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We Know Love (I John 3.16-24)

I. Introduction

• I recently read an article in Sports Illustrated about a woman named Rhiannon Hull – Rhiannon was a runner, but she is not known for her athletic achievements – she earned a feature article in SI for an act of bravery and self-sacrifice – Rhiannon and one of her sons, Julian, moved to Costa Rica to establish a school there – her husband and their older son were to join her after a couple of months, so she and Julian were living in an isolated house miles from her nearest neighbor or from a market – hers was not a religious mission, but a humanitarian one, and even though she was lonely, she had committed herself to the work
• One day, Rhiannon and Julian went to the beach near where they lived – by all accounts, the ocean was strange that day – instead of the usually clear water, the tide and surf were so active that they kept stirring up more sand – the tide was unusually extreme and, as it turned out, there was a dangerous rip current – Rhiannon and Julian walked out into the water and suddenly found that the tide and surf had washed away some of the sand and the water was unexpectedly deep and they were caught in the current, which carried mother and son away from the beach – people on the beach saw the pair in the water and thought they were playing, but as the current pulled Rhiannon and Julian further away from shore, the watchers realized they were in trouble – two young men got on their surfboards and paddled out to the tiring pair
• We have all heard stories about people who under duress or in emergencies perform astounding acts of strength – when the situation is a matter of life or death, these people move cars or pianos or do something that they could not do in ordinary circumstances – people who knew Rhiannon believe that what she did was something like that – she fought the current, which is not what a swimmer should do, keeping a panicked and frightened Julian’s head mostly above water – when the young men from shore reached the struggling swimmers, Rhiannon, in a final feat of strength, pushed her son into the grasp of one of the young men and then disappeared under the waves – the Costa Rican Coast Guard found her body a few days later several miles out into the ocean
• The author of the Sports Illustrated article said that athletes look for a finish line and that for Rhiannon Hull, the finish line was the arrival of the two boys on surfboards – once she reached her finish line, she had nowhere else to go – if author's account of the story is correct, certainly Rhiannon worked as hard as she could for as long as she could and she had a finish line in sight – what I think that the author misses in this tragic story is that Rhiannon was doing what any parent would do for a child she loves – Rhiannon was not simply competing, merely trying to reach the finish line – she was saving the life of her son – the author underestimates or underplays the importance of love in the rescue of Julian

• We do not know who wrote this letter – nor do we know exactly to whom the author wrote – but we do know that the author wrote mainly to counter docetism, which is a form of Christology that says that Jesus Messiah did not actually come in the flesh – docetism followed one of two paths – the first said that God was so present in Jesus that he could not have an actual, physical body – Jesus’ body only seemed to be physical – it was an illusion – the second path differentiated between Jesus, who was corporeal, and Christ, who was incorporeal, a spirit that took control of Jesus’ body at the baptism and departed before the crucifixion – eventually the Christian movement rejected docetism as heresy, affirming instead that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully human – at the end of the first century CE, however, the question was far from settled, and the author of this letter tried to address it
• The author addresses it by declaring quite emphatically that love is not love unless someone enacts it – it is probably trite to say so, but nonetheless true, that love is a verb, love is action – the author says that followers of Jesus Messiah know love because of an action – the Son of God laid down his life for them – Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love for the world – laying down his life was a physical act in a physical world – Jesus' self-sacrifice cost him his life in the body – and the author tells the followers of Jesus that they should lay down their lives for one another as well – we might be tempted to think that laying down one's life is solely a matter of dying for others, but the example that the author gives is less drastic – he asks how God’s love abides in a person who has the world’s goods and who sees another in need and refuses to help – that is what laying down one’s life means just as much as it means being willing to die for another
• The author then calls his readers to love not in word, but in truth and action – that is to say, the followers of Jesus Messiah heed God’s commandment when they believe in, have faith in, Jesus’ name and love one another – there is the sense in the way that the author has stated this that these are two parts of one whole – we might look at this statement and think that there are two separate ideas: believing in Jesus’ name and loving one another – but I think we are to think of them as one idea – that is, Jesus’ followers believe in his name and express that belief in their love for one another – in this way the author ties word to deed, belief to action, because love can never be simply a word
• For followers of Jesus, then, there is assurance – if they believe in Jesus’ name by loving one another, then they know love – they know that they abide in the full reality of Jesus, in all he is as God and as human, and Jesus Messiah abides in them by the presence of the Holy Spirit – this is good news indeed for anyone who feels unsure about relationship with God

• We, too, know love because all that the writer of this letter wrote to his community applies to us as well – we know that God loves us because God sent Jesus into the world for us as an expression of God’s love – we know love because we love one another – we know God’s love because we lay down our lives for one another, which is to say that we see a need and we commit ourselves to meeting the need – we see injustice and we commit ourselves to bringing God’s Vision of justice into the world in concrete ways – we know love because we invite and welcome everyone to be a part of this community regardless of age or social status or education or sexual orientation or gender identity – we know love and we do all we can to embody love
• The Christian churches are in trouble today in the United States because too many of us have forgotten that simple idea of loving one another – too many people who bear the name are investing themselves in being right or in being in control or in forcing their ideas on others without regard to the cost to the others – to anyone outside the churches, this does not look like love – it looks like coercion – in looks like intolerance – it looks like distrust, dislike, and distance – it looks like hatred
• But here, in this place, in this day, we know love and we will give ourselves to embodying love in the world – good wishes and prayers alone are not enough – we will open our hearts and our lives and bring others into the community as sisters and brothers, and together we will show the world that we know love
• So do not hear this word as a condemnation – I am not here to judge you or anyone else – I am here in the world to love others, and I hope you are, too – this word is a word of encouragement, a word of assurance, a world of empowerment

• Let us all participate in this love – let us all share the Vision of God’s love for all people – we do not all have to be like Rhiannon Hull – we do not all have to die in the cause of love, but some of us may – we may not have to die, but we do have to show the love that we know, to show that we know love