May
The Force Be With You
By
Litton J. Logan
Scriptures:
1 John 3:1--11 (NRSV)
3:1See
what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and
that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not
know him. 2Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has
not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he£ is
revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 3And all
who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
4Everyone
who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5You
know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6No
one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. 7Little
children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous,
just as he is righteous. 8Everyone who commits sin is a child of the
devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God was
revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. 9Those
who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them;£
they cannot sin, because they have been born of God. 10The children
of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do
what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and
sisters.
Love
One Another
11For
this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one
another.
The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible
First
Parsons Technology, Inc.
Cedar Rapids, IA
Second
Translation:
1
John 3:1--11 (The Message New Testament)
What
marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called
children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world
doesn’t recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or
what he’s up to.
But friends, that’s
exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows
how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll
see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his
Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for
our own.
All who indulge in a
sinful life are dangerously lawless, for sin is a major disruption of God’s
order. Surely you know that Christ showed up in order to get rid of sin. There
is no sin in him, and sin is not part of his program. No one who lives deeply in
Christ makes a practice of sin. None of those who do practice sin have taken a
good look at Christ. They’ve got him all backwards.
So, my dear children,
don’t let anyone divert you from the truth. It’s the person who acts right
who is right, just as we see it lived out in our righteous Messiah. Those who
make a practice of sin are straight from the Devil, the pioneer in the practice
of sin. The Son of God entered the scene to abolish the Devil’s ways.
People conceived and
brought into life by God don’t make a practice of sin. How could they? God’s
seed is deep within them, making them who they are. It’s not in the nature of
the God-begotten to practice and parade sin. Here’s how you tell the
difference between God’s children and the Devil’s children: The one who
won’t practice righteous ways isn’t from God, nor is the one who won’t
love brother or sister. A simple test.
For this is the
original message we heard: We should love each other.
The Message: New Testament
First
NavPress Publishing Group
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Sermon:
In my ministry, especially during my time in academia, I frequently
encountered people who believed that their understanding of scripture, religion,
and Christianity was far superior to other people’s.
Such beliefs tend to polarize Christians into groups we commonly refer to
as “Liberals”, “Conservatives”, Fundamentalist”, and
“Evangelicals”.
Many people in these various groups display a sense of superiority, which
either causes them to patronize and look down their sanctimonious noses at other
groups, or they become openly hostile to those who don’t believe as they do.
I think some of the meanest, most hateful, and inhospitable people I have
run across in my life have been among so-called Christians.
I witnessed the dynamics of this divisiveness once at a seminar where two
reputed scholars representing different ends of the spectrum on an issue of
interpreting scripture became involved in a debate.
When it became obvious that neither scholar had the weight of evidence
ultimately to support his position, the debate deteriorated into mutual snide
remarks and attacks on the scholars’ respective schools of thought with
totally unrelated and inappropriate criticisms.
Finally, the debate became a shouting match with personal attacks levied
against the scholar’s and the inadequacies of their scholarship and education.
Finally, the moderator of the event stopped the fiasco and we all took a
break. I watched as the attendees
gravitated to their like-minded scholar to support him and commend him.
It was amazing to see so-called intelligent, educated, and professional,
Christian clergy and scholars behave so hatefully toward one another.
This is the same dynamics that prompts John, the Elder, to write the
three little books of 1, 2, and 3 John.
As we think about the New Testament, in particular the Gospels, we often
assume incorrectly that the major force in opposition to the Christian message
was Judaism. This may have been the case early on in Christianity but soon
the most pervasive and serious opposition to the Christian Gospel would have
been Gnosticism.
Many biblical scholars believe that the Gospel of John itself was a
passionate argument against Gnostic beliefs that had crept into the Christian
faith. However, we can say with
certainty that the Epistles of John were written to address fallacious Gnostic
teachings that had invade the Christian faith in the churches were John, The
Elder, was overseer.
Please indulge me in a little teaching before I do a little preaching.
Let’s take a broad stroke look at
Gnosticism before we look at our text. Gnosticism
was not so much a religion as a conglomeration of oriental, religious
philosophies believed to have originated in ancient Persia—modern day Iraqi
and Iran. Like many oriental philosophies and religions Gnosticism tended to be
very pessimistic about the material world and this life. The
exact origin of Gnosticism per se is still a matter of scholarly debate.
However, Gnostic Christian teachings are often characterized by the
following basic points:
1.
The god of the Jews, Yahweh, is not the ultimate creator of the world,
but rather a lesser god, who was himself created through a series of miss
emanations from the ultimate ground of being, the good god.
Yahweh of the Jews is a wrathful, vengeful, blood lusting and unloving
god, who overstepped his abilities as a god by creating this world and set into
motion the dynamics whereby preexisting souls—divine sparks from the good god,
are trapped in human bodies. Therefore,
the material world is not good contrary to what the god of the Jews maintained.
The material world is inherently evil because in the material world there
is suffering, corruption, death, and decay.
In short, a good god couldn’t and wouldn’t have place humankind with
its divine awareness in such a world as this.
2.
The ultimate
good god—the prime god behind all the other gods--is utterly transcendent and
is not involved in or interested in what happens in the material world.
The extent of the ultimate god’s involvement in the material world is
that periodically this ultimate god allows a revealer, a bringer of light and
enlightenment, to come in human form to impart secret, esoteric knowledge
(“gnosis”—Greek for “knowledge”) to a privileged few.
These privileged few then pass on the secret knowledge to their special
groups. This secret, inspiring
knowledge is given to help members of the Gnostic groups understand their
spiritual origins and guide them through a series of reincarnations on their
return journey to their original spiritual existence.
3.
This radical
division of reality into either the material or the spiritual led to a very odd
since of morality at times. Many
Gnostics spurned the material world and subdued the influences of their bodies
on their sense of their spiritual selves through extreme asceticism. Among other groups, people totally indulged themselves in
matters of the flesh. Their
rationale was that since the divine spark was trapped in the body by no choice
of its own and it was not of the material world then what one did with their
body did not affect the spirit. This
lead to blatant immorality at times among some Gnostic Christians. Sensuality, however, is not the sin or lawlessness that John
is talking about in our reading to day.
The
sin or lawlessness that John refers to in our reading today concerns violating
the law of love as we heard read in verse 11:
11For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should
love one another.
How
this religious philosophy plays itself out in relationship to Jesus and the
Gospels is this: For most Gnostic
Christians, Jesus was a man, born or Mary and Joseph.
At Jesus’ baptism the Christ—the latest divine-revealer dispatched by
the good god descends upon Jesus to bring the latest increment of enlightenment
or divine knowledge to guide trapped spirits back to their original state. This
Gnostic Christ becomes the source of Jesus’ power as a teacher, healer, and
revealer. Remember, for the Gnostic
the idea of a unique spirit-human being was impossible.
The spiritual and the material worlds are two eternally opposing
principles or realities and never the twain shall mix.
As
the Gnostic Christian traditions go, when the Christ had completed its mission
it abandons Jesus before Jesus’ trial, scourging, and crucifixion.
However, not to appear to be a cruel spirit like Yahweh of the Old
Testament, the Christ resurrects the human Jesus.
In some Gnostic circles, this resurrected human Jesus then leaves for
parts unknown and in one story, marries Mary Magdalene and they have a family.
Thus, one can see Gnostic sources of some of the stuff in the De Vinci
Code.
In
summary, Christian Gnosticism denied the sovereignty of the God of the Old
Testament and the God of Jesus; Gnosticism denies the goodness of creation, and
it denies God incarnate in Jesus as preexisting and an eternal dimension of his
nature. By the end of the 5th
Century C.E., most of the Gnostic literature had been destroyed and heresy
hunters had all but rid Christianity of Gnostic influences.
However,
in the Epistles of John we see the Judeo-Christian Gospel of Jesus Christ
meeting the oriental mind and its philosophical, religious world view head on
with a bang. The resulting
conflicts caused great dissention in the churches under John’s responsibility
and people have become openly hostile and inhospitable toward those who differ
with them. Gnostic Christians were
belligerent and refusing basic hospitality to the teachers sent from John. Those of the Christian Gnostic view point looked down their
noses at John and those who believed as he did with contempt.
Gnosticism
and its radical dualism are alive and well in our modern world.
We see its dualistic ideas clearly in the Star Wars Trilogy—the Force
with its dark side and its light side. The
Jedi warrior-teachers, Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the Jedi Master Yoda are the
keepers and transmitters of special knowledge and powers of the light side of
the force that allows the Jedi to use the Force to manipulate nature in the
battle against the dark side of the Force personified by the Dark Lord and his
convert Darth Vader. Luke Skywalker
is the student who must serve his apprenticeship in order to receive the
knowledge that will give him power. We
find Gnosticism in the various scenarios of supernatural forces of evil or
darkness battling the forces of good or light for cosmological dominance in all
sorts of places.
Thus,
in John’s Epistles, we see John addressing the conflict in his churches using
the dualistic language of the Gnostics—dark, light, truth, lie, order, and
chaos, etc., to turn the Gnostics’ own concepts back on them in order that
they may become truly enlighten. John addresses those in the churches who will
hear him with instructions and insights concerning those in error.
Through
out the Epistles of John one encounters three reoccurring themes:
1.
God is light—the ultimate source of truth and
goodness,
2.
God is righteous,
3.
God is love.
We
see John’s themes reiterated in our reading to day.
God
as the ultimate and only God so loved humanity that in Jesus the Christ, the
only begotten son, the incarnation of God’s wisdom, we have become children of
the one and only God of all creation. In
Christ, the Christian receives the true light or enlightenment of God—the
reason behind creation and why God sent Jesus into the world—God’s love.
We don’t know exactly what this childhood in God may mean in some
future form, but we know it now in substance, if we are people of love.
Therefore, those who are children of God should live according to God’s
righteousness, morally and spiritually. Christians
should live as children of the light—people who love as God loves.
Those
people who violate the law of love by treating their fellow Christians hatefully
and inhospitably are guilty of sin—lawlessness. These
lawless people interject chaos, corruption, death, and decay into the body of
Christ. People who hate or disrespect their fellow Christians and
withhold fellowship and hospitality from them can not be truly of the Christ.
They are children of opposition. In
John’s words, they are of the devil—that which opposes God.
Therefore, those people who foster and encourage inter-sectarian strife
in Christianity at the expense of God’s revealing and uniting love for all
humankind are of the devil, that is to say they are in opposition to the truth
and revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
John
declares that those who are truly, truly of God can’t possibly violate the law
of love because God’s divine presence, the Christ himself, lives in them. Therefore,
those who violate the law of love and treat their fellow Christians wrongly are
not of God, they are not truly enlighten nor are they truly righteous. Such people are filled with the spirit of the opposition.
John
goes on to say that the test of a true believer, one possessed of the presence
and power of God, is to be found in the person who lives a righteous,
spiritually and morally law abiding, and loving life in relationship to his or
her brothers and sisters in Christ.
Personally,
I am sick of all the wrangling and haggling over fine points of scripture or
theology that we will have to die to prove, when living by the law of love
defines all righteousness and encompasses all the law and the prophets. (At
least that is what Jesus said.) I am not saying that anything goes in
interpreting scripture and the Christian Gospel.
I am not advocating unreflective and irresponsible emotionalism,
romanticism, and maudlin-ism as comprehensive and valid forms of Christian
expression. I am not okaying
personal-designer Christianity that seems so popular today.
What I am saying is what John is saying that in confronting and dealing
with misinterpretations and errors such reproof and addresses must always be in
the Spirit of God’s love.
The
love I speak of is not irresponsible, feel-good romanticism but responsible
caring, kindness, justice, compassion, and mercy. God’s relationship to us, God’s children as it were, is
our model.
I
encourage people to read and study the best minds at either end of scriptural or
theological disputes. I would then
ask people to look for that, which is common and true in each position.
Affirm the truth that is common and let this become the intellectual
ground a person stands on.
With
that having been said, never let one’s intellectual ground become the ground
of one’s faith. One’s faith
should always reside in God’s love for us made known in Jesus Christ through
the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.
May
the force be with you my fellow Christian.
The force of God’s love.