Last Sunday we began this sermon series I am calling “Little Lost Letters”. We looked at the first part of the Second Letter of John.
With the advent of email, letter writing as a whole has become a lost art. Back when I was just starting to use email, in 1996, I corresponded with a man by the name of Sheldon Vanauken, who, along with C. S. Lewis, is one of my favorite authors. Van, as he was known to friends, made a commitment, early on in his writing career, that he would write back to every fan who wrote to him. That is how our correspondence began, I wrote to him as a fan, and he wrote back, not by email, but with handwritten letters. Do you remember those?
Over the course of several months, we exchanged about seventeen letters. The correspondence came to an end, sadly, because Van died in October of 1996 at the age of 82. Now, because I was just one of hundreds of people that Van was corresponding with, every now and then he would write me a postcard instead of a more formal letter sealed inside an envelope. I am sure it saved him time and energy on especially busy days when he had several letters to respond to. But because Van was a very skillful writer, he could get more content on a postcard than anyone I have ever known.
I share that little story to point out that this letter of 2 John is sort of like a postcard. 2 John consists of 300 Greek words. It is as though John crammed as much as he could on a little postcard and then he just ran out of room. Nonetheless, in those 300 Greek words, John has conveyed certain ideas that are still worth remembering 2000 years later.
Listen for God’s word to you as we read the second half of John’s postcard from 2 John 1:7-13…
I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.
I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
The children of your sister, who is chosen by God, send their greetings.
It seems to me that the first point John makes here is that Jesus must be the touchstone of all our thinking.
Let me put this in the form of a question: Would your faith be the same without Jesus? If so, it is not really Christian faith.
Would your faith be the same if you removed everything from it that is not Jesus? I believe that if any of us were to lose everything in our lives but still have Jesus, we would still have everything we need. For, after all, it was Jesus who said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.”
How does this work out in practice?
Let me give you just one example. Over the past year, as we have struggled through this pandemic, I have heard many people ask, “How can God allow suffering?”
One answer to that question, that I have heard many people offer, and I have offered myself, is that in the beginning, God created everything in the universe perfect. But then, because human beings chose to live their lives apart from God, suffering entered the world. God’s good gift to us of free will, and our human abuse of that free will is what has led to all suffering.
That answer has some plusses and minuses to it. But I have come to believe that the main problem with that answer is that it leaves out Jesus.
The same God who created the world perfect, and who gave us free will, is also the God who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth in response to the abuse of our free will. When we chose to run away from God, he came running after us in Jesus. And in Jesus, God has taken all of our suffering upon himself. He bore that suffering on the cross, and through the resurrection of Jesus, he has turned the minus of the cross into a plus. That same God who suffers with us, his creation, can enable us to turn our minuses into plusses as well.
So, John’s first point is that Jesus must remain the touchstone of all our thinking. Any theology that leaves out Jesus is incomplete.
This leads to John’s second point, namely: Saying “yes” to Jesus necessarily involves saying “no” to all that is not compatible with him.
Now, why is this the case?
Well, it’s like this… I was having a conversation over breakfast a few months ago with a friend of mine who has served as a missionary in southeast Asia. I said to him, “You know, out of all the non-Christian religions, I bet Hindus have the easiest time accepting Jesus.” My friend Bill agreed with me.
Why is it that Hindus have an easier time accepting Jesus than people of any other religion? It’s because Hindus are polytheists. They believe in a countless number of gods. And so, when a Christian talks to them about Jesus, and they see how wonderful Jesus is, they accept him and add him to their pantheon of gods.
And so, you may ask, “What is wrong with that?”
The only problem with that is that to add Jesus to a pantheon of other gods is not to accept Jesus on his own terms. That’s true because Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
And so, to accept Jesus on his own terms involves recognizing him as the way, the truth, the life, the only way to the Father. Jesus is the king of kings and lord of lords. We must put him on a pedestal far above all other gods, or not accept him at all.
This is sometimes a hard teaching for some of us to accept. Many of us prefer to be positive in our dealings with others, especially those of other religions, rather than negative.
I had a professor in seminary whose name was Bryant Kirkland. Dr. Kirkland was the former senior minister of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City. He was, in many ways, the Presbyterian equivalent of Norman Vincent Peale or Robert Schuller. Dr. Kirkland used to tell our preaching class, “You can turn every negative statement in a sermon into a positive statement.”
Dr. Kirkland was probably right. And I try to do that in my sermons. But I imagine that if the author of this little New Testament letter were in Dr. Kirkland’s class, they would have come to blows. The author of the Second Letter of John definitely sees certain issues in black and white, wrong and right. He makes both negative and positive statements.
And so, our ears, trained by our modern cult of “tolerance”, are bound to prick up and cause us to react sharply to what John says here. “Don’t be taken in by the deceiver, the anti-messiah.” Anything that waters down the truth of Jesus coming in the flesh is not to be tolerated.
This may seem very unloving. But I wonder, is it unloving or intolerant to shout to people when the house is on fire? Is it intolerant to insist that if we are to worship the God revealed in Jesus, then we cannot simultaneously worship one of the many other gods on offer today? If we deny this central teaching of Christianity, that Jesus has come in the flesh, then certainly our house of faith will eventually collapse.
Now, John talks about not receiving those who are anti-Messiah into one’s home. Does this mean not inviting the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons into your home? Not necessarily. I have, on more than one occasion, invited Mormons into my home. It is one thing to invite them into your home, it is quite another to provide them with a platform for their teaching.
Let me tell you about one of the best conversations I ever had with a Mormon. In a town where we used to live there was an annual event called “Community Days”. Our church, along with many others, had a table at the event. One year, the Mormons were just a few tables down from us.
Eventually, two young Mormon missionaries strolled over and engaged me in conversation. I decided to take a different approach than I had ever taken in conversation with a Mormon. I simply asked these two young men questions about their faith. I allowed my curiosity to run wild.
After a while, these Mormon missionaries started asking me questions about my faith. I got to talk with them about everything I would want to tell anyone about the Good News of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t received as a sermon. We were just having a good conversation.
However, part way through our delightful conversation, a member of another church walked up. Realizing the two young men were Mormon missionaries, he started “preaching” to them, and tearing down their faith. You could see the “wall” go up in the countenance of these two young men. The talk changed from a conversation to an argument. And so, I simply walked away.
Saying “yes” to Jesus definitely means we need to say “no” to all that is not of Jesus. But it doesn’t mean we have to be obnoxious about our faith.
Let me give you another example of how one might deal with holding to the truth while still being loving. I once had a discussion about the resurrection of Jesus with a member of a previous church. She communicated to me quite clearly that she did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Furthermore, as a consequence, she said she did not believe in the bodily resurrection of believers in Jesus in the future. After I talked on for quite some time about the importance and centrality of both of these teachings to Christianity, she asked me, “Are you saying that I am not a Christian because I do not believe in the resurrection?”
I don’t know how you would have answered this person, but here is how I answered… I said, “No I am not saying that you are not a Christian. I do not believe God has made me the judge of anyone or their faith. However, I am saying that belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus and our future resurrection has always been a central teaching of Christianity up until modern times, and even down to the present day in most major Christian denominations.”
That answer allowed me to remain friends with this member of my church without compromising the truth. I believe Jesus wants us to be tenacious in holding on to the truth and, at the same time, tenacious in holding on to others in love. It is, after all, possible to state what we believe to be the truth and leave the judgment of others up to God.
The great New Testament scholar, C. H. Dodd, once said, “The problem is to find a way of living with those whose convictions differ from our own upon the most fundamental matters, without either breaking charity or being disloyal to the truth.” Precisely!
I also like what Abraham Lincoln once said… “The best way to destroy our enemies is to make them our friends.”
The third thing John says as he closes this letter, raises this question: How are we to “flesh out” our faith today?
John says, “I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.”
There is an interesting expression John uses here. In the Greek it is literally “mouth to mouth” not “face to face”. The same expression appears in the Hebrew Scriptures. God spoke with Moses “mouth to mouth” in Numbers 12:8. John wants to perform spiritual “mouth to mouth” resuscitation with the Christians he is writing to.
We have a tendency to feel that this little letter is not as important as, say, 1 John, because it is so brief. Yet, it may be that John was showing great wisdom by not writing more.
Here is what I mean by that. Any adult who has spent a good bit of time in church circles has probably seen this happen. Someone in the church gets upset about something that has been done, or left undone, in the church. And so, they write to someone else, maybe to the pastor, to complain. This has been made even easier by the advent of email. Our tendency, as human beings, is to respond in kind, and write an email back saying why we agree or disagree with the person’s complaint. The disagreement, if there is one, soon turns into an ongoing argument with emails flying back and forth, sometimes involving multiple people in the church. (Please note, I am not saying that any of this has happened recently in our church, but it does often happen in churches.)
The whole thing usually ends with several people having their nose out of joint, and maybe some people even end up leaving the church over an argument that could, perhaps have been settled by a face-to-face meeting. That is why William Barclay once wrote, “Church courts and Christian people would do well to make a resolution never to write when they could speak.” I think Barclay’s statement is so true, especially in regard to the discussion of controversial matters.
I also see a second practical application of what John says about speaking face to face…
Because belief in the incarnation and resurrection of the Son of God is so central to Christianity, this means that Christianity itself can never be a disembodied religion that cares only for things “of the spirit”. In this time of Covid-19, we have all had to meet less face-to-face than we would like. The technology of Zoom and all the rest has been invaluable to the Church and other endeavors in this strange time. But as Christians, we must remember that this is only an interim solution to a temporary problem. We need to return to worship and fellowship that is face-to-face as soon as we possibly can. We need it for our own physical and spiritual well-being.
My friend, Tim Hansel, used to say, “God decided 2000 years ago that human flesh was a good conductor for his Spirit, and he has not changed his mind since.”
God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth 2000 years ago and he wants us to continue “fleshing out” his truth today.
Here is a prayer I learned recently from Tim Hansel’s wife, Anastasia. She says that she has often made this the focal prayer of her daily life… “Lord Jesus, if you were me, with all my weaknesses and strengths, what would you be doing in my little corner of the world?”
I urge you to make that prayer your own this week and then ask the Holy Spirit to flesh out your faith in your little corner of the world in some practical way. Perhaps, in this time of Covid-19, that might mean writing a note of encouragement to a friend, or picking up the phone and calling them, or even going by their house to visit them, albeit while wearing a mask and social distancing.
We need to find ways of staying in touch with each other, now more than ever. As the writer to the Hebrews says, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)
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