Beloved First & Behavior Second: How does the Gospel order our welcome? ~ 1 John 4:7-21

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. ¹³ This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. ¹⁷ This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹ And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. ~ 1 John 4:7-21

In rock climbing beta is everything. Beta refers to information necessary to complete a climb, specifically hand and foot placement and the order in which one should do it. You can be really strong, mentally tough, and yet have the wrong beta and be unable to complete a climb, particularly more difficult ones in which precision is of utmost importance. Your hands and feet moving precisely to the right place at the right time and in the right order can be the difference between being able to move up or spinning off the wall – which also has a name – it’s called barn-dooring. This reality of order is also true when seeking to understand the welcome that God extends to us and the welcome that, we are told, we must extend to others. So our text from 1 John will serve as our beta for welcome.

1.    “Beloved” – the order is everything!

 The NIV translators of 1 John do something that I find a bit frustrating. They take a word from the Greek and in their effort to make it understood unfortunately make it mundane. They translate Ἀγαπητοί (the first word in vss. 7 & 11) as “friend.” Ἀγαπητοί, however, literally means “beloved.” Its root is agape - love. It’s the first word in our passage this morning, the first word spoken in John’s soliloquy on “love,” and the first word one needs to hear in order to understand welcome rightly. The order is everything. Before you do

anything, you are “beloved.” Before you are asked to believe anything, you are “beloved.” Before you repent, before you are transformed – you are “beloved.” Before there is a “how,” a particular behavior that you are asked to do, there is a who – “beloved.” Before you can welcome others you must also learn that you are welcomed yourself.

 This is more than a sentimental remark. To understand love, to experience it rightly, to show it faithfully, is not mustering up some feeling, it’s acknowledging a chronology – that God has always loved you. God does not say you are “beloved” if you first become law abiding, or respectable. We are NOT beloved, John tells us in vs. 10, because we “loved God” but because God “loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” So God’s love does not wait for people to come asking for love and forgiveness. God already has and always will make the first move – loving broken, hurting, sinful people before they ask for it or even acknowledge their need for it. So our belovedness is not contingent on our response to God. God loves you 525,600 minutes of every year, regardless. You will never be able to welcome well until you realize that.

 You are beloved BEFORE you believe or accept anything. But there is something for you to believe and something for you to do because there is something you need – your sins need to be atoned for and your love needs to be transformed. Love does not believe nothing and mean anything. This is why theology is important and why we can’t simply use the term “love” and imagine that we are all saying the same thing. We know what love is by understanding who God is as a “lover” first because God is love and love comes from God. In vss. 9-10, 14, John grounds our “belovedness” in a story of belovedness- that God loves us and aims to save us from our sins. Beloved doesn’t mean that you don’t need saving, that you don’t need atonement. It does mean, however, that you were loved before you even knew that you did.

 So you do not need to become a Christian to be beloved. You become a Christian because you already are beloved and recognize your need. Yet, that is not the whole story, John tells us. We are not simply a community of belonging, a group of beloveds. We are also a community of transformation, who understand that God transforms us so that we can love one another.

 2.    Beloved, become a Christian in order to be “beloved” for others.

 One does not become a Christian to make God love him or her. That is already taken care of. One becomes a Christian in order to love God back and in order to love others in the way that God wants. You become a Christian, in part, in order to be “beloved” for others.

 How does one become a Christian and how does that help us love others? And the answers and order are once again critical, according to John. We become a Christian by acknowledging Jesus, by receiving the Spirit, and by living like Jesus without fear and hate.

 Acknowledging Jesus and receiving the Spirit (vss. 13-15). First, to become a Christian is to acknowledge Jesus as Savior and Lord. It’s to recognize that God loved us, John tells us, by sending “his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (vs. 9). God in Jesus Christ makes amends for us. And John says in vss. 14-15, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.” Essentially, one becomes a Christian by “welcoming” God. When that happens, we are then empowered by God’s Spirit to be able to love others in the same way that we were saved. Love according to John is not merely a choice but a pneumatic reality (vs. 13). “This is how we know that we live in God and God in us: God has given us God’s Spirit.” And God’s Spirit is responsible for the actual change of heart and change of life. Notice how we are to love like God, which means that we are also to love others first before they change or perhaps behave as they should. That doesn’t mean that behavior doesn’t matter. It means that we are not the ones who transform others – God by his Spirit does. Our job is to help people recognize their “belovedness.” But it’s not simply acknowledging Jesus and receiving the Spirit. We are also to . . .

 Live Like Jesus (vss. 16-17). Unwelcome and patterns of unlove are typical human responses – to love only our own, to fear the stranger, to scorn the enemy. If John is right, we shouldn’t imagine that we can “love” as God intends on our own power or with our own thinking. We need Jesus not simply as savior but also as our model for welcome. We need to be saved not simply from our sins. We need Jesus to save us from “cooties.” You remember “cooties,” right? Those

imaginary germs that children use to play infection games in order to mark and exclude others. It’s when playground talk sounds like the CDC tracking an Ebola outbreak somewhere. Psychologists, however, show this behavior to be hard-wired in us and modeled for us by others. Adults, in other words, play cooties as well. Think of all the adjectives we use to convey feelings of revulsion about people we don’t like. We call people creepy, slimy, icky, rotten, repellent, nasty, awful, bad, vile, gross, nauseating and revolting. These words reveal social emotions which link a germ-like avoidance with our social world. These feelings are the battle ground of hospitality. Let me give an illustration. Psychologists brought people into a laboratory to show them an old sweater. They told the participants that the sweater was once owned and worn by Hitler, and they invited the subjects to put the sweater on. Would they be willing to do that? And if they did, how would it make them feel? Most people refused to put the sweater on. Those who did put it on said they felt icky and uncomfortable wearing it. Participants didn’t believe in actual cooties but they acted as if they didn’t want to wear or be near Hitler’s sweater because they might become morally polluted. We know this is irrational; that evil isn’t a germ that contaminates us like a bacterial infection. Jesus models for us a way of life that challenges this germ-infested spirituality. Jesus, it turns out, would have put on the sweater. He welcomed the marginal, blessed them, ate with them, loved on them. The Gospels are extended object lessons on how to love and respond to people. The Apostle Paul in Romans will sum this up very precisely in Romans 15:7, “⁷ Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

Without fear and hate (vss. 20-21). We now live in a world where it seems that one’s faith in anything is determined and illustrated by the purity of one’s life and the willingness for the pure to call-out anyone for wrong doing and grind them into dust. In this context, to “hate” is seen as one’s religious duty and the clearest signal that one is devout.  John, however, suggests that the quality of one’s Christian faith is not determined and illustrated by the purity of the practitioner but by the consistent expression of love in the face of fear and hatred. “Whoever lives in love” - love defined by Jesus’ life and death and our willingness to believe and follow – “lives in God, and God in them.” (vs. 16). You cannot love God, John insists, if you hate others (vs. 20-21). Fear and hatred, however, seek to undo God’s welcome. They turn

us into monsters. Who is the real beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast? It’s not the beast, but the guy screaming, “Kill the beast!” Who is the real monster, Frankenstein or the mob carrying pitchforks? It’s just like Nietzsche once warned: Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.

Beloved, we must beware of the temptation to rely upon hatred and fear as religious motivators. They have a certain allure but they are hoaxes like many of the internet hoaxes that generate a lot of angst and effort but serve unhelpful ends. According to John, the most ironic oxymoron is a hateful Christian.

"Come Hell or High Water": How do we welcome Jesus in our midst? ~ Matthew 25:31-46

³¹ “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ⁴¹ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.^'44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’⁴⁵ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’⁴⁶ “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Yesterday I passed an awful accident on the road. A multi-car pile up with a number of people in need of assistance. And as I passed by I realized that I couldn’t stop because I was late and didn’t know them. Maybe they were bad people anyway. I thought about how I worry about my safety. Driving a car is a very dangerous thing. And I committed to being sure to care for myself: that I have my needs met, that my concerns are heard and addressed. And I worried about my life, wondered if I was doing the right things, and pondered whether I was who I wished to be.
Have I driven you crazy yet? And if such a self-centered introspection strikes you as ridiculous in the face of a terrible accident I have two things to tell you: 1. First, if it isn’t already apparent, I made it up. I’d like to think I’m not that big of a jerk but truth be told I struggle with self-centeredness. 2. Second, as silly as this little drama was, I found myself with just such a mindset with regard to this text, found myself worrying about how I was doing, was I a sheep or a goat, where I would end up, and missing the entire point. I can’t tell you how many pages I’ve read this week on this passage that obsessed over such issues that aren’t the point: like, what’s hell really like, who’s a “brother or sister,” do Jesus’ words challenge salvation by grace through faith? I want to tell you from the outset that I will not answer all your questions today in this brief sermon. But I will say this. If your first question is whether you are a sheep or goat, or where you’re going, you’ve already taken a wrong turn. I’m not suggesting that these are unimportant. They are, however, not the point. So what is the point?

1.    Hospitality and welcome are dangerous but that’s not really the point. It’s about delight.

It’s true that Jesus talks about hell and while I don’t wish to go down this highway (that’s a joke) we can’t simply pretend Jesus didn’t bring it up. And yet it strikes me that to worry over whether you are a sheep or goat is not Jesus’ intent. Worry about Jesus and remember that he is present in the world outside of this place.

If we are to worry about anything, worry should about the hell that we have created on earth: the loneliness, the alienation, the violence, oppressive systems where people go hungry and don’t receive care. Let’s work on stopping hell from being a place on earth. I once heard a Christian Sudanese refugee fleeing violence say, “What Hell have we not seen?” Let’s worry about not offering hell’s hospitality– like hatred, violence, and fear. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that in this teaching Jesus points out that we were not made for hell. It was designed for

someone else, he says in vs. 41 – “the devil and his angels.”
So hell is not the motivator of hospitality. Jesus is. If we offer welcome in the name of Jesus we need fear no hell – now or ever. You still may not recognize Jesus but you don’t have to pretend you aren’t in the know (he told us where he would be) and remember that he is the one who decides, who determines our end, and that this is not the only place Jesus talked about salvation or does something about it. So we should not use this text like a harping parent sitting in the passenger seat of a car warning our teenager who gets behind the wheel over and over again, “Be careful or you will die.” We need to discover or rediscover the blessing and delight of welcoming and caring for Jesus the stranger. This week I heard a great story from Jake Schaeffer about his kids and their own experience of the delight of welcome. They were out and about and realized that they still had one of the gifts we made for those who were homeless around Christmas time. So they gave it to someone standing on a street corner and watched as he was overjoyed by the gift. Later in the day, Jake asked Sam and Georgia what they wanted to do for fun. They responded, “Make more gifts for those who are homeless.” Don’t be afraid, friends, be thrilled. We’re welcoming Jesus.

2.    You are not the “I”. Jesus is the “I.”

Jesus is the only “I” in our text this morning. He is the only first person singular pronoun in this passage – “I was hungry, thirsty, a stranger,  . . .” etc. You are not the “I”. You are a “we.” This has two important implications for us. The first is that before we have any talk about hospitality or

welcome and how “radical” we might wish it to be, the most radical thing in our passage is not what we do but what Jesus did and does; that is, have solidarity with human beings, particularly the marginal. Jesus identifies with the sick, the poor, etc. If you want to be uncomfortable this morning, be uncomfortable about that. It means that Jesus is not so much found in bread and wine but people, particularly struggling ones. That if we want union with God we must have mission. If we want “eucharist,” literally “thanksgiving,” we must move out and not simply huddle here. Our welcome of the stranger is our transubstantiation – the Roman Catholic idea that the bread and wine of communion literally become the body and blood of Jesus. According to Jesus, it’s the stranger. And Jesus makes this radical claim without offering any distinction or qualification. He doesn’t say, “I was hungry and had made no bad choices.” “I was a stranger with no drug problems or struggles with mental illness.” “I was wrongly imprisoned.”
The Christian philosopher and provocateur Peter Rollins

illustrates the strangeness of this radical solidarity with a dramatic parable, called the Salvation of a Demon. The parable is about a kindly old priest, known far and wide for his hospitality. Late one night, in the dead of winter, there was an ominous knock at the cathedral door. The priest hurried to open it, concerned about a traveler being left out in the cold. Upon the opening the door, he found a towering, terrifying demon. Without the hesitation, the kindly priest welcomed the demon into the church. As the priest finished with his evening devotions, the demon prowled around, spewing curses and blasphemies. When the priest went home, the demon followed. Again, without hesitation, the priest welcomed the demon into his home and calmly prepared them both a meal. All the while, the demon cursed and mocked the priest. Here’s what happens next:
The demon then ate the meal that was provided and afterward turned his attention to the priest, “Old Man, you welcomed me first into your church and then into your house. I have one more request for you: will you now welcome me into your heart?” “Why, of course,” said the priest, “what I have is yours and what I am is yours.” This heartfelt response brought the demon to a standstill . . . For the demon was unable to rob him of his kindness and his hospitality, his love and his compassion . . . What happened to that demon after this meeting with the elderly priest is anyone’s guess. Some say that although he left that place empty-handed he received more than he could have ever imagined. And the priest? He simply ascended his stairs, got into bed and drifted off to sleep, all the time wondering what guise his Christ would take next.”[1] This confounding and subversive parable is a profound illustration of solidarity and welcome. Unqualified welcome in the name of Jesus overcomes and disarms demons. I know that’s a crazy story but we’ll come back to it.
But the solidarity of Je

sus with the marginal is not the only point. I suggested at our Ash Wednesday service that Lent is also the spiritual truth that we must die to that little thing called “I.”  You and I do that, in part, by becoming a “we.” “When did we see you hungry or naked or thirsty?” This means that my future and your future are tied together. Do you know who you’re tied with? We will never be able to be welcoming out there until we are also welcoming in here. But this simply isn’t a warning. There’s also a grace to this truth. It means that I, myself, am not the sole force behind welcome. My gifts, my personality, my means, my hang ups, my busyness, are not the sole determiner of what happens.

Small things with great love means that my welcome need not be radical – I need only to join my welcome to others – like our image for this series of the dandelion shedding its seeds, let’s be the dandelion that fills Salem with small acts of great love. We can only do that if we do it together as a “we.”

3.    Jesus is (and is not) the other.

Jesus makes a radical, provocative claim, that he is aligned, and in solidarity, with marginal people. And Peter Rollins’ parable captures the radicalness of this claim but it’s still a parable and not the whole story because Jesus will also differentiate himself from others by describing the sick, the hungry, the stranger, as “brothers and sisters of mine” in vs. 40, signaling a distinction. So, on the one hand, Jesus is claiming that when we honor the bodies of others, we honor him. When we dishonor the bodies of others, it is him we

wound. And this honoring and wounding occur without qualification. He does not say, “I was wrongly imprisoned and you visited me.” It doesn’t say, “I was sick and likable.”
Yet, Jesus is not totally subsuming himself as the other. Rather, he appears to be saying, treat these ones well because I love them and they are “mine”. They deserve respect and can also change. It means that our welcome is not necessarily agreement with all the stranger might do or say; nor is Jesus’ solidarity a full agreement either. This is because our welcome without qualification offers open space for conversion. Does this work in real life? Is Peter Rollins parable of welcoming a demon a naïve story that offers no real change? Is hospitality merely being nice and not a force to change the world?

Well, consider the example of Daryl Davis an African American musician who has spent his life sitting down and befriending Ku Klux Klan members. Dozens of former KKK members have left the Klan because Davis was willing to enter into conversation, relationship, and friendship with them BEFORE they left the Klan - and he has the robes of former members to prove it. As he recounts in the documentary Accidental Courtesy, Davis’ strategy in converting Klan members was simple: “You invite somebody to the table.” He did it, in other words, by inviting ones who

seemed like demons to his table and into his heart. Yet, his heart also had something to say. In one segment of the film, Daryl called the wife of a Klansmen who was jailed in a federal penitentiary. After cursing him outright, he told her to shut-up and listen to him. He told her that he would be willing to drive her and her kids down to see her husband in prison on a regular basis. Because of that act of kindness, her and her children left the Klan. Daryl Davis proves Peter Rollins and Jesus right.

Let’s a be a people who offer hospitality and welcome to others come what may, come hell or high water. Let us remember the words of the Apostle Paul who says that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).  Come Hell or high water, let nothing stop us from welcoming Jesus and those he loves in our midst. Question for reflection: What’s one thing that keeps you from expressing the love of God to strangers? What’s one thing you might do this week to challenge that fear?

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[1] Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2009), 26-27.