This Is How We Know What Love Is

sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 05/08/2011

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-20, TNIV

There is something I've noticed about many of the moms I know; something that is present in them to a degree that that it isn't present in me. And that is an awesome capacity to be moved, to lay down their lives for others.

Certainly, this capacity is present in all of us, to a greater or lesser extent. It isn't unique to Moms; not at all. But there seems to be something about being a mom that especially demands and develops this capacity. Consider, from the start, mothers are:

Moved from within their wombs...

Moved by cries in the night...

Moved by cries in the day...

Moved by needs...

Moved by desires...

They aren't just moved, either.

They are ready to be moved...

They move first and ask questions later...

And they seem to be moved not from without, but from within.

Deeply moved...

This movement has purpose and power.

Moms give life through their movement.

Moms find life in their movement.

Even though every movement is, at heart, a laying down of life.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

1 John 3:16-20, TNIV

This Mothers' day, let's talk about knowing love. The love we see most profoundly in Jesus, who one time compares himself to a mother, saying "how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings."

We are made to know Love. Love is as important to human life as oxygen, as food, as water.

With Love, we will have life in abundance, overflowing, everlasting, imperishable. But without it our lives fall apart and death is imminent.

So when John writes, “This is how we know what love is…” we have every motivation to pay attention to what he says next.

Will it be the kind of feeling it generates? We feel alive inside and corny pop songs all of a sudden have deep meaning to us? We get weak in the knees? We feel secure, cared for? We feel emotionally affirmed?

No, John doesn’t say anything like this next. And for good reason; way too many things can produce the same kinds of feelings love sometimes produces, at least at first, and not be love at all.

But before we consider what he says next, it’s important to realize that when the Bible talks about knowing something, especially something like real love, it almost always means a deeper knowledge than head knowledge. Biblical knowing is experiential, participatory knowing.

[singing in Spanish, 30 hour famine, new year’s resolution…]

[Juggling example. I can tell you what juggling is. Better, I can show you juggling. Better yet, you can try to juggle yourself. But Biblical knowledge is deeper still. It’s more like being captivated by watching a master juggler. And then learning how to do it yourself. And coming up with your own techniques. And then seeing the look in kids’ eyes as you juggle for them. And seeing the satisfaction it brings them when you teach them to juggle too.

“This is how we know what Juggling is: Jesus juggled for us, and now we ought to juggle for one another. If any one of you knows how to juggle, and sees a child with downcast eyes and isn’t moved to juggle for them, how can juggling truly be in you? Dear children, let us not juggle with words or pantomime, but with actions and in truth.”]

So let’s dig in to what John is trying to say to us…

This is how we know what love is: Jesus the Anointed King laid down his life for us.

This is how our knowledge of love begins. We see it enacted before our very eyes. That’s love. You can see it, tell it, remember it, experience its effects on history.

And look at what we see! The one with all the power and prestige and resources and riches lays down his life for us. He looks on us, and out of his love for us, sees our needs and is moved. The one with the power to move us is instead moved by us.

[Jesus Christ / Jesus the Anointed King / language that sets up a contrast with the Kings of the day… the corrupt king sees our hungers and figures out how to exploit them for his gain, how to use them to move us for his purposes…]

When Jesus sees our hunger, he offers himself to us as the bread of life. When he sees our thirst, he offers himself to us as living water. When he sees our debt, he becomes our ransom.

Jesus voluntarily displaces his life so that we might have life. Jesus, “Who, in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being formed in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross!”

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. That’s the beginning of the love story. But it is not the end. There is also an And.

And we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

The love story continues in our lives. The Jesus love story becomes the Jesus/Sharon love story, the Jesus/Vern love story, the Jesus/Roxie love story. When the story Jesus writes becomes the pattern for the story we are writing, this is how we know what love is.

The love of God cannot be in us, cannot be truly known by us, until we too are moved, until our self is displaced for the sake of another.

“If anyone of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need, but has no pity on them…” or KJV, “…but shutteth up his bowels of compassion…” “then how can the love of God be in you?”

In other words, if the love of God doesn’t move us to be moved out of love for others, then the love we think we know isn’t in fact the true love of God. Love is dynamic, creative, alive, expanding…if we cannot be moved, there is no room in us for love. And without love we are without God. And without God we are without life.

We are made in the image of God. We are, in fact, made to be moved, for our selves to be displaced for the sake of another. Just as he is moved by us.

The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.

Romans 8:29 The Message

Love lays down His life for others.

Love is moved by others as they are.

willing to allow the desire of his heart to become that others can have the desires of their heart,

willing to join others in their misery that others might taste true joy,

willing to live in others' skin and walk in others' Nikes in order that he could point the way to freedom.

Why is it so easy for us, dear children, to love with words and tongue and not with actions and truth?

Rut Stories vs. River Stories...

Rut stories limit us, lock us in place; river stories move us forward.

It's easy to love with words and tongue, but not actions and in truth because we've adopted a rut story. Jesus wants to change that by inviting us into his river story.

Our World’s Rut Story: Real love is the experience of self through the approval of others. [the teenager who experiences self by "winning" the "love" of others who are ultimately using them...S/O, clique, fans, parents living vicariously through him/her...]

If attractiveness "moves" others, what do we pursue? If talent "moves" others, what do we pursue? If money "moves" others, what do we pursue? If power "moves" others, what do we pursue?

This puts us in a serious rut.

If we accept this story, our capacity for love is equal to our capacity to "move" others in this way. And it's ultimately all "movement" that shrinks our capacity to know real love, because all of it has strings attached. All of it is conditional. It's moving people closer to us so they can eat us or so that we can eat them. And pretty soon everyone is devoured or starving.

Look at the world around us…do you see this rut story at work? Look at our lives…do we see this rut story at work?

Loving talk reinforces our experience of self as the kind of people others would approve of, but it’s still part of the rut story.

We need a new story, a river story. Because river stories move us forward.

When the stories of scripture become “our” stories, when biblical images and metaphors become “our” images and metaphors, when we structure “our” lives around the cornerstone Jesus story, a new architecture for our souls is constructed.

Leonard Sweet, Aqua Church

Here’s the story of Jesus’ life: He laid down his life for us, while calling us to lay down our lives for others.

That’s a river story.

Real love is the experience of God through self-displacing love for another. Loving actions move us out of our comfort zones, into a place where the only one who can provide for us is God.

If this becomes our story, our capacity for love is has unlimited growth potential. We fix our eyes on the love of Jesus, which opens our hearts to be moved for others as he was moved by us. And as we allow ourselves to be moved by the needs of others, more of the love that first moved us makes a home in us.

John is pointing the way forward, into this river story.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we should do the same for others.

Is this the love story you are living? Is this the love story your life is telling? What the world needs now is love. What the world needs now is men and women willing to be mothers to a new creation.

This is the powerful beauty of love. God is moved by us, and moves to lay down his life for us. We are moved by his sacrifice for us, and we move to lay down our lives for one another. Our laying down of our lives for one another becomes a picture of his laying down of his life for us that those we are moved to serve can see up close and personal. Causing them to be moved by his initial movement.

And now we have movement all around. Now love is the order of the day, and love is ordering the day. Now the kingdom of God is arriving in its fullness.

[good Sam ministry story]

Practical Tips…

1. Try the 15 Minute Challenge. Spend 15 minutes a day this week just looking for needs to be moved in action to meet. Then do whatever you can to help. If money, give money. If time and energy give time. If prayer, give prayer. (can I pray for you right now?). Ask Jesus to help you with this each time.

2. Take a Laxative (you know, so you can be regular for the rest of your life). Make a 2 column list. Column 1: regular things you do that you would do even if no one else needed you to do them. Column 2: regular things that you do because you have been moved by someone else's needs. Do you feel constipated when you look at this list (are your bowels of compassion shuttethed up?) If so, find one thing you can take off Column 1 so that you can add something to Column 2.

3. Ask 3 questions. Ask yourself if you are too busy moving to be moved by others. Or too tired from moving to actually move when you want to be moved. Ask Jesus, are you OK with this? If not, repent, and go from there.

This is how Milan will know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for The Vineyard Church of Milan. And Vineyard lays down their lives for one another, and for their neighbors. And when the people of Vineyard see brothers and sisters in need and are moved by compassion for them, then the Love of God has made a home in them, and their imitation of the Master speaks louder than the loudest words!