Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

1 John 2:12-17

Whoever says, ‘I am in the light’, while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. (2:9)

Do not love the world or the things in the world. (2:15)

I am juxtaposing the two verses above, just a few lines apart from each other in 1 John, as a way of highlighting how we must be careful with instructions such as those found in 2:15-17. If we read them too simplistically or in isolation, we risk getting the wrong message. Take also, for instance, Jesus’s words about the lilies of the field, clothed in glory. He goes on to say:  “And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying” (Luke 12:29). Interpreting this as saying that our health, our physical life, isn’t important is to ignore the healing miracles of Jesus, and his compassion for the crowds, for whom he multiplied bread.

So what then might we get from today’s passage? If there is a good love of the things of the world around us (for example, love for our neighbours, as Jesus taught us), then what kind of love of the world is harmful? Is it a love of something in itself, without being mindful of its source, in God? Is it an unhealthy clinging to something? Is it a selfish use of someone or something? I suggest that you give some time to thinking about what love, investment, and prioritizing in your life is healthy (or holy), and what isn’t. 

The ‘Johannine’ writings give us some tension to work through. The writer of the Fourth Gospel has told us that Jesus came into the world to redeem it, yet he came from God, not from the world. Nevertheless, he had compassion for it. Likewise, we, as Jesus’s disciples, are called to be in the world, but not of it. It can be baffling at times, but that’s why we have the resources and riches of our tradition; it’s why we have our reason; and it’s why we have each other.

- Matthew Kieswetter