Easter 5B- April 29

1 John 4:7-21

            Back when I coached youth basketball & baseball, I would routinely frustrate my players by beginning every practice with drills emphasizing the fundamentals—dribbling & passing in basketball, soft-toss barehanded catching & soft-toss hitting in baseball. They wanted to shoot & play practice games. But I firmly believe that one cannot become proficient at anything until the fundamentals of whatever it is are thoroughly engrained.

            I believe the same is true of Christian faith; & so today you’re going to hear again about the core fundamental of Christianity—love. “You talked about that just last week, pastor. Do we have to hear about it again?” No, you don’t. You can choose to take a nap, if that’s what you’d like to do. But then, don’t be surprised when you don’t fully understand the total workings of Christian faith life down the road.

            For, as John says in our Epistle reading today, “God is love.” Think about that. John encapsulates God’s essence & being in that one word—love. He doesn’t say, “God is the creator” or “God is our judge” or “God is the redeemer or savior.” No, “God is love.” Not that God isn’t our creator or judge or redeemer or a whole lot more; but I think fundamentally God creates & God judges & God redeems out of God’s love.

            Why did God create the world & you & me? Because God desired something with which to share His love. How & why does God act as our judge? Out of His love for us & His desire that we live full & just lives. Why did God send Jesus into the world to redeem & to save us? Because “God so loved the world.”

            Love is at the very core of everything our God is & everything our God does. Now, this may not sound revolutionary to us Christians today; but it certainly was revolutionary for the readers of John’s words 2000 years ago. Remember that in Jesus’ & John’s day monotheism—the belief in just one god—was rare. Most people had a pantheon of gods—gods of war, of peace, of the sun, of the moon, of the sea, of the harvest, & on & on & on. And the stories of these various gods were rarely stories of love.

            In Homer’s The Odyssey, the main character Odysseus was a favorite of the goddess Athena; but during his adventures, he was kept prisoner by the goddess Calypso & tormented with disasters by Poseidon, the god of he sea. Stories like this about the ancient gods were fairly common. So, a God—just one God—whose fundamental essence is love would have been very strange indeed.

            But once it is the central focus of your belief system—how wonderful is that!?! God made YOU because God loves you. God sent His only Son to die for YOU because God…what? God loves YOU!

            And because God loves you, you are to love everyone, all the time. “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ & hate their brother & sister are liars,” John tells us. “The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers & sisters also.”

            That’s hard sometimes, though, isn’t it?  Some of our brothers & sisters are nasty & dangerous. But “there is no fear in love,” John also writes, “and perfect love casts out fear.” Hmmm, “perfect love casts out fear.” But, Lord, we still get afraid. That may be because you & I have yet to achieve that “perfect love.” Maybe we need to keep working on this fundamental—keep reminding ourselves, keeping reading about God’s love, keeping praying for God’s help in loving others, keep practicing…with family, with friends, with neighbors, even with those nasty & dangerous folks we mentioned earlier.

            Practice loving, because love is a verb; it is about doing things to show our love for God & for one another. It is a fundamental of being a Christian. No, it is THE fundamental of being a Christian. Because, after all, GOD IS LOVE!

            Amen.