May 18, 2025 ~ Fifth Sunday of Easter
Rev. Beckie Sweet
A young woman stood in my office doorway, looking embarrassed. I hadn’t seen her in nearly a year. As I looked up her records from the last time she had come to ask for help, I hoped I had made some notes about her story that would jog my memory. When I found her papers in my Emergency Assistance file, my heart sank.
A few months after I had begun my appointment to serve the Broad St. UMC in Norwich, NY, I had set a limit on how many times a person could receive vouchers for food and gas. You see, folks from all over Chenango County came to Norwich for social services. Word had spread that there was a new pastor in town, with a discretionary fund, and the frequent visits had begun. If folks came regularly expecting assistance, then it was hardly an emergency situation. So, I decided to only help each person/family four times each year, in hopes of helping the discretionary fund last for a while. It seemed that without being too judgmental, I could be a good steward of the funds entrusted to my care. Those who came back frequently needed more than a voucher for groceries, but most were not open to spiritual care.
This young woman had already received her yearly allotment for groceries and gas. And here she was again, choking back tears, desperate for whatever help I could offer her. We talked for quite a while. She had tried everything she could think of, and I was her last hope. Couldn’t I do something? ‘Anything to help?
When Jesus was teaching and healing during the early part of his ministry, there were times when the needs around him seemed overwhelming, too. In Matthew’s gospel we read, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matt 9:36)
This morning’s reading from I John echoes these words from Matthew. John calls us to be more than simple sheep when we choose to follow Jesus. In these few verses, John touches on some themes we often hear: God has deep love for us, Jesus shows us how to abide in that love, believing in Jesus will save us from our sins, and we should obey Christ’s commands. As these themes weave themselves together, John moves toward the big point he wants to make clear: there’s only one thing you need to believe ~ Jesus is God’s Child, who has shown his love for us by laying down his life for us. And then we are instructed to show that kind of love to each other. It is that simple.
First, according to John: LOVE. When Jesus gave his life to save us from our sins, he gave his all. He held nothing back, but sacrificed his own life for our sakes. John’s point is that we need to be so committed to sharing God’s love that we are willing to give our entire being to that purpose. Our lives are to be a “living sacrifice,” with all the attention we would normally give to satisfying our own desires redirected toward loving each other.
“Laying down OUR lives, as Jesus laid his down for us, may mean sacrificing busy schedules that keep us too occupied to notice another’s need. Laying down our lives might mean setting aside our own personal agenda, so that we can be part of someone else’s life, and invite them to be part of ours. Laying down our lives could be taking the time to listen to someone who is hurting. Laying down our lives isn’t so much about dying for someone else, as it is living for someone else, putting their needs ahead of our own as an act of love.
And then John gets real. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a sibling in need and yet refuses to help others? “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Loving in truth and action means sacrifice – but it isn’t always the kind of action or sacrifice you would expect.
That woman who came to ask me for help, wasn’t unique. In that ministry setting, I saw a dozen or more people just like her every month. People who had reached the end of their rope, and the knot they tied in the end of it, so they’d have something to hang onto, had become unraveled. Many times, I could not help them. They needed a place to live, their utilities had been shut off, their only car was broken down and it provided income for the Uber driver family member. Their needs were overwhelming and urgent. Offering a voucher for $40 worth of fresh groceries, knowing they had no transportation to take it home, would often break my heart.
While there were some folks who made up stories they thought would gain my sympathy, and some of those stories were so obviously untrue, there were also some heartbreaking stories that were very true. Sometimes I had already read about them in the newspaper. There were some people who came to ask for help because they had made some really poor choices, and there were some who were truly victims of circumstances. They had been living in poverty for so long that they didn’t know any other way to live. When a catastrophe strikes, they have no reserves, no way to handle the situation without some help.
What is the best way for those of us who live comfortably to help others in need – not only material needs, but the deeper layers of need that cause brokenness and pain, that send people into a cycle of poverty? How can we invest ourselves in their lives, and share our lives with them to meet the deepest need of all: to know Christ and follow him?
Instead of seeing ourselves as the generous benefactor, and others as the poor recipient of our generosity, we can start seeing each person we meet as a beloved child of God, precious in God’s eyes, created in God’s likeness, just as we are/just as they are. Recognizing that each person has something to offer to the community of faith, we begin to see everyone as a contributor in some way to our common good as the body of Christ.
Caring for one another is something we do within the community of faith. Just as the airlines tell you in the event of an emergency one should put on your own oxygen mask before helping someone else. And Jesus says to pull the log out of your own eye before trying to remove the splinter from someone else’s eye, so we need to make sure that we are taking good care of one another in this congregation, even as we reach out to others, inviting them into our fellowship.
Sometimes, we will fail. Sometimes we just don’t do a very good job of paying attention to the needs of others, because our own needs are so great. When we doubt our own capacity to love, and beat ourselves up for not seeing the need around us, GOD IS GRACIOUS. John writes that Christ “will reassure our hearts whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and God knows everything.”
Jane Goodall, who has dedicated her life to studying chimpanzees, once said, “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” Christ calls us to make a difference by being different. Loving others is not enough in itself. Loving others as an act of faith in Jesus Christ transforms us into the people God created us to be.
The young woman who came to see me, sat in my office and told me her story. She described everything that had happened in the months since I had seen her last. She knew coming to me was a long shot, that she had used up all her available options. She ended by saying, “I know you probably can’t help me with groceries, but could you at least pray for me? When you did that the last time, it really seemed to help.” So, we prayed together for all the needs she had shared. And, I broke my own rule, and gave her another voucher for groceries and gas. It seemed pretty small, given her circumstances, but she was grateful. In the midst of all of her need, she believed in the power of prayer to effect comfort and peace.
What mattered most was that she heard someone say, “You have value. You are God’s own beloved child.”
We know love by this, that Jesus laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” – if only for a few minutes at a time, as we learn more and more about how to live as followers of Jesus. “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”