Sermon — April 28, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God;
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4:7)
Four months ago at the Christmas Stroll, we stood out on the sidewalk on a cold night and handed out little bags of cookies and candy with information about Saint John’s and a friendly smile. And in each bag was a card with my favorite verse from the Bible, and the church’s website and logo. And I pulled one out to show you, and I realized that the citation was printed wrong: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. — 1 John 4:12” It’s actually 1 John 4:7, but shockingly enough we didn’t get any phone calls to the office in mid-December, correcting our mistake. I’m not sure whether it’s good news or bad news that nobody bothered to pick up the Bible and check, but then again, at least for me: ignorance is bliss.
It’s an interesting exercise, to pick out the one verse of the Bible you’d want to put on a card to hand out on the street. Maybe that’s your homework today. What’s one sentence that expresses your faith that you’d want someone else to hear?
You might even find it in the passage from 1 John we just heard. It’s one of my favorite parts of the Bible. It’s like a compilation of greatest hits: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us… No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us… God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them… There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…” and of course, there’s the verse that you’ll hear Michael paraphrase whenever he ends a sermon, “We love because he first loved us.”
As a person and as a Christian, I’ve always loved these words of love. I first read 1 John at a pivotal time in my life, on a Christmas Day long ago, when this reading is part of the service of Morning Prayer, and these words have been one of the touchstones of my faith ever since. Whenever I hear them, I’m comforted by the reminder of God’s love for me, which began long before I could begin to love myself or anyone else. I’m reassured by the reminder that although no one can see God, if we love, God lives in us, and so we can see God like we see the passing of the wind through the trees, in the ripples of love that flow between human beings. I’m challenged by the reminder that there is no fear in love—after all, what do I fear more than failing the people I love?—and then I’m freed from a little bit of fear by that promise that I can “stand with boldness on the day of judgment,” because in the end it’s not the perfection of my love that matters to God. In the end, my whole life is God’s love being perfected in me.
So as a person, I’ve always loved these words of love. But as a pastor, as a preacher—as a guy who occasionally stands out on the sidewalk with one chance to share something with the world—it’s this first verse that stands out to me, today. It’s this verse that I chose to have printed on a card: “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Last week a colleague sent me a set of slides from a church event, which contained an alarming projection. You probably know that the Episcopal Church, like most other churches in America, is experiencing a long-term decline in attendance. Decade after decade, year after year, the total number of people attending an Episcopal church on a Sunday morning has simply continued to decline, in a more-or-less linear trend. It’s a linear-enough trend, in fact, that you can do a linear regression, if you are so inclined. You can extend the line down and calculate the year in which that attendance number would hit 0. In early 2020 you could see that if trends continued, by 2046 there wouldn’t be anyone in church. But trends did not continue. Instead, the pandemic came, and the bottom fell out, and now that number is more like 2039: Just 15 more years, and statistically, on average, if the trends continue, the pews of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts will be empty.
Of course, averages obscure variety. There are plenty of churches like ours, where attendance is growing, not shrinking. But all that means is that for every church that can hold off decline another decade until 2049, there’s one where attendance will be at zero in the next five years. And yes, it’s easy to lie with statistics, and yes, it’s probably an asymptotic curve, which basically means—if you haven’t taken a math class in a few years—there is probably some number of us who are crazy enough to be here no matter what. But still, it’s a drastic enough trend that we have to reckon with it.
When Bishop Alan visited us in December, he gave me a slightly-overdue certificate that institutes me as your Rector, and gives me a certain charge: “Do not forget the trust of those who have chosen you,” it says. “Care alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. By your words and in your life, proclaim the Gospel. Love and serve Christ’s people. Nourish them, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.”
And this isn’t just for me, as a priest. It’s a beautiful description of any Christian life. These words are full of the spirit of love. Care for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. Proclaim the good news by your words and in your life. “Love and serve Christ’s people,” the letter says to me, and to you.
But what do we do when that line hits zero? What do we do when Christ’s people are all gone?
It’s a trick question, of course. It’s a question that comes from fear and anxiety about the future of the church, and that fear and anxiety come from how much we love the present of the church. But “what do we do when church attendance reaches zero?” is a very different question from “what do we do when all Christ’s people are gone?” If we take the vision laid out in this First Letter of John seriously, then our understanding of who God’s people are cannot be limited to our measurements of who shows up on Sundays: for “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God,” and I don’t believe for a minute that the decline of the Church has meant a decline in people’s ability to love. The Church doesn’t have a monopoly on love—in fact, to our discredit, sometimes it’s the other way around.
And that’s why I love these words. “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” is a challenge to the Church’s traditional claim to know who’s in and who’s out. To say that “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” is to say that no pastor or priest can ever tell you that you don’t belong in the Church, or that you’re not the beloved child of God, so long as your life is shaped by love.
But these words are not just a challenge to the Church. They’re a reminder and an invitation. They’re a reminder that there are more people who know God in the world than those you’ll find at prayer on a Sunday, and that God’s work is not confined to what we do together as part of the church. And they’re an invitation to go and be a part of that work, to “love one another, because love is from God.”
The Church may be shrinking, but the need for love is not, and the capacity to love is not. As 1 John reminded us last week, love is not about feeling something, or about saying something; in the Christian understanding, love is seeing your neighbor in need of help and doing something. And maybe that is the work of the Church in this new era, as our traditional structures and our traditional ways continue to fall apart. Maybe our work is to look for the people in our communities who are already acting out their love in the world. To recognize, whether they are Christian or not, that in our eyes, they are born of God and know God in that love. To find where Jesus is moving out there, in the world, and to follow him. To join our siblings, carrying out that work. Because we know that “if [we] do not love the brothers and sisters whom we have seen, [we] cannot love God whom we have not seen.” (1 John 4:20)
So, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8) Amen.