Heart Sick Calling

Text: 1 John 3:16-24
Other texts: John 10:11-18

Why do we have fire departments when there is no fire?

Every day all day fire fighters are waiting in fire stations, fire trucks at the ready, fire hydrants cleaned and checked. Yet most of the time we have no fires.

The question is absurd and the answer obvious. We will for sure have a fire some day, some day soon. Fires threaten the individual good and the common good. Though maintaining a whole fire department is expensive, and most of the time unnecessary, the evil of fire and the extent of the loss is great. So great that we are willing to give up our individual wealth to provide for people and equipment and systems to do nothing but put out fires, should there ever be one.

We have agreed to spend our money, and to put firefighters’ lives at risk, to put out fires for everybody. Even for people who do bad things. Even people who don’t have any money. Even people who are illegal, on the run, who have committed a crime. Even people who stupidly contribute to the fire by smoking in bed, storing oily rags, leaving charcoal grills open; all those things experts say not to do. When there is a fire, we save everyone, if we can. We don’t inquire first. Firefighting is unconditional. It is a kind of grace.

In the city, you might say that it is in my own best interests to keep my neighbor’s house from burning to the ground. But country folks, whose houses lie far apart, have fire departments, too. Who anywhere could ignore a burning house? Who would say, “let it burn to the ground”? We fight fires because it is horrible not to. Because our hearts tell us to. We fight fires because we care for one another. It is a sign that we do.

We do the same when we build hospitals. Or build transportation systems. Or when we feed people who have no food. Though in these things we are often less graceful and more stingy.

We do things for the common good. What that means in practice is that we do things for the good of individuals. What turns individual good into the common good is that we do not distinguish one individual from another when we decide whom to care for. When no privilege is recognized. When we care equally for all, it is the common good. When we choose others to receive extra benefit or extra burden or extra punishment—for whatever reason; the reason does not matter—when we do that, the good is no longer common, but particular.

The writer of the first letter of John asks how any of us could see someone who is in need and yet refuse to help. Actually, he asks how God’s love abides in anyone who does that. For he surely knows that in most cases, people pass by the needy by all the time. But his question is not rhetorical. The question is: when we do that, is God in us? Where is God’s love in us when we refuse to help our brother or sister?

Whenever we bring suffering to anybody, and whenever we fail to relieve the suffering of anybody, do we have any grounds to claim that God’s love abides in us?

When we harm others by omission or commission, we embarrass ourselves. It hurts our hearts. Our hearts know better. It makes us sick at heart. War makes us sick. Personal violence makes us sick. Torture makes us sick. Seeing others starve makes us sick. Seeing others die for lack of medicine makes us sick. Seeing others enslaved makes us sick.

Yet we continue to see our brothers and sisters in need and refuse to help. We do so for all sorts of reasons. Reasons that are practical, expedient, or affordable. And shame-making reasons, too. Fear which shows itself as timidity, greed that grows out of fear, self-importance, ignorance. And reasons of confusion. Balancing one thing against another, one life against another, one love against another.

None of the reasons matter to our hearts. They all end up sounding like defenses, apologies, “this-hurts-me-more-than-it-hurts-you” kind of talk. But our hearts hear this nonsense and know it for what it is, and they condemn us. Our hearts condemn us, it says in the epistle of John.

Our hearts condemn us. But God does not. For God is greater than our hearts, it says. God knows everything, and knowing so, does not condemn us. Not that God doesn’t agree with our hearts. Maybe God does. Maybe God, who abides in our hearts, see things as our heart does.

But God does not condemn us. God knows that condemnation is not helpful here. What God knows is that we do not easily refuse to help a brother or sister whom we see is in need. We do so against our will, so to speak. Against our deep desires. Our brothers and sisters call us. Call our hearts.

What makes the shepherd good, in the story we heard today from the Gospel of John, is that the shepherd knows the sheep. Jesus is the shepherd. What distinguishes the good shepherd from the other shepherd, the bad shepherd, the hired hand, is not that the good shepherd treats the sheep better than the hired hand, though he does, but that he cares for them. Meaning that his heart is called by them. The sheep call the shepherd and the shepherd cares about that.

He cares so much that he is willing to risk everything, even his life, to help the sheep. Each sheep. Each sheep without regard to privilege. Without regard to anything. Each sheep. The shepherd listens to the calling of his heart. He never sees a brother or sister in need and refuses to help.

Jesus is the shepherd. He tell us so. I am the good shepherd. And in the Gospel of John, as we heard a couple of weeks ago, we are sent by Jesus as Jesus is sent by God. In the Gospel of John, the sheep become shepherds. Jesus tells us that, too. It will not do for us to stand around and munch and [bleat] baaa. We cannot stand around and watch the fires burn.

For John, the power of God lives in Jesus and in us. John calls it abiding, which means making one’s home somewhere. An abode. Our hearts, which abide in us, call us to help one another. To love one another as Jesus loves us and has commanded us. But the power to do so comes from God. When we see our brothers and sisters in need, and our hearts call to us, and then we turn to help them, we are able to because God’s love abides in us. When we do not refuse them, we may claim that God lives in us.