Today's Scripture Reading (July 8, 2024): 1 John 4
God is love. Christianity
is not a philosophy; it is a practice. Up until the
translation of the Bible into Greek, the only use of the word agape was as a
verb; agape was something that you do. Maybe we could phrase it this way: God
is the action of love. You resemble God the most when you act with love, even
in circumstances that we think deserve something else.
Maybe another way of saying agape is by describing it as "Love Perfected." It is mature; it doesn't depend on being
returned or on the other agreeing with us. That would be an immature love;
Agape is more. Agape is present amid disagreement and is with us when we love
someone who ignores or openly confronts us.
God invites us to come to him,
carrying all of our baggage. Too often, when we arrive, we leave all of our
stuff, habits, addictions, relationships, and hurts outside. We get ready to
come into his presence. We shower, clean ourselves up, make ourselves look presentable,
put on our clean clothes, and, in the old days, it was our Sunday best. Then,
we walk into the church. And we look around and see everyone else has done precisely
the same thing. For an hour or two, we can become perfect people and act the
way Christians are supposed to act. I know we do it.
The problem
with that logic is that God can't allow his love to transform what we refuse to
bring to him. God wants our garbage. Too often, we wait until we have no
choice. The gig is up; we've been caught living a lie, and we have no choice
but to admit that we have messed up, that we are broken and desperately in need
of God's healing.
Too often, we
are like the woman in John Chapter 8 who was caught in the act of adultery, but
we miss the situation of the story. John says that Jesus was teaching in the Temple
when the Pharisees brought her to him. Could you imagine being caught in the
middle of your worst addiction and having the person who caught you drag you
into the middle of the Sunday Morning Service and say, "Pastor, I found this
person doing this. What do we do now?" Everyone in the service is there
staring at you. It is not that they weren't doing some of the same things, but
at least they had the sense not to bring it into the Temple with them. They
left it outside.
That is precisely
what happened. We know the story. We know that Jesus knelt and wrote something
in the dust until he was pushed by the people who brought the woman to him. You
know, Jesus, that the penalty for this is death by stoning. Then, Jesus stood
up and said, "You're right. Stone
her. Only let the one who has never
sinned be the one to throw the first stone."
The only one
in the room who could start the execution was Jesus, but he wasn't about to
throw the first stone. We seem to have this twisted idea that if we bring all
of our stuff into the sanctuary, God will throw us out; he will condemn us. But
that isn't the message of love. God's love comes not to condemn but to
transform.
Let me make
this statement: the worst and the most unchristian thing we can do with someone
with whom we disagree is to say that they are not allowed in the spaces we frequent.
I am afraid for the Pastor who refuses to invite his gay compatriot to a
ministerial gathering. If we err, and if we truly believe what John is saying,
then we have to err on the side of love. I have never felt comfortable
convicting of sin. That is God's job. We will stand before God and hear God's
verdict declared over us. But I don't believe that any of us have a hope for a
perfect report card. All we can hope for is that God, who is love, declares
that we should reflect that love to the world around us. That in love, we
became more like God.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 John
5
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