Who’s going to win? That’s the question of the weekend. This Super weekend. I know there are some who don’t care all that much. I know because one lives in this house with me. But still, you can’t really avoid hearing the question, wondering, You can’t avoid the mindset that grips the nation if not the world this weekend each year. Someone will win. Someone will lose. And that just the way the world is.
It is a world of winners and losers. Not just on Super Bowl Sunday. Always. And most of the time we seem to be losers. Most of the time things go against us. The world conspires against us. Or our enemies do. Not that we have enemies. Just annoyances. Just adversaries. Competitors. Those who see the world differently. Those who disagree. Those who ... well, never mind. You know what I mean. And if you don’t, then more words won’t inform you. The point is that in a world of winners and losers it is a royal pain in the heart.
No, that wasn’t the first thing I thought of. But it works. A pain in the heart. It seems part of the human condition. To be wounded, thwarted, rebuffed. To fail at love, at loving and being loved, both. It seems beyond us. No matter how much we might want to love, to be loving, to do the loving thing, it escapes us. It is misinterpreted, not appreciated. It is lost in the emotion of the moment. Swallowed up in the competition of messages too confusing, too distracting, too busy to speak clearly.
Winners and losers. Oh, sure, sometimes we win. Sometimes it seems like we are ahead, like the world is turning in our favor. Sometimes. It never seems to last though. Does it? No, not for long. We might be winners for a time, but it isn’t long before we slip back into the loser category.
But what if we’ve got that wrong? What if that filter for how the world works is a distortion of a true and deeper reality? What if it isn’t winners and losers but something else all together? And if so, what might that be?
1 John 4:7-19 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love because he first loved us.
I know, old news, heard it all before. I know. But set aside what you thought you knew, what you thought you heard in these verses before and look again. Start with that most basic of declarations: God is love. Amazing, really, when you think about it. John could have said God is power. Or God is justice. Could have said God is unknowable, the ineffable mystery of the universe. Could have said almost anything, but didn’t. Instead John chose this little word that trips us up on a regular basis. God is love.
Not, God loves. Or God is the source of love. But God is love. The fundamental essence of God is love. It boggles the mind, to say the least. But John isn’t done with this one earth-shattering statement. Earth stabilizing statement. Earth defining statement. Whatever. He doesn’t stop with one. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us.” What? Wow. God lives in us. Because love lives in us. Not we love, or we are the source of love, but love lives in us.
And, and this is one of those ands you’ll need to hold onto your hats for, and John says “If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
OK, we were on board there for a while. It sounded good. Promising, even possible. Until that word got tossed in, perfected. His love is perfected - stop there and we can go along. God is perfect, it is a part of our fundamental theology, it is what we think about God, God is perfect and God’s love can’t be anything else but perfect. So, stop there John and we are doing just fine.
But he didn’t stop there. God’s love is perfected in us. In us. See now we know John is a bit messed up here. God’s love might be perfected in us, in a perfect world, with perfect circumstances and if we stopped being human. Then maybe, ok. Superman, Wonder Woman, maybe. But little old me, little old you? No way.
We know it can’t be true because we’ve hurt too many times. We’ve been wrong too many times. We’ve been hurt, been lost, been rejected, tossed aside. Hardly perfect. We’ve stumbled through vows and commitments, we’ve run out of hope and energy. We’ve fallen short. Perfect? Not even close.
It’s a process. That’s what our founder John Wesley wrote. We are “going on” to perfection in love. We are on the way. Maybe. But if that’s true then we must be taking the scenic route. We seem a long way off. We don’t grasp this love thing very well. We have trouble with the people close to us, the people we’re supposed to love. Let alone the rest of the world. The ones unlike us. The ones that disturb us. The ones that just seem way too different from us. How in the world are we supposed to love them? Because who is to say that they will love us back?
Isn’t how it is supposed to work? Don’t we love in order to be loved? Aren’t there winners and losers in this love game? Unless it isn’t really a game. There is no score to keep, no statistics to measure. No winner, no loser. There is just love. Love for the sake of loving. Love in order to allow God to take up residence in us. Love in order to be like God.
What is perfect love anyway? Love that doesn’t make any mistakes? No, not as long as we are human, mistakes are a part of the design. Love that never is rejected? No, even God’s love has been and continually is rejected. Love that never suffers, never hurts? Christ on the cross shows us that perfect love is love willing to suffer for those who are loved.
John seems to be saying that perfect love is love that never ends. “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world.” Love lasts into eternity. Love never gives up. Even when it hurts. Even when it seems futile.
Perfect love casts out fear. What does that mean, I wonder? Maybe what it means is that when we allow God to do the loving in and through us then there won’t be a time when we will need to wonder if we should love, should act out of love. We won’t be afraid if there is enough love to go around. We won’t be afraid that our love is inadequate in the face of indifference, or brokenness or evil. Because it isn’t our love in the end. It is the God who abides in us that enables us to love at all. We won’t be afraid of running out, because we know an inexhaustible source. Beloved, let us love.
Shalom,
Derek
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