· Acts 4:5-12
· Psalm 23 (1)
· 1 John 3:16-24
· John 10:11-18
That's a good question John asks. "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?"
And then he goes on: "let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."
So, we're back again to my old leitmotif: do something. Do something material. Do something with the world's goods, to be of help to a brother or sister. Take what you have and give it to someone who needs it. If you have money, give it to someone who is poor. If you have time, give it to someone who is overwhelmed. If you have strength, lend your strength to someone who is weak.
Now you might say, if you're always giving your money to the poor, your time to the busy, your strength to the weak, and so on, they'll take advantage of you. If you share your home with the homeless, they'll trash the place. If you share your food with the hungry, there won't be enough for you.
Well, you're right. But so what?
Yes, whatever you give, people will ask of you until you have none left, and some more. And?
Is that not what Paul calls being "poured out"? Was not Jesus's life poured out for us? If you give until there is none left for you, what of it? Didn't many before you pour out even more? Not only in the church, but in revolutions, in labour action, in the civil rights movement, in suffragism, in non-violence, in war, in countless other ways?
The first line of this reading from 1 John was "we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another." Are you asked to do this? In twenty-first century Canada, practically never. So couldn't you at least give of what you have until there is none left for you? Shouldn't you at least give that much?
It's dreadfully inconvenient, making oneself available to others. A person in a heavy power wheelchair asked me to help her through a door when I had a broken wrist. A person left a child with me for nine days and I didn't even have a bed to put her in. A person kept me up half the night for four days telling me her troubles. A person needed a prayer when he was drunk and I was supposed to be at work. To say nothing of my sponsored children in the Third World who need money I could really use for myself in a hundred different ways. To be perfectly honest, people inconvenience the crap out of me. I don't have the time, I don't have the money, I don't have the patience, I want to blow a big pile of cash on books and sit alone at home with a cup of expensive coffee reading them and ignoring the world.
And?
How does God's love abide in me, if I do that?
It doesn't. If I did that, the love of God would not abide in me. But it's really the other way around, isn't it? If the love of God didn't abide in me, I couldn't help others. I'd be too tired, too broke, too frustrated. And I am. I am tired, and broke, and frustrated. But by the grace of God, because the love of God abides in me, I can still help. I can keep on giving when I don't want to, when I don't think I even could. Not because of my merit, but because the love of God that abides in me will not relent. And not only I can do it after all, but I can do it all with a smile. Not I, but the love of God that abides in me.
What I do for my brother or sister, I do not do it myself, out of my own virtue, but by the grace of God. By the grace of God, I can. In fact, I could barely stop myself if I tried. When I see a brother or sister in need, the grace of God moves me to their help, whether I am tired, angry, frustrated or just terminally lazy. Does it take something out of me? Yes it does. But in the void left by what I have given, I find again nothing but the love of God that abides in me.
By my own merit I am nothing. But by the grace of God, through faith, I can give my brother or sister anything I have to give, and more. Give your life to God, and he will pour you out for your brothers and sisters. And why not? He gave you your life, and he redeemed it for you. Your life belongs to the Lord, and yet he gives you this choice: to let the spirit, the love of God, abide in you, and pour you out for Him and for his sheep, or not. And the Lord will not stand in the way of your choice, but remember again one of my favourite scriptures, Mark 8:34-38:
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
Let the love of God abide in you. Let it pour you out to help your brothers and sisters. What have you got to lose? Your earthly treasures? You're storing up treasure in heaven.
For today's hymn we will sing #583, Take my Life, That I May Be.
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