Twelve
Ordinary Men: The Disciple of Love
Pastor Mathew Magera – 2/28/18 – Sermon 273
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
If there is anything you
might know about John other than the fact that he has a few books in the New
Testament, is that he is the disciple Jesus loved. While not the leader in the
group, John appears to be the closest follower of Jesus. So, we nickname him
the disciple of love. What we don't realize or even think about John is that
this idea of love was very foreign to John. John was not a disciple of love
when Jesus called him as one of the twelve. John became the disciple of love
because Jesus taught him to love. John can be characterized by three things.
Within each of them could either be his greatest strength or his greatest
weakness.
First, John was and is very
black and white. You can tell that in his writings. In John's Gospel, he will
always set one thing against another with nothing in between. He'll talk about
light and set it against darkness, life against death, being fruitful against
fruitlessness, obedience against disobedience, receiving Christ against
rejecting Christ.
Second, as a result of being
black and white, John loves to deal in absolutes. You are either this or that.
A or B. Not both. That is his writing style. At the same time, he does
understand that people sin but the picture that he wants to paint in his
writing is that righteousness, not sin, is the dominant feature in a believer's
heart. John loved to speak in absolutes because Jesus spoke in absolutes. John
wanted to imitate Jesus to the best of his ability. He took Jesus quite
literally.
Lastly, and perhaps his most
obvious characteristic, John was devoted to truth. He would be the one who is
always asking questions and never satisfied if the answer was wishy washy. And
so, he began to follow John the Baptist along with Andrew, Peter and his older
brother James. He was a fitting follower of the Baptist too. John the Baptist
was an extremist. John the disciple was also an extremist. All right or all
left. Nothing in the middle. John took things very literally as a student and
he needed details to operate.
Jesus didn’t want to take
these qualities away from John. Jesus needed to teach him something new. John
was black and white. Jesus needed to introduce John to the gray. John loved
absolutes. Jesus needed to teach him about middle ground. Lastly, John loved
truth, but Jesus needed to teach him love. The trouble here is that when you
try to teach someone who is black and white, like John, about a gray area, to
them it feels like you are teaching them that what they believe is wrong and
that the other side, by default, must be right. Jesus' attempt with John and
perhaps with some of us, is to balance our black and white and give way to the
gray. So, John was taught how to balance his love of the truth and his aversion
to love and to find the gray area that is in between.
The teaching moment that I
want to work with is found in Mark 9. As I've said already, John loves the idea
of truth. He’s very one sided. In the Gospel of John we find that word 25
times. In his 3 epistles, we hear it 20 more times, including one we know very
well, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not
in us." John's quest for truth started with John the Baptist but when the
Baptist pointed to Jesus, John left him and followed Jesus. If you remember
when we talked about James and wanting to call fire down from heaven on the
Samaritans, yeah, John was there too and wanted the same thing. Not very
loving. Now, in Mark chapter 9 John shows us that he can be to the point where
he comes off as just plain stingy and rude. It is the only place where John is
shown speaking alone.
Jesus had just finished
teaching about putting children first in the kingdom of God. John would
otherwise push children aside if Jesus had not used one as an example to him.
John was being taught to love others, to love the unlovable, or those who you
don't want to love. John abruptly says to Jesus, "Teacher, we saw someone
driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one
of us." This was a fellow believer he was talking about. John had showed a
lack of love for Samaritans and for unbelievers, but here John is even off-putting
toward a fellow believer in Christ. This comment seems to stop the
conversation. Going from children to rebuking other Christians seems like quite
a jump until you take a look at what was happening.
At this point in Mark, we
are not too far after the transfiguration where John got to see the brilliance
of God's glory too. No one had ever seen something like this since Moses
himself saw God's back in the book of Exodus. Where this event was intended to
humble Jesus' disciples, the transfiguration had empowered John to believe that
he was an elite disciple, not just one of the twelve but one of the three and
that he had the power to rebuke other believers. He got to see God's glory. Now
he was ready to desire one of the thrones closest to Jesus in the kingdom of
heaven, much like his brother James. John, then, was excited at the time that
he stopped someone else from driving out demons. He probably thought that was the
right thing to do.
But, now as Jesus was
teaching more about the kingdom, love and humility, John felt the need not to
speak out in pride but rather conviction. John was conjuring up a confession,
knowing now what he did was not loving, it was wrong and now he wanted to get
it out in the open. Jesus was trying to balance John who thought the truth was
more important than love, that the twelve disciples were the only disciples.
How might we behave like
John did and rebuke other believers? I think Christian denominations have
increasingly put up border walls between themselves. We have discovered,
however, that this is not healthy. We have to strengthen our ecumenical
relationships with the body of Christ that is not like us. Jesus told John
whoever is not against us is for us. This was a hard lesson for John to learn.
How could someone who is not like us be on the same team? That is the gray area
John dealt with and it is the same gray area we deal with in our relationships
with local churches around us. Clearly there are areas in theology and practice
where we disagree with others. This divide makes us lean toward pursuing truth.
However, we are also told to love one another and we hear Jesus' words to John
about whoever is not against us is for us. This makes us lean toward love. John
had to deal with the fact that the answers were not as cut and dry as he wanted
them, much to his frustration.
John had his theological
ducks in a row already, or so he thought. He knew what truth was by following
Jesus. He knew the kingdom needed somebody like him who had courage, ambition,
drive, passion, boldness and a zeal for the truth. But, what he didn't know is
that he needed to be balanced with love. Without love, John's theology was just
cold facts and unattractive.
From there on John learned
about love. He learned about humility. He learned that the world was not all
about him. We can see where he balances love and truth and even incorporates
humility into the mix. If you read his extremely short epistles, 1, 2 and 3
John, you'll see this balance. In 2 John alone you'll notice how he begins
talking about love but then finishes talking about truth. John no longer calls
down fire on the enemies of truth but he also doesn't support leaning so far on
love that truth disintegrates.
You may notice in John's
Gospel that he never refers to himself by his name. The only John that comes up
in the Gospel is that of John the Baptist. John always refers to himself as the
disciple Jesus loved. It is obviously intentional. John, where he had once seen
himself as an elite member of the twelve disciples, now wants to focus no
attention on himself but give all his attention to Jesus. It's not John, it's
the disciple Jesus loved. I don't think that this attribute is intended to show
off saying that Jesus didn't love the others. Jesus loved all his disciples.
But, referring to himself as the disciple Jesus loves attest to what Jesus was
trying to teach him in order to become a fruitful disciple. It may have been a
reminder to himself every time he wrote that Jesus loved the one who had no
love in his heart whatsoever other than for himself. It may have reminded
himself that Jesus could've chosen someone more worthwhile to follow him but
Jesus picked John to one be one of his closest followers.
This transformation comes
complete at the site of the crucifixion. John is the only one that is recorded
to have actually witness Jesus dying on the cross. John was able to witness in
its full power, the balance of love and truth as he looked at his Lord bleeding
and struggling on that cross. The idea that one could suffer so much for
someone else, for people he knew personally, for those he's never met, all for
the sake of giving them a place in God's kingdom, the perfect balance of love
and truth, meant so much to John. It was likely an image that was stuck in his
mind from that moment forward. Then, we have an astonishing turn of events.
From on the cross, Jesus speaks to John. With Mary the mother of Jesus and John
standing there, he unites them together, mother and son. Would Jesus have
entrusted his mother to John if John knew nothing of love and could not balance
it? Who would best take care of her? It was John and perhaps he included it in
his Gospel as an affirmation or confirmation from Jesus that he was where he
needed to be.
I began this evening by
saying that John loves truth. He mentions it over 45 times in his Gospel and in
his epistles. What I didn't say is that John also uses the word love more than
80 times. John learned to love others as his Lord loved him. This balance
became his anchor. He still embodies his qualities of being black and white,
speaking in absolutes and yearning for truth, but it shows to be much more
balanced than during three years he followed Jesus. Jesus loves us and teaches
us to love others just as he taught John. When we struggle to love others who
are not like us, when we struggle to love others who have different beliefs,
values, behaviors or lifestyles, Jesus continues to love us. How he can love
those who don't love or who are unlovable I don't know, but it doesn't change
the fact that Jesus took a cross to show us what true love was along our quest
for truth and that though there may be gray areas held between truth and love,
it is in those gray areas that we find our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, loving
us, forgiving us, renewing us, and sending us out as disciples of love and
truth boldly proclaiming his goodness to all. To God be the glory, now and
always. Amen.