January 5

1 John 3:11-18; Psalm 100; John 1:43-51

Ouch!  I feel challenged by John’s letter.  “We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.  Whoever does not love abides in death.”

I love to hear the promise of abundant life, and to call others to new and abundant life.  But it’s easy for me to overlook what is needed for that to happen.  It can sound like a consumer good - “get your abundant life here!”  It can be preached that way.  But John is right.  Any life that focuses only on me and my needs is not only not abundant; at some point it shades into death.  

John is prone to either/or thinking, so his only alternative to love is hate.  I’m not so binary.  I think there are shades between these.  Yet his point is taken.  The more we love, the more we live.  The more I withhold, the less I have.  Long before I get to active hatred, I have withdrawn my concern and goodwill and affection for others.  Then, when hatred pokes its head in the door, I mistake it for a friend.  I think, “Someone understands me.”  “Someone isn’t judging me for being angry or resentful.”  But that someone is death.  It grins at me and tells me I am fabulous, I don’t deserve to be frustrated or denied anything.  It tells me that my life would be great if only those others got out of my way or did my bidding.  It lies.

Abundant life means abundant love.  Jesus conquers death by smothering it with love.  He walked into it full of love, and transformed it by the alchemy of his love.  He invites me to do the same.

I admit it.  I’m afraid to lay down my life for another.  I’m afraid of the expense of buying fair trade products and food that doesn't kill the earth, I’m afraid of the emotional toil of living and caring for others who won’t always be who I want them to be, I’m afraid of reaching out to people I don’t know or who are radically different from me.  But I’m more afraid, in the end, of missing my chance for what Jesus knows.  I’m more afraid of losing my chance for life.

Come, let us pass from death to life.  Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.