Text used – 1 John 5:9-13

• We’re going to full-circle everything this morning, all.
  • Last week à started the congregational conversation about renewal
    • Continuing that conversation after worship today → talking about how to reach out to the people who are already here = basically a discussion about developing discipleship
  • And this is yet another one of those funny little God-moments, y’all … one of those times when the sermon that I planned months ago falls so perfectly into the space and time that we’re occupying together that the timing of all of this truly had nothing to do with me and everything to do with a God who is not done with us yet.
    • In talking about reaching out to one another – about deepening our discipleship together – Percy: Disciples are learners. … In learning to live to the glory of God, our desire is to become more like Jesus in thought, character, attitude, behavior, and purpose; to live lives that are pleasing to [Jesus] in every way.[1]
      • Goes on to loops the congregation into that description: The church is a community of such people, everyone of them in process, beginning from wherever they are and moving in a new direction with a new purpose. Such people can only hope to reflect God’s glory dimly and with a great deal of refraction, but the process of drawing closer to God and being transformed is what the adventure is all about, and also what brings glory to God.[2]
    • And this morning’s Scripture reading is all about that exact thing – scholar: In these verses, we find four terms prominently repeated: believe, Son, life, and testimony.[3] → If, as Percy describes, we do indeed have a desire to deepen our discipleship and become more like Jesus in thought, character, attitude, behavior, and purpose, then this passage is the gateway to those depths.
• Context for 1, 2, and 3 John[4]
  • John Wesley’s descriptions of these particular books of Scripture: “How plain, how full, and how deep a compendium of genuine Christianity!”[5]
  • Author = unknown BUT scholars agree same author wrote all 3 letters
    • Possibly same author who wrote gospel of John
      • Share some similar phrasing: “love one another” comes up a lot in all texts
      • Share some similar particular word choices
    • Unsure about order in which these letters were written
    • Unsure about particular destination of these letters
      • Particular city/church a la Corinthians?
      • More general “Christians at large” → circulated from city to city?
    • Unsure about date of authorship
    • Somewhat unsure about particular genre of these letters
      • Scholars agree 2 and 3 John are personal letters similar to ancient letters of recommendation
      • But 1 John is, as one scholar put it, vexing. It doesn’t necessarily follow any of the general patterns of ancient texts so it could be an essay, or a treatise, a sermon or a manifesto, an encyclical or a circular letter, to name but a few proposals.[6]
  • But as we read through the text of 1 John, it becomes clear that this little epistle was written with a few major Christian tenets in mind.[7]
    • Speaks of the nature of God
    • Speaks of the communal context in which we hear and experience God’s word
    • Speaks of a tentative understanding of the end times without skewing highly condemnational
    • Speaks about who Jesus is and what Jesus does
    • Speaks about what Christian life should look like
    • Basically, this little book is all about deepening discipleship!
• Today’s passage begins with a reminder that it all comes from God: our efforts, our testimonies, our faith, our life, our eternity … it all comes from God
  • Text: If we receive human testimony, God’s testimony is greater, because this is what God testified: he has testified about his Son.[8] → For all intents and purposes, all, this is why we do our Glimpses of God on Sunday mornings: because as human beings, we don’t always reflect God as fully or as perfectly as we’d like to. As Percy put it, “people can only hope to reflect God’s glory dimly and with a great deal of refraction,” but we also believe that God is moving and working and dancing and sparkling and living in the world and the people around us. We believe that God is showing up in new and stunning ways each and every day. If we didn’t believe that, we wouldn’t be here. And our Scripture passage this morning assures us of that – that even when our testimony or the testimony of others around us fall short, God is still working and speaking and showing up! “If we receive human testimony, God’s testimony is greater.”
    • Also want us to notice an intentionality in this phrase: “If we receive human testimony” → Gr. “receive” = hold, grasp, seize, catch, put on, choose, collect → This receiving of testimony is about more than just letting others’ stories and experiences of God go in one ear and out the other. This is about more than politely nodding our head when we hear that testimony before moving the conversation along. There is an intentionality about the way that testimony is received. We intentionally take it in – we grasp it, seize it, catch it, choose it – and we intentionally keep it in a way that is honoring and noticeable – we hold it, we collect it, we put it on like a favorite sweater or a well-loved t-shirt.
    • And just in case we either aren’t grasping that idea that God’s testimony is greater or we’re underwhelmed by that idea, let’s look at that for just a second. → Gr. “greater” = more in every sense of the word: wider, more intense, deeper, louder, brighter à God’s testimony is so much more that we cannot fail to see it! Praise God!
  • The good news according to our Scripture this morning: that testimony is already within you! – text: The one who believes in God’s Son has the testimony within; the one who doesn’t believe God has made God a liar, because that one has not believed the testimony that God gave about his Son.[9] → Thom Rainer, who’s done a lot of writing about church renewal: Membership in the church is not country club membership. It’s not about paying your dues and getting perks.
    • Cycles back to Percy’s idea that the “church is a community … in process, beginning from wherever they are and moving in a new direction with a new purpose” → I would hope that you’re here this morning because that word that God has written on your heart has drawn you to this place – because that testimony that God has sunk deep in your heart is one you want to explore and pray over and share. I would hope that you’re here seeking to deepen your understanding of God and your relationship with God through worship and through your active presence in this Christian community.
    • Nothing about this promises a perfect testimony or an eloquent testimony or a testimony that looks anything like anyone else’s … But it does promise that God is an active and inextricable part of that testimony because it comes from God in the first place.
  • And just in case you’re unsure about the core of that testimony, the writer of 1 John outlines it for us: And this is the testimony: God gave eternal life to us, and this life is in his Son. The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have God’s Son does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of God’s Son so that you can know that you have eternal life.[10] → At the end of this Easter Season in the church, this testimony is about the good news of the life everlasting.
    • Empty tomb = LIFE
    • Folded graveclothes = LIFE
    • All of those beautiful and baffling appearances Jesus made to his disciples after he was raised from that grave = LIFE
• And for us today, in the midst of all the chaos and pain and disfunction and fracturedness of the world around us, the good news is still LIFE!
  • “LIFE” means different things for each of us because we all have different places in our lives that needs that infusion of God’s good news: relationships, personal habits, daily routines, situations, experiences, moments from the mega to the mundane.
    • What this LIFE doesn’t mean = others are beyond God’s reach – scholar: Labeling others evil and ourselves as good distorts the complex reality of human nature and God’s unpredictable grace abound anywhere and everywhere in God’s created, groaning world. When we listen to the words of this author [of 1 John], we must be careful not to presume too much about our own righteousness as God’s chosen.[11] → Too often, passages like this that talk about how we find God through the grace of Jesus Christ get used as a weapon – against those who struggle with belief, against those who have been so hurt by the church that their belief has been shattered, against those who grew up with no knowledge of or access to the gospel message, against those whose life circumstances have wrung the faith out of them one excruciating and devastating heartbreak at a time. But the love of God and the grace of Christ are not a weapon.
      • Percy: The gospel is an invitation. While the gospel proclaims important news, its proper form is always an invitation … The thing about invitations is that they require a response in order to be activated.[12] → Your testimony is that response! Your own particular story about seeing God and hearing God, finding God and noticing God, following God and getting to know God better is your activated response to God’s own testimony in Jesus Christ. And our call as Christians – our call as this church … the Presbyterian Church of Oronoco here in this time and place – is to live into that testimony every minute of every day, not just for a couple hours on Sunday morning.
  • Definition of the church from my friend, Kara Root, pastor at Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church up in south Minneapolis: The times I feel my deep love for the church are when it’s transcendent, mysterious, and unknowable and when it’s messy, haphazard, and human. And my favorite moments of all are when it’s all of these at the same time. Church is a broken and messed-up collection of beautiful souls longing for the world to reflect the truth of God’s love. These people show up with each other, believed there is a reason to come, a reason to risk, a reason not to quit.[13] → What better testimony could there be? Amen.

[1] Harold Percy. Your Church Can Thrive: Making the Connections That Build Healthy Congregations. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 26.

[2] Ibid, 26-27.

[3] Nick Elder. “Commentary on 1 John 5:9-13” from Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-1-john-59-13-6.

[4] C. Clifton Black in “The First, Second, and Third Letters of John: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, vol. 12. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 365-368.

[5] John Wesley quoted by C. Clifton Black, 365.

[6] Black, 370.

[7] Ibid., 374-376.

[8] 1 Jn 5:9.

[9] 1 Jn 5:10.

[10] 1 Jn 5:11-13.

[11] Bonnie Miller-McLemore. “Seventh Sunday of Easter – 1 John 5:9-13 – Pastoral Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year B, vol. 2. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 540.

[12] Percy, 18 (emphasis added).

[13] Kara Root. The Deepest Belonging: A Story About Discerning Where God Meets Us. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2021), 5.