One of the great joys of serving this congregation stems from the incredibly helpful and kind things you tell me about that help in the preparation of my sermons. For instance, this past week one of you sent me this email: “Jack, read through the New Testament while at lunch today and found there is no requirement that this Sunday’s 9:00 a.m. service run the entire hour. About 45 minutes seems right to me. Just trying to help.” You need to know that the church in which I grew up regularly held 45 minute services, but I don’t think it had anything to do with the starting time for National Football League playoff games. At any rate, since this is a sermon about love, I’ll see what I can do.

With everybody back from the Christmas break and life fully geared in for the New Year, let’s take a moment to look back to see where we have been so that we know where we are. In September we began a year-long journey guided by the work of Scot McKnight in his book, The Jesus Creed. McKnight has given the name Jesus Creed to the twin commandments that Jesus said are the two most important pieces of information we can learn regarding spiritual life: that men and women become who God has made us to be as we love God with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, and as we love our neighbor as ourselves. We have explored how loving God and loving others takes shape and begins to influence life in our prayer, in our understanding of God’s love for us, in our fellowship together, in the joy and power and renewal we experience as we love God, and in the transformation of our personality and character so that we begin to function more and more like Jesus. We also have seen how loving God and others shapes actual human lives, in people like Mary and Joseph and Peter and Paul. Today we are going to look at one of the other key figures of the early church and of the New Testament, the Apostle John.

As with other key people in the group of Jesus’ first followers, John was a very human fellow who found his life changed as he learned from the teacher from Nazareth. Luke gives us two brief but telling accounts, among others in the Gospels that give us great insight into John’s character. The first glimpse is when John has an encounter with someone who is casting out demons but who is not one of Jesus’ followers. Apparently, John thinks that if a person is not with the “in” group of disciples then they should not be in the business of trying to use God’s power to help other folks. He is so upset with this scene of someone else from outside the group trying to do something good that he actually tries to stop it. Jesus corrects him however. Jesus does not mind at all that someone outside his influence and control may be doing something good, and perhaps getting a little credit for their effort. John’s attitude reeks of conceit, but Jesus’ attitude is totally unconcerned about anything but the fact that God’s work is being done.

The other glimpse we see is when Jesus and the disciples are passing through Samaritan territory on their way to Jerusalem. The most direct way to Jerusalem from Galilee was through Samaritan territory but usually a Jew would go around it because there was absolutely no love lost between Samaritans and Jews. They got along about as well as Hatfields and McCoys. Intertribal hatred is not just a modern problem in the Middle East: it goes back many centuries. It was no surprise that Jesus and his band were denied passage and lodging by the people of a Samaritan village. John, along with James, does not want to take the insult lying down. They propose a simple response: “Hey, Jesus, let us call down fire from heaven and burn up this pathetic little village.” You might call that a pre-Christian attitude toward one’s enemies! And again, Jesus has to gently correct their narrow attitude. Actually, Jesus might not have been so gentle: he rebuked them. “Rebuked” is not a mild word, but it was needed to correct a very dangerous attitude in John.

There are other stories about John in the Gospels and taken together they give us a picture of a self-centered, self-righteous, power-seeking man. Just as Peter was prone to over-commit and to lose his nerve when things got tough, and just as Paul was totally opposed to everything about Jesus and his followers, so much so that he actually persecuted them, so John was anything but a model Christian when he began his journey with Christ. John was willing to step over others to get to the top. He was mostly concerned about being with God’s “in” group. He was happy to destroy people who opposed him.

But the John we see in the early years is not the John we see in later years. More than the other Gospel writers, John remembered and wrote about Jesus’ extreme emphasis on the idea of love. And it was about more than just an idea. In the extended and detailed account John gives us of Jesus’ last visit with the disciples before his arrest and crucifixion, John tells us just how much Jesus spoke about the absolute necessity of love. John showed us how it was love that made Jesus give his life for us. John in his later years made love the theme of his life. In his three little letters to the early church, love is his primary concern. John tells us that Jesus said, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” And then John himself wrote to the early church, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God.” Somewhere along the line, the John who couldn’t stand sharing the spotlight with anyone else who might be doing God’s work and the John who would happily destroy an entire village of people who had treated him badly became the John who finally understood that, in his own words, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

John must have learned his lessons from Jesus well. As he hangs dying on the cross, Jesus entrusts his mother Mary to John’s care. John would spend some time imprisoned by the Romans on the island of Patmos, but he ended his life taking care of Mary as they both lived in Ephesus. Paul would also write about God’s love for us and our need to love others, but John became the great proponent of the idea that love is the identifying mark of Christian people, the supreme principle by which Christian people live their lives. In John, we see how the twin commands to love God and to love other people can reshape and define a very unloving man.

You and I look back at John through nearly two thousand years of history. What lessons can we learn from his life that might have some meaning and impact in our own lives? I think there are four key things that John’s life teaches us, four principles that you can put to use in your life today. The first is this: that people can become more loving in the future than they have been in the past. All of us know mean, self-centered, violent, unkind, unloving people. All of us know that within ourselves there is much that is not very loving. We want to put ourselves first. We want to destroy our enemies. We want to get ahead even at someone else’s expense. We ignore the pain and suffering of others. But John’s story gives us hope that we can actually change. John was something of a hot-headed primadona when he met Jesus. But he learned to become a different person, a better person. I don’t know if John ever caught on to the fact that he was changing but we know that he did change over time, and so we can hope for that kind of change to happen in our own lives. We don’t have to give up on ourselves or on other people. We can’t change other people, of course, but perhaps as they see us change, they can be inspired to seek that kind of change for themselves.

The second principle we seek working in John’s life is that life continually presents opportunities for us to learn how to love. In John’s case, at least early on, he often blew it when life called on him to act in a loving way. Is someone stealing your thunder doing something that you think is your business alone? Do you stop them or applaud them? John got that one wrong. Is someone pulling your chain when they treat you with the same hatred that you have treated them? John got that one wrong, too. But along the way John started taking advantage of opportunities to love other people. Along the way he started learning how to react more like Jesus. And maybe he started looking for those chances. Maybe he started to understand that every day there are situations that arise that give you a chance to put your love into action, and even when you blow it, you can learn to do better the next time.

The third principle that John’s life teaches is that we learn to become different people as we spend time with Jesus. It was true for all the disciples and it was true for John: when they spent time with Jesus they learned a totally different outlook on life, a totally new way to respond to what life throws you and a totally new way to go out and meet every day. John advocated stopping the interloper on their religious enterprise. Jesus said no. John wanted to nuke the Samaritans. Jesus said no. John finally got it. John finally learned to see life through Jesus’ eyes, and to see people through Jesus’ eyes. But he had to live some life with Jesus. You and I have Jesus available to us in the stories of scripture, in the tradition of the church, and in the life we share with other Christian people. When we teach each other about Christ, we are doing Christ’s work. When we spend time with each other, we are spending time with Jesus. You cannot learn life Jesus’ way without spending time with Jesus.

The fourth principle that speaks from John’s life is that we must always remember that our love begins with God’s love. We love because he first loved us. John wrote eloquently about the love that Jesus had for us, a love that laid down its life for its friends. John is the one who tells us about Jesus’ washing the disciples’ feet in one of the ultimate symbols of sacrificial love. John is the one who referred to himself as the disciple that Jesus loved. John is the one who gave us the immortal line that, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son….” You see, when you remember how much God has loved you, how much God has forgiven you, how much God has been patient with you, how much God has blessed you with, how much God promises you, then you will begin to treat others more lovingly. It becomes harder to condemn when you have been forgiven, harder to be selfish when you have received freely, harder to tear down when you have been built up. Remembering God’s love as we go through the day helps us be more loving ourselves.

John’s story is the story of how you and I can learn to become loving people. But it is a story that cannot be told apart from the love of our Father in heaven. It is a story that will not become real in our lives if we forget that we love because God first loved us.

George Strait knows that, or at least he sings about it, in one of my very favorite country songs.

I got sent home from school one day with a shiner on my eye.
Fightin' was against the rules and it didn't matter why.
When dad got home I told that story just like I'd rehearsed.
And then stood there on those tremblin' knees and waited for the worst.

And he said, "Let me tell you a secret about a father's love,
A secret that my daddy said was just between us."
He said, "Daddies don't just love their children every now and then.
It's a love without end, amen, it's a love without end, amen."

When I became a father in the spring of '81
There was no doubt that stubborn boy was just like my father's son.
And when I thought my patience had been tested to the end,
I took my daddy's secret and I passed it on to him.

And he said, "Let me tell you a secret about a father's love,
A secret that my daddy said was just between us."
He said, "Daddies don't just love their children every now and then.
It's a love without end, amen, it's a love without end, amen."

Last night I dreamed I died and stood outside those pearly gates.
When suddenly I realized there must be some mistake.
If they know half the things I've done, they'll never let me in.
And then somewhere from the other side I heard these words again.

And he said, "Let me tell you a secret about a father's love,
A secret that my daddy said was just between us."
He said, "Daddies don't just love their children every now and then.
It's a love without end, amen, it's a love without end, amen."

God’s love is without end. May ours be as well.

Amen.