Message given at Grace Church, Molokai May 3, 2009

1 John 3:16-24 "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us."

"We should love one another." Seems obvious. That's the right Christian thing to do. And the world applauds that. There are thousands of songs that sing about love, from Sinatra to the Beatles to Beyonce. But the second part of that verse about "we ought to lay down our lives for one another"- that's not quite as easy to take.

The world at the time when John wrote his 1st letter lived in a world where to worship Jesus meant to be persecuted. All their neighbors worshiped the emperor. Any one who didn't bow down were targeted to have all their property confiscated and to lose their livelihoods or may have even ended up as Alpo for the nearest lions. So there were many brothers and sisters in Christ who had to go underground to practice their faith.

Most of us are familiar with the sign of a fish as a Christian symbol. So what is the connection to Jesus? We are called to be fishers of men. The word "ICTHUS" is the Greek word for fish. Across the top of our prayer list, we here at Grace Church take the letters of the word "CORE" and come up with an acrostic about Committing our lives to the Lord, Offering our gifts, Reaching out, and Enjoying the peace of God. By taking the letters of the word, "ICThUS" that acrostic stands for Iesous (Jesus) Christos (Christ) Theou (God's) Uiou (Son) Soter (Savior).
Persecuted believers would covertly identify themselves as followers of Christ by drawing a fish in the dirt, erasing it if a Roman soldier approached. Many believers all around the world still live under similar persecution to this day.

Now we may not live in a country where following Jesus gets you killed yet, but we do live where resentments, anger, grudges and violence dominate our common culture. Our news is full of stories of people not being loved - killed, raped, divorced, bullied, sued, terrorized, abused, and full of road rage. Our work places and families are full of "issues."

And let's be honest, things are not all rosy within our churches either. Wherever people get together, issues and hurts live. If you read the pages of the Bible, you'll find what happens in the real world also happens in the lives of sinners and saints. Even true blue Christians.

Samson was a party animal who loved to get revenge. The first king of Israel, Saul, was so greedy and jealous that it cost him the crown. David, who killed Goliath, had an affair even though he had more than enough wives at the time and had Bathsheba's husband bumped off. Abraham, the Father of our faith, was a liar and a coward. The Apostle Peter was 2 faced; acting one way with Jewish believers and acting an entirely different way with Greek believers. The first churches were competitive about who their pastors were.

Never mind about laying down our lives, heck people, even those who say they follow Jesus can't even get along with each other.

Real Christian love is rare. That's a real problem. We have so few models of real Christian love. WE hardly know what real Christian love is all about.

And John asks a hard question - if we see someone in need and turn our backs to them, how does God's love abide in us?

And I ask another hard question - how can we expect God's love to live in our hearts when we are full of resentment and unforgiveness towards each other?

Don't we often live like the person that Jesus taught about: the one who had a million dollar debt wiped off the books and then immediately chased down the person who owed him a quarter?

Jesus could have spent eternity counting all our mistakes and sin - instead He showed us the love that God has for us by laying down His life for us. He chose to forgive, to love with action, by dying in our place. The start of today's reading reminds us, "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." (ESV)

In our day, just as in the first century, there were brothers and sisters in Christ who were in terrible need. They were unemployed. They were hungry. They were often homeless and they were often persecuted.

John issued a throw down to the church. Don't close your hearts and expect to please God. Instead open your hands and share. Love is only love when there is ACTION attached.

I don't want to minimize that part of John's message. But I want to go a bit deeper.

Last week I talked a bit about when Christian brothers and sisters let us down. And within the church, within our church are people who have intentionally or unintentionally failed or hurt us.

What makes it harder is that we thought that were stronger or more mature than that. When we see them sing, when we hear them praise God, and when we hear them pray or share their prayer requests, there is a lump in our chest that never quite clears.

For so many people in and out of the church, their expectation is that if someone is a "real" Christian, they should get it right the first time. No room for failure. No room to learn to grow.

This is how we get into trouble. If this is really so, the church becomes graceless and restricting, with rules of how to behave dominating. Every failure and infraction becomes ammunition. Oh you let me down this way, because the rules say you need to come through for me.

How does it help anyone, if we start blaming people for every disappointment we feel? If we are suddenly historians, able to cite every infraction, it is a sign that the love of God is not abiding in us. Besides that, it just plain feels - junk. It's like wearing yesterday's rubbish instead of today's clean clothes. We walk around stinky and uncomfortable.

I want to share a story about how a moment of true Christian love changed my entire life. As you will hear, that true love of Jesus didn't come from a perfect person.

Let me begin the story.

Last Sunday I brought this big red photo album to church. I also took it with me to our bible studies this week. Some of you were kind enough to look through it. It's the record of my ordination on St. Mark's Day, April 25, 1977. It was a wonderful day. St. Andrew's cathedral was packed. My mom and my Auntie Dollie were there. People I've known since I was little on Ewa plantation were there. I had friends who came from as far away as Berkeley, Texas and Africa there. And so was a new friend, Scotty.

We'd known each other about ten months by then but there are no photos of him in the album. I remember my ordination vividly. But I remember the next morning more.

Scotty invited me to bring my mainland friends to his place for breakfast the morning after the ordination. He was cooking at Chez Michel and Mr. Christians' at the time, so I knew he was a great cook. I had a large gang staying with me at my house on the side of Punchbowl. He knew the challenge of getting up after a big day and feeding such a large crew. He actually lived at the church where I worked at the time, so the venue was convenient.

In addition to cooking, Scotty was a rubbish man for the city & county of Honolulu. He didn't have a lot of money. Still, he took a day of vacation and spent a small fortune to cook a feast for me and my guests to continue the celebration of my ordination. He wasn't trying to make time or score points. He just wanted to serve my guests and me during this special time.

There are no photos of that wonderful breakfast in this album. And I wish I could tell you how great that meal was. But I cannot do that. You see, I completely forgot. Slept in. No showed. With a great meal waiting for us about 3 blocks away, my guests and I did not go.

We celebrated love on the day of my ordination. But I learned so much more about love the day after.

Did Scotty call me to ask where we were? No.

It was only when I went back to work and the church secretary asked me how it went that I realized that I had blown off the breakfast.

I have never in my whole life felt so guilty, so convicted, so nailed. Did I intend to hurt Scotty? Absolutely not. Was I trying to "dis" him? No way. But I blew it big time.

Scotty's response to my failure taught me what real love is. He didn't hold on to his hurt. He didn't hold it against me. He didn't carry around his anger. If you ask him, it wasn't even that big of an event in his life. He never brings it up because he really did forgive me. This young and imperfect man had a moment where he taught me about what the love of Jesus really looks like.
I can honestly say it's the reason we're married today. When he heard I was going to share this story he said, "That's how you get the babes. Woo them with a meal, make them feel guilty, and then wow them with love!" That's not true.

But it is truly an example of this part of John's letter, "Dear children, let us stop just saying we
love each other; let us really show it by our actions. It is by our actions that we know we are
living in the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before the Lord,"

Our Lord is a God of second chances. We are His second chance agents. He uses us to be the ones who receive and share His love, especially when the ones who are in need of forgiveness are the ones sitting in the pews next to us.

Rick Warren noted: "Believers are going to disappoint you and let you down but that's no excuse to stop fellowshipping with them. They're family, even when they don't act like it, and you don't just walk out on them."

When Peter declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus told him that truth was like bedrock: a solid foundation. Then Jesus said, "I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you lock on earth will be locked in heaven, and whatever you open on earth will be opened in heaven."

It can get tempting to try and lock out those who have hurt us. But with the keys to the Kingdom, we unlock the hurt, unlock the pain, unlock the grudge, unlock the anger and let Jesus in. And when Jesus comes in, He brings His love and the peace that is beyond all understanding.

And let's face it - joy and love feels better than resentment and anger any day.

Trust that today you have the tools to conquer the problem of real Christian love. All is not lost. The Bible tells me that God has placed extraordinary resources within each and every one of us. We have the power to heal and to have a depth of joy that only connecting with God and with one another can bring. Where there is true uninhibited celebration of God, His power connects in us and with us. Because of love, there is real hope. And today the Bible showed us through Jesus what real Christian love means: "laying down your life" - it is packed with meaning.

I love the story about the 10 yr old boy that was failing math. His parents did everything they could; they hired tutors and finally sent him to a private Catholic school. Immediately after his first day of school he began to spend every night pouring over his books. When the 1st report card came back, he had an A for math. The parents were curious, "What made the difference?" they asked. "Was it the nuns? The textbooks?" The boy replied, "Well, I never took math seriously but the 1st day I walked in to math class (yes, you all know the punch line) I saw this guy nailed to a plus sign. I knew then they meant business."

Church, we already have one loved one who was nailed to the cross. Isn't it time we use the keys of the kingdom to unlock our hurts and let one another down from those crosses we have nailed them to?

We are not perfect but we are forgiven. Let's not forsake those in need: those in need of food; those in need of shelter; and those in need of forgiveness. Lay down your life. Let's let the love of Jesus take out the trash and cover us with garments of His love. AMEN

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