Keep us in the fellowship of your love, O God. Amen.
We
know that a fellow is a companion, a colleague, a friend. So fellowship would
be our connection with friends. And while that is a great thing, to have
friends gather as a part of a church, that’s not exactly what I have in mind
when I say that First John is about fellowship. First of all, First John’s
concern isn’t fellowship in general, it’s fellowship with God. And God is not our
colleague – God is the source of all being, the artist who created the beauty
of the world, the author who wrote into our hearts the yearning for love, the
judge who calls for justice, the Good Shepherd who makes it so that we all
belong to the flock. Fellowship with God isn’t quite the same as fellowship
with a friend over coffee.
Fellowship,
as we often think of it, is a relationship between equals and we are not equals
with God. Instead, our fellowship with God is all initiated and enabled by God;
it is a relationship of grace. As we heard in Psalm 23, God sets the table of
fellowship in front of us, God is the one who fills our cup so that it flows
abundantly. The word that used by John’s fellowship to describe this is “abiding.”
The word “abide” means to wait, to remain, or to live or dwell, as abide and
abode are related words. To have fellowship with God is to abide in God, to be
at home with God, to live in God.
This
is the image found in the final phrase of Psalm 23 – “and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord for ever.” It’s a lovely and comforting image – dwelling in
God, being at home in God. But what does that mean and how would we do that?
St. Augustine famously said that our hearts are restless until they rest in
God. So how do we have our hearts be at home in God? What is fellowship with God
like? The answer, I hope, will not come as a surprise: love.
If
God is love, then the way to be with God, to abide with God, to be connected to
God is to receive, enjoy, and share the love that we have been given. But then
we’re right back where we started – needing to be clear about what we mean by
love. If there’s another word that is used in such wildly different contexts
and ways, I’m not aware of it. Love can describe the motivation of a martyr,
our feelings for a family member, our reaction to a movie, or our opinion about
a pair of socks. When a word can mean so many things, the danger is that it can
easily come to mean nothing because it has been stretched so thin.
Staying
with First John, the definition of love is this, “that Jesus laid down his life
for us.” It is just as Jesus put and John recorded it in the Gospel, “I am the
Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” There is so
much packed into this short statement, and while it would take a lifetime to
truly understand it, I’ll point towards at few things that we might take with
us and use as we pursue fellowship with God and one another.
As
I’ve already mentioned, and as I mention in pretty much every sermon, it all
starts with grace. God loves us because God has chosen to love us, not because we
have done anything to merit, warrant, or deserve being loved. This is such a
tremendous gift because it means that our sense of being the beloved of God can
never be lost, stolen, or taken away. If we did nothing to deserve being loved,
we can never do anything to undeserve being loved. God chose to love us, we did
not earn it. God’s love was never the reward for correct doctrine, the consequence
of us saying the right prayer, or the result of our good deeds. As we heard in
First John, even when our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts.
Meaning, even when we are not sure of our belonging, God is. When we doubt our
forgiveness, God is certain of it. If we question our value or worthiness, God
remains the lover of our souls.
The Good Shepherd lays
down his life for us because that is what the Good Shepherd does. We are born
into the flock of God’s belovedness and God’s goodness and mercy shall follow
us all the days of our lives, for ever and always, regardless of the things
that we do and the things that we fail to do. God’s love is always about grace.
Throughout
the Easter season, we’ve been paying attention to the need for evangelism –inviting
people to come and see, both as a means of growing our fellowship, and also
welcoming others in the joy and blessing of beloved community. Well, this is
the invitation – to invite people into love. Church, when we are true to our
mission and foundation, is a place where everyone belongs as they are. No need
to pretend that you have things put together before you walk through those
doors. You can sit in a pew and weep the tears that you’ve been holding in. You
can be and not have to pretend. The wonderful thing about the Church is that we
all confess the fact that we are imperfect and broken. So when we make mistakes,
we aren’t judged or outcast for it, but rather are given opportunities to be reconciled.
And the Church is also a place where everyone has a gift that is needed and
valued. Some people are great at spreadsheets, others with gardening, cooking,
teaching, singing, repairing, or visiting.
So
as you’re thinking about inviting that neighbor, coworker, or friend to St.
Luke’s, you might think about it in terms of inviting them into a place where
they can be at home, where they can abide. No pretending to have it all figured
out, no needing to have all the answers, no needing to do anything other than
receiving the message of love. You can tell them that St. Luke’s is a place
where they can belong and contribute – their gifts will be valued. And if you’re
already a part of St. Luke’s and you have a gift to share, please, let us know.
Giving in love is how we participate in the abundance of love that flows from
God.
Giving
really is at the heart of love. Both First John and Jesus describe love as
laying down one’s life, as a sacrifice. Some are called to martyrdom, to giving
up their lives for the sake of others – and the Church is blessed by their
witness. Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Constance and the nuns of the Sisterhood
of St. Mary, Maximillian Kolbe, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Jonathan
Daniels are shining examples of love as they followed Jesus’ example of laying
down their lives for others. It is not likely though that many of us will be
called to love to the point of death. But there is always a sacrifice in love –
maybe it’s being imprisoned like Nelson Mandela, taking tremendous risks like
Harriet Tubman, or giving generously as so many of you do with your time and finances.
Love
is an action of sacrificial giving. And, to be very clear, the sacrifice of
love is always chosen, never imposed. Being the victim of abuse or neglect is
not sacrificial love. As Jesus said, no one took his life from him, he chose to
lay it down. Love is not about being victimized, love is about abiding and persisting,
even in the face of danger and death.
Love
though does require sacrifice, it requires us making certain choices instead of
others. Love is standing up and speaking up for justice instead of remaining
silent. Love is giving not out of our excess or leftovers, but love is about
starting with the needs of others before our own. Love is not about emotions; love
is about showing up, writing a note, or baking a casserole. Love is not about
our thoughts, it’s about doing something that restores or enables relationship,
things like saying, “I’m sorry,” or “I forgive you,” “Let me help with that,”
or “I need help with this.” As we heard in First John, “Little children, let us
love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Love is action. One of
my favorite ways to understand love comes from the founder of the Order of the Holy
Cross, an Episcopal Benedictine community, “Love must act as light must shine
and fire must burn.” Or, as we heard, “How can God’s love abide in anyone who
sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”
This
is the very pattern of Jesus, our Good Shepherd. We say that Jesus is love
incarnate – that Jesus is the love of God in human form. Jesus is God’s love in
the flesh, the action of God’s love. It was not enough that God calls us
beloved children, but this love must act, which is what we see in the life,
death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Jesus shows us the love of God in action. We
might even say that Jesus is the Sacrament of God’s love – the outward and visible
sign of God’s eternal and gracious love for us.
When we claim our
belovedness and have this love be our orientation and commitment to the world,
then we abide in God. And because our actions of love are given to one another,
we gain fellowship with one another. It is the perfect economy of love – we receive,
we use, we share. This is what the Church is all about – we are not here to
perpetuate a particular style of worship, to affirm our sense of having the
correct theology, or to support an institution for its own sake. No, we are
here because we have heard, seen, and felt the call of love over the world’s cacophony
of chaos, challenge, and conflict. We have been found by the greatest of all
things, which is love. We have recognized that we belong in the flock of the
Good Shepherd who loves us so much as to lay down his life for us. The brightness
of this love burns bright in our lives, and it is our holy task to share this
light with all we meet.
Everything that we do at
St. Luke’s is meant to proclaim this love, to nourish our growth in this love,
and to foster an environment for others to receive the joy, freedom, and gift
of this love. On a personal level, if we want to go deeper in faith and love,
we might pray and reflect on the sacrificial side of love and ask what love
summons forth from us. We always begin with thanking God for the love that is
given to us in Jesus, and then we ask how that love is burning in our lives. And
in terms of inviting others into the fellowship of St. Luke’s, think about how
you show others the shining grace of God’s love that you have come and seen in
our parish. Beloved, let us abide in God’s love, not merely in words and
speech, but in truth and action.
