You don’t have to go on some far flung adventure to get the real stuff of faith! The person sitting right next to you is an opportunity to engage in the height, and depth, and breath of what all this is about!.

You don’t have to ponder esoteric, intricacies of theology. Jesus revealed the heart of it for us, on the cross: One-way, selfless, LOVE. 

LOVE that makes its home even where life isn’t lovely.

Like at a deserted hill, with only some government officials, who have to be there. 

Or here, with a pastor who you can’t help but suspect gave a version of this very sermon a month of two ago.

So, are you like me? Are there places your life that don’t look lovely?

Be it from indifference or sin?

If you do, and since you’re here I’ll assume so, then know you have a savior who sees those places. And, what’s more, can’t help but squander every last bit of his attention, which is love, upon those very places!

The mistake we always make is to think we need to rush off to some place better. Some place more dramatic or lovely! But the God you have, is a God who abides! Abides in the places that aren’t perfect. That aren’t lovely!

Wasn’t that Luther’s great, big breakthrough?

That he didn’t have to ascend to some spiritual high to get God’s attention! Because all along, God had been busy giving Martin Luther the goods; every last ounce of God’s love. 

When it comes to the Love of God, there isn’t anywhere else you need to get! 

God offers all the riches of God’s love right here, right now.

When it comes to the God of Jesus Christ, all there is, is LOVE!

Love is the Genesis beginning of creation, AND your life! Love is the Revelation conclusion to history, the world’s AND your’s!

That Love, like Abby, Amanda and Al spent a week in Houston finding out, changes everything. NOTHING can be the same anymore, because this is what Jesus went to the cross for!

Pay attention, because this is the real subtle part of the sermon!

This moment, while you sit there thinking about your to-do list or dreaming about some destination. This moment as, while you daydream, I tell you THIS: “In this is LOVE, NOT that you loved God, BUT that God LOVED you AND sent his Son to be The atoning sacrifice for YOUR sins.” And THAT, that is where all your life have been leading!

Jesus has atoned for this very moment. Given everything for this very second! It may look like small potatoes, but to God it looks a perfect place to make home!

And here’s the P.S. at the end of this love-letter, beloved, even if what’s happening right now is lost on you, Jesus won’t lose you!