Series on 1 John: Brother Tiger & Sister Dolphin: Finding Family in the Kingdom of God ~ 1 John 2:9-11

⁹ Whoever says, “I am in the light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. ¹⁰ Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. ¹¹ But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.

My mom’s family is big – one of five of poor sharecropper parents in Granger, TX. I’ve got more cousins than you can shake a stick at. Some live in the country and some in cities. Some are very religious and others not. Some talk like this and other like this. Some are wealthy, some not, some highly educated, others not. But we know the same stories, we love the same grandparents, we spent summers working on the same farm side by side and complaining about it. We know what a combine is, have watched chickens being slaughtered and de-feathered, knew NOT to throw rocks down the well (but did it anyway), and we all cried when they died. You’d look at us and see a motley crew of individuals who seemingly had nothing in common and you’d be wrong. The kingdom of God is like that – a group of people that you would never put together: different backgrounds, countries of origin, diverse worship practices but a shared story, a common book, One Lord. And John assumes a family here – “brothers and sisters”, “believers” but acknowledges some family tension, even hate. Where should we look for family resemblance? How should we behave as brothers and sisters?

               1.      When it comes to family, where you look determines what you see.

1 John uses familial language to describe all of us in the church. He uses the term “brother” which many translators rightly connect to “sisters” and “believers.” What makes us brothers and sisters is an important question – particularly as we think about Christian unity. John argues that what makes us a family, marks us Christian, connects directly to Jesus – the Son of God, come in the flesh as atonement for our sins (c.f. 2:22-23; 4:2; 5:5-8). So if we have any hope of finding and loving each other as fellow Christians we have to look to Jesus. Thankfully, while the Apostle John will use the term “brother” he does not the word “twin.” So Christian unity isn't asking how can we all look alike, sound alike, worship alike – that would remove the beautiful and (almost) necessary diversity of the kingdom of God; no, we need to ask, how can we be more centered on him? How can we advance his work? Or in the words of 1 John, how can we be brother and sister with one another?

A good paternity test in line with 1 John for having God as our father and Jesus as our brother is the Apostles’ Creed – it’s the oldest creed and represents the conclusions to which the first Christians were driven when they sought to formulate the summary truths about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit and humanity. It provides the basic essentials and serves as a reminder that we have a vital and rich tradition that runs long and deep and that does not require constant reinventing.  This is not to say that creeds cannot be abused nor that they should replace the importance of the Bible or a personal relationship but rather that they rightly serve as a precise theological summation of Christian identity and a guide for reading Scripture.  Moreover, it is generally the case historically that heretics have always used the Bible. Let’s say the Apostles’ Creed together. What do you notice about it?

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

It is no accident that the part of the creed dealing with Christ is the longest. The creed centers us by summarizing the story of Jesus before speaking of a few particular doctrines. We simply cannot talk about who God is, how we know God, what God is like, what God wants with us, and what it means to be human, without telling the story of Jesus Christ. And it says, “catholic” – little “c” catholic means “universal” – this is the universal story that we can all affirm.

1 John and the Apostles’ creed are also fairly modest. Allowing for a diversity on what the Bible is not entirely clear about or what is not about salvation. They do not tell us how to vote, what to eat, which form of baptism must be practiced, which type of music should be sung in worship, or even when to expect the second coming of Christ, etc. This is not to say that these issues are not important but that we can embrace diverse responses and wrestle with them with a certain ease because they are not our core identity.  It does not mean that Christian existence is not, at times, controversial, but it does help us frame what is truly worth fighting about and what is not, what should divide us and what should not. To understand this unity in diversity, I often ask believers to consider the definition of a mammal. These are animals that are warm blooded, give birth to live young, have hair, and a backbone or spinal column. While the definition is certainly exclusive, knocking out a whole range of creatures, it, nevertheless, maintains an amazing inclusivity that would describe a horse, tiger, dog, monkey, dolphin, or human being. That’s the beauty of God’s kingdom – A delightfully diverse family centered on Jesus Christ.

               2.      When it comes to family, love and hate are orthodox matters.

For John, however, doctrinal unity is not enough to establish Christian identity or help us “walk in the light.” Light to walk by can’t simply be enforced uniformity or theological toleration. Diverse ideas and strong disagreements can be present but the absence of love, however, cannot. John goes on to say that the absence of love isn’t simply darkness, however. He warns us that it is something far more scary than that. To not love another believer, to hate them, to deny their rightful connection to God and us, is to become blind. Darkness is external to us – I turn a light on and then off – my eyes still work, it’s the darkness that obscures my vision. If I turn off love, though, I become blind and now the darkness is internal- I carry it around with me. I cause myself to stumble and don’t know where to go. It’s important, however, to not replace “hate” in this passage with “disagreements” that cause one to walk in darkness. John does not say, “Whoever disagrees with another believer walks in darkness.” The beauty of Christian love is that it’s wide and spacious enough to hold differences and disagreements within in its borders. Lovers can still fight! We can disagree, our worship today reveals, and sing the same songs.

So disagreements can be a part of what it means to walk in the light. Love centered on Jesus creates a context for real dialogue, understanding, even change. I remember the first time I voted for a candidate that was different from my father and the tensions that ensued. Looking back now I can also see that while I claimed to hate conflict I was often spoiling for a fight by focusing on our differences rather than beginning with the love and respect that we held for one another. I don't love my political ideologies but I do love my dad. That's an important difference.

It’s important to remember that we’re NOT in love (or hate) with ideas no matter how good they are. We’re in love with a person – Jesus Christ and with fellow believers. When the church reads 1 John or professes the creed, we do not say, “I believe in the virgin birth, the atonement, the second coming” but “I believe in God the father . . . and in Jesus Christ, God’s only son . . . and in the Holy Spirit.” It’s that relationship which makes love an orthodox matter. And the love of God moves us from being simply about ourselves or our own people to work and serve with others. For example, M-4 (the four churches of Montecito)– once we served together we discovered that we could worship together as well.

Whether in the four churches of Montecito (M-4) or with the person who sits next to us in the pew, Christian unity exists precisely because we share the belief that Christ has freed us from the binding power of sin and our own selfishness not to be twins but in order that we might become who we were created to be - a community that is free to love God and one another (Lev. 19:33; Gal. 3:28; Acts 15:19-20; 1 Cor. 8:12). When we love each other, we can walk hand-in-hand even when we don’t see eye-to-eye.

Series on 1 John: "People of a Particular Sort": Becoming Obedient Rebels of Love

³ Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. ⁴ Whoever says, “I have come to know him,” but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; ⁵ but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached completion. By this we may be sure that we are in him: ⁶ whoever says, “I abide in him,” ought to walk just as he walked.⁷ Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word that you have heard. ⁸ Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

So in our last sermon we learned about how words matter, particularly that difficult and nuanced word – sin. Last week we learned how sin was a “we” word, a “when” word, and a “forgiven” word. Well, today our passage continues with a further language lesson as John teaches us about the word – obedience.

               1.      Obedience is a Jesus word.

It’s interesting to realize that John focuses his notion of obedience on knowing and imitating Jesus, vs. 6. Yet, if we were to describe Jesus – most of us and even many who claim no allegiance to Jesus personally – would define him as a rebel and religious rabble-rouser. He questioned and was disobedient to Torah when he healed (or gleaned from fields) on the sabbath, he flaunted tradition when he refused to fast or when he didn’t instruct his disciples to wash their hands, and he raised more than a few eyebrows when he commuted a lawful sentences of death for a woman caught in adultery. He challenged social mores in associating with gentiles, prostitutes, tax collectors, and other outcasts and appeared to relish in dismissing most religious authority, even the sacredness of the temple. So it may be a surprise to many that Jesus himself and the Apostle John define his ministry and spirituality in terms of a radical obedience. 

John 5:30: “I can do nothing by myself . . . my aim is to do not my own will, but the will of the One who sent me.”

John 14:10: “The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself: is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work

Jesus defines obedience not as some acquiescence to a domineering God nor a codified list of rules but rather hearing, speaking and acting on God’s loving word. Obedience is a gospel word, Jesus tells us, because it is the very foundation for his commitment to God’s mission to save sinners. He does all of this because God asks him to. We are helped in understanding this by the origins for the word obedience. It’s derived from the Latin word audire, which means “to listen to.” Obedience then, as it is embodied by Jesus, is a total listening, a giving attention with no hesitation or limitation, a being “all ear.” It is a listening with one’s whole self to God at work – in the scriptures, in people’s lives, in prayer, and in the world. You will never be able to listen if you don’t saturate yourself in God’s word. You will never be able to hear if you don’t offer yourself to God in prayer. So, to ask, “How can I be obedient?” Is not first a question of – “What should I do?”; but “Who should I know and listen to?”

So obedience is not first and foremost always a worrying about doing the right thing or following the right rule per se. Obedience is about adopting a posture of always trying to listen to the only one who always knows and does what’s right - God. This is C.S. Lewis’ point - “We might think that God wanted simply obedience to a set of rules; whereas He really wants people of a particular sort.” ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity Rules, Lewis understands, actually aren’t enough for God. He demands the full attention of our whole lives.

Brennan Manning, in his book Ruthless Trust, relates a conversation between John Kavanaugh, the famous ethicist, and Mother Teresa. John had gone to Calcutta to work for three months at Mother Teresa’s “house of the dying”. At the time, he was seeking clarity about how to spend the rest of his life.

On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. He said: “Pray that I have clarity.”

She responded firmly, “No, I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is that last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said: “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.” Mother Theresa’s trust captures the meaning of Jesus and John’s vision of obedience – an attentive trust and intimate knowing (that’s why the verb to know is also a sexual word.)

The understanding of trust and obedience without clarity was brought home to me by my friend John Roth, a historian at Goshen College who encountered a gang of youth about to harm an elderly man on a train in Berlin one night. He started walking to help the man before he knew what he was going to do. He lacked clarity but acted with obedient trust (listen to the actual sermon to hear the full story at mcchurch.org).

In the beginning, obedience is properly about rules. Let me be clear – some of us are being disobedient by not knowing the Scriptures and Jesus’ commands well enough. This is, John says, an important part of what it means to know and love Jesus. But, the Pharisees also knew the Scriptures and refused to listen to Jesus, failed to recognize that he was the love of God. So in the end, obedience is about paying attention, about becoming a certain kind of person, which is both freeing and very demanding. That’s also John’s point in vs. 3 that obedience shows us that we “know him.” My friend John had to start walking toward conflict before he knew what to do. So love is not a code word for saying, “anything goes” or “rules don’t matter” but maybe that “rules aren’t enough” – and that may be the clearest summation of Paul’s message in Romans yet.  You do need to obey the word. But it might mean for the sake of love you go farther than any command of the Bible does. That’s Paul’s point about Christian freedom in 1 Cor. with regard to meat sacrificed to idols or my friend who said, “I don’t drink alcohol because my friend is an alcoholic.”

               2.      Obedience is a love word.

John is not arguing that our obedience saves us. It simply proves that we know God, that we have availed ourselves to him, that we listen to God and accept what he has done on our behalf. Christian obedience occurs not because we are better people but because we are fueled by a God who came to us first in obedience to himself. Jesus’ own obedience, in other words, was fueled by God’s love and willingness to obey. Maybe that’s why in John’s Gospel when Jesus uses the word “command,” almost every time it refers to loving God or others (John 5:15-20, 13:34, 14:23. 15:12. 15:17; 1 John 3:23).

1 John is right – do you want to learn obedience? Love like Jesus. Look at the picture of the altar piece above – love is the fork in the road. And if Jesus is our model for obedience, if we are to walk as he walked (vs. 6) – we should hardly imagine that our submissive posture will necessarily make us good citizens, delightful neighbors or mild-mannered friends. Jesus’ loving obedience to God led him break rules, flaunt taboos, skewer manners and disrupt traditions all for the sake of love. His obedience led him to the cross. 

Obedience to God is God’s spirit at work in us. And it’s the messy work of love which holds a bit of a paradox. It means that success, a great job, a beautiful spouse, well-respected reputation, nice kids, nicer car, are not necessary signs of obedience. The rejection and crucifixion of Jesus by those who knew the scriptures are proof of that. And to my few rebels out there who like to mix it up, fight the man, leer at authority, or brandish your rights, that’s not necessarily very radical either – Jesus’ own unfettered obedience to God is proof of that. Are you overflowing with love for God and others? That’s obedience, that’s social rebellion, that’s the obedience of the cross.

Jesus reveals that the question of Christian obedience is not, “What should I do?” but “How have I been loved?” Obedience, like sin, fits in a story of redemption. If you view obedience as following rules to be good you will either trick yourself regarding your own moral strength (we never sin) or find yourself in utter despair at your apparent failings (I’m only a sinner). Remember John has already told us that we can follow Jesus, know him, seek to emulate him, but do so as obedient sinners. This is true whether your smug in your morality or saddened by your lack of it. Vs. 5 tells us that obedience is made possible by a relationship of love initiated by God’s own love NOT our own. This is why identifying obedience with a rigid moralism fails to grasp the point. Notice that John doesn’t say that “whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love for God has reached completion” but as if we could attain it through our own obedience but that our obedience is God’s love at work in us, coming to completion.

God doesn’t love us if we obey, God loves us so that we can obey. And Friends, if we obey, our world would experience some of the most dynamic and glorious change that it has ever seen. It does not mean to say, “whoever obeys loves Gods” but “whoever obeys” reveals God’s love and word at work.

In Isaiah 50 is remarkable for the fact that everything this suffering servant of Isaiah does – listen, speak, be open – comes from God. And after having done so – being obedient – this one still suffers. So the challenge of obedience is not first and foremost pulling up our boot straps but willingly confessing that we must be supplied all these things. That God gives us the love necessary for obedience.

All that I’m saying here about obedience can be wrapped up on one word – Beloved (vs. 7) – agapētoi literally “Loved (by God) ones.” Those who receive God’s love – obey God – by loving others.

Four Quick Thoughts about being obedient, being Beloved:

Be plural (he doesn’t say agapētos in the singular) If you want obedience – spend less time asking, “What should I do?” and more time asking, “Who should we be?” or better yet, “Who are we in Christ?” We are the beloved. We are to be lovingly obedient together, to read scripture together, to pray together, to be beloved to one another. 

Be thankful! If you want obedience recognize that true obedience is fueled by being loved by God. God initiates the transformation by his redemptive . So obedience, John tells us in vs. 3, assures us of salvation it doesn’t secure our salvation. Salvation and obedience are God’s work, they need to be received not achieved – thank God for that.

Be single-minded! If you want obedience, know the Scriptures – all of them – and recognize that God is consistent in them – even single-minded - about love. The Great Commandment of Jesus (to love God and neighbor) are two Old Testament quotes – they’re not new, John tells us in vs. 7. The spiritual life, our knowing God, has always been about love.

Don’t be absurd! To be obedient, recognize that by listening to God in the scriptures, in prayer, in the presence of your daily life – you dissipate the dark (vs. 8). John says that this is true “in him and in you.” Myrtle Vanderlip told me that her pastor would always say that o\”our joy is to do the will of God.” We learned the Latin word obedience meant “to listen.” Interestingly enough, the Latin word for not listening or being deaf, is where we get our word “absurd.” How can you know him, experience his love, and not do what he says. How can you refuse such joy? That would be crazy.

Friends, be a people of a particular sort, be like Jesus, be obedient rebels of love.

Series on 1 John: "When we . . . ": the Beautiful, Horrible Truth about Sin

⁸If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
2 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; ²and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 

I often use a phrase with my kids that drives them crazy, “Words matter.” Anyone who has tried to learn another language understands this. I’ve failed at a few languages, even English, and had my fair share of comical moments. I once told a German teacher that I had a “gift” for her [Ich habe ein Gift für Sie. Rather than ein Geschenk]  failing to note that the English word “gift” means poison in German. So I basically said, “I have some poison for you.” Another episode happened when my French wife told me she had a surprise for my birthday. When she couldn’t contain herself any longer she excitingly declared, “I got you a beaver!” – she meant “beagle.” Gift – poison, beaver – beagle, small subtleties or misunderstandings make big differences. According to John, the word sin is critical for the spiritual life. And we would do well to look carefully at it with all its nuances. What kind of word is sin? How should we use it? What does it mean?

               1.      Sin is a “we” word

Sin is not so much a word to be used to describe secular culture or, as a child of the 80s, heavy metal rock music but remains a functional and critical word for the church’s own life together. John does not write, “If they say that they have no sin” but “If we say that we have no sin.” So sin is a church word before its anything else. But this is more than saying that the church is sinful but also that sin seeks to destroy community and relationship with God and one another.

The writer is saying that if “we” say we have no sin we will be incapable of having fellowship with God but also with one another, vss. 6-7. Why might that be? Sin is fundamentally a social word which tries to destroy God’s design for us - “fellowship.” Sin NEVER just impacts an individual.

Sin is not simply that which God dislikes or disdains but that power which seeks to keep us apart and alone without love. Such a notion fits well with Jesus’ understanding that the greatest commandment meant loving God with all your heart . . . and your neighbor as yourself. So sin is the opposite of loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbor as ourselves. This is why Bob’s song hits the nail right on the head – love not morality is the opposite of sin. Sin is the core problem for humanity – a failure to love well – a religious problem and not simply an ethical or moral one. 

Jesus and the Gospel writers repeatedly point out that the failure to connect “we” or “I” to sin is what makes it truly dangerous, e.g. Luke 18:9-14. That’s why the Gospels scare me – it’s religious people who don’t like Jesus, don’t get his message, and seek to end his life. And how is this shown, by their “separateness” and “judgmentalism”. And this makes sense to me. We just finished the Gospel of John in which there were no demons – none – and yet the Pharisees are everywhere pushing people away, keeping people out, down, apart, oppressed, and secluded. The point is that sinful people often rarely have to be reminded of sin – they know its effects – its religious people who are as dangerous as demons when they think they have risen above it. They so easily, John says, deceive themselves and truly don’t know God’s word, they call God a liar (vs. 10).

In the book A Wizard of Earthsea, a young wizard named Ged one day inadvertently conjures up a minor demon. The demon proceeds to haunt him throughout the book. As he grows in power and influence, the demon grows right along with him, stalking and plaguing him with all manner of mischief. Ged flees in terror. He runs to a city by the sea, but it follows him there. He hires a boat and rows out into the water but it follows him there. Then, he jumps into the water, but the demon rides on his back. Finally, with all escape routes blocked, he does the only thing left to do: he turns to the demon embraces it. At which point it vanishes, integrated back inside him as the shadow-self he was finally willing to own. Ged’s experience of liberation begins when he acknowledges - that the demon is himself. 

We must be honest here and not defensive. I want to take this even one step further – I once heard another preacher venture that those of us who belong to the church are tempted to look outside ourselves and see horror, exploitation, misogyny, political scandal, and violence and worry about its effect on us. But then he asked a truly eye-opening and horrible question, “What if society is no more sick than the sins of the church?” Maybe we should think about and embrace that? IF WE admit our sins, THEN we would no longer think us insufferable hypocrites and phonies. IF WE declare our faults, THEN they could not near decry our own sin and failing more than we would. We have seen the demon and the demon is us, to paraphrase Bruce Fisk quoting Pogo. IF WE embraced that demon, THEN what would our church and world look like?

               2.      Sin is a “when” word

Sin destroys relationships but is recognized first in the church. So once you realize John’s point that sin is a “we” word, a “church” word, then you naturally discover another terrible but beautiful facet of it– it’s also a “when” word. Vss 8-10 are helpful because we don’t have to hide or lie and say that we have no sin and that we will never sin. So when sin comes our way, because it will come our way, we don’t need to freak out and that’s a beautiful thing.

So when sin comes our way – it will, we know it. What should we do? We need to be alert and fearlessly ask questions. I was recently with someone at Renaud’s Café who had never been there and I suggested that she try a very traditional French café sandwich called a croque monsieur – which has bread and prosciutto baked with cheese and a white sauce. As we were ordering she quickly stopped and said, “Wait, it doesn’t have alcohol in it, does it?” I chuckled a bit and said, “no” that even French hedonist would find that strange. She then said matter-of-factly, “I’m a recovering alcoholic, I can’t be too careful.” Alcoholics get it – they get the “when” of sin and the seriousness of being alert and honestly asking questions and not in some holier-than-thou sort of way but because they understand the depth of their own weakness and the malicious power that seeks to bring them down. So the “when” directs us to the “we” of sin in a different way. We’re not simply sinners, John tells us, but we help one another against it.

The first step is to confess repeatedly that we are recovering sinners, “we can’t be too careful.” But John also tells us that “when” sin comes and we fail, we can confess. I would like to stick with our friends in A.A. here because they, better than anyone, get this teaching of 1 John.

Step 5 of the twelve steps is a helpful: “Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.” Bill W. in the 12 Steps says, “Few muddled attitudes have caused us more trouble than holding back on Step Five. Some people are unable to stay sober at all; others will relapse periodically until they really clean house.” That’s why a favorite phrase of recovering alcoholics is, “Accountability is sustainability.” What you will not acknowledge cannot be healed. Jesus said in Luke 5: 31-32, “I did not come for the healthy, but for those who need a doctor.” And many us, we’re standing around with coughs and fevers saying we feel great or at least not as bad as that person next to us. And friends I don’t want Jesus to pass me by. I struggle with anger and bitterness. In the story of Cain and Abel – Cain who cannot and will not confess, who murders his brother and blames others can only “settle in the Land of Nod” which means “wandering.” He settles where he can never rest. (Slide) He walks in shame and cannot speak or see where he is going. To not confess makes you incapable of receiving forgiveness, using your mouth, and finding rest. You can only hang your head in shame.

So when sin happens. When it lurks at our door and pounces on us? What should we do? A.A. recognizes that confession is an incarnational, an embodied experience. It demands the real presence of another. “When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with God.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) – this comes from John 20:23. Some of you haven’t felt forgiven because you’ve never been able to confess incarnationally. When the church gathers -  the space it occupies becomes a confessional. When the church gathers – listens to its members tell of their sins, prays and offers forgiveness – Jesus is present – touching and forgiving. When we do this, it is Christ working through us, who is truly doing it. The power is still with God, not with us, but God is always an incarnate God, using flesh and blood to touch and to heal others. A favorite writer of mine wrote about the church forgiving sins and received a curious response from someone who said, “This can’t be true because, if it were, it would be too good to be true!” And he responded, “It is too good to be true. It is precisely because of this incredible, unimaginable, goodness of incarnation that we find ourselves free.”

               3.      Sin is “forgiven” word

So we’ve seen that sin is a word that belongs to the church and its life together. More importantly, however, is that the Apostle John sets out for us that this word intimately and ultimately connects to God, vss. 1:9, 2:1-2. Notice the picture above (today's altarpiece - which side is the Christ candle on? why? The Christ candle is on the side of sin and the cross on the either side. Sin is surrounded so to speak) To capture this truth, the theologian Shirley Guthrie provocatively argues that Christians shouldn’t believe in sin. It is no accident, he said, that when Christians confess our faith in the Apostles’ Creed (page 879 in your hymnal), for example, sin is mentioned only when we say that we believe in the “forgiveness of sin”. And although Jesus certainly reckoned with the reality of sin, Guthrie reminds us, he himself refused to speculate about a person’s sin but speak only of its demise to the glory of God. Even Paul himself, Guthrie notes, doesn’t “believe in” sin; but believes that “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3). So sin never stands alone and never functions solo. It doesn’t have a story of its own. There is only one story - God's.

The message of 1 John on God’s relationship to sin could be stated this way, “God is love and therefore is against sin because sin seeks to destroy love itself – love for God, love for others, love for creation and love of self. Sin is anti-love and resides as the villain in a global love story, John tells us, and not a moral tome, an ethical cookbook, or a list of rules. So, to understand sin as a “forgiven” word is to also understand that it is a “story” word and fits in the great drama of God coming to vanquish it through the law given to Moses, the prophets who call people to faith and ultimately through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it’s more than just a story we tell but a story we live, a story we inhabit – like Bruce told us last week – a story that we see, hear and touch in the present – a story that isn’t simply fantasy but makes sense of all of our lives.

Here’s your final word lesson. In French they don’t use the word “work” the way we use it. They don’t say, “Now my computer works.” Or “I called the repairman so the dryer is now working.” No, what we use the word “work” for they use the word “walk.” If something walks – it does what it’s supposed to do. Today I invite you into a life that walks – that walks in the light of truth – that we are sinners who surrender to a forgiving God. In invite you to live in the story of 1:7 "if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin." There is one story but two ways of walking in it. Which way do you want to walk today?