Because I'm on holiday next week I am trying to prepare the sermon for when I return. I have now realised I misread the week number as per the lectionary (not that anyone will know) so have been working with 1 John 5:1 - 6 and John 15: 9-17 and intending to do some explorations about love, noting that in 1 John believers are children of God and in John 15 friends of Jesus. After three abortive attempts I had lunch, and realised part of my struggle was that 1 John 4:7-20 kept sneaking into my mind.
So here's the conundrum.
1 John 4:7 - Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
So far so good.
1 John 5:1 - Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who who loves the father loves his child as well.
So which is it? Is it our love that makes us children of God? Or is it our faith? Or is it the wrong question? (undoubtedly!)
I think I'm going to add the 1 John 4 passage to our set of readings - though I'm not sure my task will be any less of a struggle - and maybe try to tease out some of the implications of the conundrum:
1 John 4: 20 - If we say we love God yet hate a brother or sister, we are liars. For any of us who do not love a brother or sister whom we have seen, cannot love God, whom we have not seen
Faith is as faith does... which after all is my central Bible verse in paraphrase!
Comments
Love = faith = love?
This equation sees faith not as a set of propositions but as the consequence of a relationship characterised by mutual faithfulness. It also sees love not only as a set of other-regarding actions but also as a relationship with God through Christ which continues seamlessly into our relationship with and faithfulness to others (Jesus says something like "If you love me, you'll love God and God will love you and you'll love one another as I have loved you, laying down your lives for one another as I have for you, and the Spirit will come and make this all real for you").
John knows he's describing an ideal (discuss), so his rhetorical strategy is to point out the inconsistency of saying we're in relationship with God if we don't demonstrate that practically in our relationships with each other.
I can articulate that; now I need to get better at doing it!
Exactly. So d'you want to do a guest preach on 24th?!
In the end I've gone for 'we all know that we're meant to love each other but what does it look like in practice'
Not giving any answers but pointing out a few observations of where we get it right and wrong! hey, they can only sack me once...
I think yours will be more like a proper sermon than mine!
I always go far too mystical when I'm preaching on John.