1 John 3:16-24

Easter 4 – Year B

1 John 3:16-24

While love has a sacrificial aspect to it (it’s not all about me), it must be asked whether sacrifice is its hallmark.

Stinginess is certainly a sign that any love available is being blocked from rising to the surface. It does not follow from this that love is absent when not evidenced, ultimately lost or controlling of G*D if not immediately passed on, or based on obedience.

I suspect the community had some reason for looking beyond word or speech, as a grounding of mutual love, to the abstracts of truth and action. I expect they had their share of disappointment and betrayal by smooth-talkers. Eventually, though, they do know that loving one another (loving all creation) is important, no matter what the response and whether or not it is commandable.

Perhaps it will suffice to note a connection between the particular and the general, physical and spiritual love. To be dependent, one upon the other, or to consistently choose an independence of one modality over the other, does not bring the interdependent, holistic experience of being loved and loving. If we were to leave Jesus out of this, the writer could still have arrived at the point from purely Jewish sources (which of course they did by referencing Jesus).

May you be bold in restoring the world by receiving your belovedness, your image of G*Dness, and encouraging those qualities within those you meet along the way.

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In Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Lessons for Transforming Evil in Soul and Society by Matthew Fox we hear the following about the “Fifth Chakra: Prophecy” and find a connection with “love in truth and action” that goes beyond sacrifice of life and obedience:

“This chakra represents the throat and the expressing of one’s truth and wisdom. The throat lies between the heart and the mind chakras. Truth comes from both heart and mind. This chakra is also the prophetic chakra. The throat is the trumpet that speaks our truth, as the prophets also spoke out (the meaning of prophetein in Greek) their truth. . . .

“It is my experience, in listening to stories of people over the past two decades, that many people are having dreams about their throats. This is especially true of women and of gay people, and I think the meaning is that these people are finding their voice after having had it taken away for many centuries. They are on a search for their true voice. . . .

“The prophetic call is to speak out to interfere with what we see is obstructing what we deeply believe in. This chakra recovers the sense of the ‘holy word’ that we are called to speak regularly in our lives. . . .”

May your deep belief be spoken/lived this day.