Let Love Live Week 2

My Dad spent ages fixing up a 1966 well-worn but still going little black Morris Minor for us three kids to drive the 8 miles to the bus pick up point every school morning. I sometimes drove. I was eight. Lucky it was not on the main highway out bush where we lived.

We would drive that little car hard and when we damaged it, Dad would fix it up time and time again. It was a way in which he cared for us.

One day, I was by myself coming back from the rubbish heap which was about 2 miles away from home part the way down this same railway track.

I couldn’t help it. It had just rained and the track was soft and slippery. I had to do some ‘snakey’s’. That is when you roll the car from side to side on the gravel and lay down a snake kind of zig-zag pattern on the road.

I was having the time of my life until the whole steering wheel came off in my hands! I looked up and could see that I was going straight for the scrub at some speed. I hit the rather ineffective brakes and surprise, surprise, hit the scrub and bounced in a bit and came to a halt with the front right wheel jammed over the top of a snapped off mallee log.

I knew I was in deep trouble and I felt immediately guilty and fearful.

After several attempts to get the car off the log, I had a choice to make. It is that same choice we all have to make when we sin against the Lord in some way. Cover it up or confess it and ask for forgiveness.

I bet both ways. With great fear and trembling I walked back home and told Dad. But I told him I had an ‘an accident’.

I knew I had sinned. The sin was only in part about the car. The sin was that I had thrown Dad’s care back in his face. That is what sin always is – throwing God’s care and love back in his face.

The Apostle John now speaks to this issue we all face. How do the beloved people of God deal with ever-present sin; that breaking of trust with God; that throwing God’s love back in his face?

He has said in those opening words that we are so privileged to share in the care of God.

Beautiful words. We baptized people in Christ share in this deep fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in all God’s holiness and peace and love. Good place to be!

But what if like me with my Dad, we betray this magnificent gift of care? What if turn our backs on this close and loving fellowship with God? What if we have betrayed our heavenly Father’s care for us by just being careless or distracted or really silly or just plain nasty?

In case we choose to minimize or downplay or hide or deny what sin really is – a breaking of trust and a rejection of everything good God has ever done for us, John has some pointed words of truth.

There is nowhere to hide and no way we can pretend when it comes to living in fellowship with our God.

Pretending and tricking ourselves or others only makes things worse;

¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

John is pleading with you to stop and listen so you can go and grow into God’s new future for you.

He is speaking like a witness in a court room. He is a witness to a past event: an eye-witness, no less. He really did see and hear this new life up close and very personal:

• on the transfiguration mountain,
• on the stormy sea,
• in the hunger and the violence and the blood,
• on the beach in the morning around a fire, after those terrible events,
• after that special night at the table, close to this Jesus of life – ‘leaning on his chest’ (John 20).

‘This disciple whom Jesus loved’ saw and heard it all.

John saw and heard a lot – way too much to write down in one little book. But when it all comes down to the many things we saw and heard and touched in this man Jesus, John says Jesus is our future and he is now.

Friend, this eye-witness is at it again in our age, in our place, at your place. Can you stop and give him your ear for these weeks?

As you do you will fulfill John’s purpose for getting his megaphone out to proclaim this life, this light, this Jesus to you.

This is his purpose for you:

John is saying in strong terms that if we deny or ignore or try and pretend that this heart or ours is not still wayward and able to produce many wrongs then God’s whole huge effort in entering our darkness, pretending and self-deception would be considered a lie – all made up – not true and not real.

But as we heard in that first beautiful word of this letter, God has a good future for us and it works because he worked it.

says John. In other words, in our God is purity and holiness and truth.

John is saying that from what they saw and heard and touched in Jesus of Nazareth, he knows that God just loves. Like an amazing mechanic who can work such ‘magic’ on a car to bring it back to life, God does this with us in Jesus: he does it once and does it right all by himself and all for love of us.

And in another way, John is saying that God is like my Dad that day. Dad came down to the scene of the an ‘accident’ and could see that it clearly was a ‘scene of a crime’ I had committed. But he fixed up that little car again anyway…. It was a way he showed his love for his child.

John knows exactly what fixes us; what restores us to fellowship, belonging, hope and peace together. It is all in that blood.

Luther puts it well:

Because of that blood and that cost already paid, John says we can now get clear. We can face our past and do so all the time. Because;

Owning our wrongs and wayward ways before a holy God is the only way to receive that pure cleansing; that Light.

We walk in this Light by owning up, facing the wrongs, speaking them to the Lord and hearing his word of forgiveness back.

Have you done that lately?

“That is fine, pastor”, you might say. “If this life-blood of Jesus is always available and is guaranteed to fix my many sins then I might be able to just produce a lot more of those sins! Maybe I can just keep on doing whatever I want and living life on my terms because at any time I can own up to a wrong and be forgiven just like you say”.

John says no.

It is all in that name … “My little children”. You are related to God. You are loved by a heavenly Father, and older brother and a family friend and guide.

You are loved, for sure and you are called to love, for sure. Your sin never destroys your sonship but it does disrupt your fellowship with your Lord.

I know.  This is a delicate balance to live out.

On the one hand we need to trust that we are indeed loved by God in the giving of Jesus who makes full atonement for all our sin, and yet, we also need to know that this love of God given to us calls us to love. We are forgiven AND CALLED. We live in his grace AND TRUTH. We are loved for sure, and called to love for sure.

And John makes it very clear that this love of God in Jesus and this call to love other people is for ALL people, not just Jewish people.

So, being a Christian community is meant to be diverse!

Friends, this is still our future and it is still working despite the may things that seem to say there is no future in the church, no true forgiveness and love in the world, no hope of anything different in the world or in my life.

But there is hope because there is forgiveness and that means that there is a future of Light and life to be lived.

How do you deal with your inevitable sin that always breaks fellowship with your Saviour? Own it and say it to him and others involved.

You cannot trick God and God does not need to be tricked because he is very pleased to ‘work his heart magic’ on you.

Here is how it is for all of us according to John this morning:

When the ‘accident’ is actually a crime, he knows and he loves.

When you deceive yourself or try and deceive him, God sees you and simply loves you.

He includes you in his decisions when you exclude him in yours.

He forgives you when you get it all wrong and tell it.

He stands with you when you desert him.

He represents you when you betray him.

Friend, you are walking in God’s light.

You have fellowship with the God of the universe and his loved people.

You have all the benefits of all of Jesus.

This is where we go to deal with any sin as we battle on toward the victory that is already won by Jesus. This is our future and he has worked.

^[1] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 30: The Catholic Epistles, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 30 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 228.

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