For You
“For You” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! This is the final week of our series For the Love of God, which has considered loving God and loving one another, and how following God’s commandments might contribute to our own happiness. We have been using texts from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. I have to tell you, just when I think I’m done being surprised by what I find in my study of the Bible, something comes up which feels new. These verses from 1 John chapter 2 are notable for several reasons. If you have a Bible with you, I invite you to turn to 1 John chapter 2. These verses stand out on even a cursory scan of the page — they are spaced differently, written in verse, like the author suddenly was taken by a burst of lyricism or poetry. This is the only time any of the letters of John which this happens.
The context, as we see at the beginning of Chapter 2, is this: the author is explaining the reason for this letter. He calls his audience, including us, “my little children,” which is familiar, affectionate, and paternal. He is writing these things — this letter for sure, and possibly including the two others — so that we may not sin. And if we do sin, inevitably, to assure us that Jesus Christ the righteous is a sacrifice for our sins, and for the sins of the whole world. We can be sure we know Jesus if we follow his commandments. This includes the old commandment which we have already heard in the Jewish law, but also a new commandment to walk in the light of loving God and loving one another. And who is this new commandment for? This is where the poetry comes in. The author could have just said This commandment is for everyone! But instead he writes, It’s for you little children (that is believers who are part of the family of God); it’s for you fathers, it’s for you young people, it’s for you children. Granted, that isn’t an exhaustive list — mothers and old people don’t get a specific shout-out, but you get the idea. It a lovely way to put out there in a warm and winsome way that the commandment to love one another is for everyone, and that everyone includes you and you and you and you.
It brings up an interesting point, and one which can sometimes be a point of tension when we try to put it into practice. We can agree with that statement in verse 2 that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for the whole world, but it can be tough when the whole world is made up of a bunch of individuals. We’re like Linus in the cartoon Peanuts who said, “I love humanity; it’s people I can’t stand.” This manifests in some interesting disconnects, like We should welcome everybody at our church, but I’m not going to talk to people I don’t know. Or don’t want immigrants in the United States, but I want to support our friends from Elim Ministries. Loving one another is not a theoretical exercise, it always comes down to interactions with actual people. And relationships with other people are frustrating, messy, and sometimes rewarding.
There may be an element of chance in who we must relate to and how, but there are some important factors we can control. Throughout this series I have been referencing The Little Book of Lykke, by Meik Wiking. Lykke is the Danish word for happiness, and Wiking is the CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. I was intrigued by the idea of bring research techniques to the subjective experience of happiness, and taken by how many of the qualities of happiness which he identifies are also things which we are commanded to do as followers of Christ. I’ve previously talked about Community, Kindness, and attitudes about Money. Today I want to consider Trust. Of course we are children of a trustworthy and faithful God, a God who keeps promises. God is the object of our trust and our model for trustworthiness. But I want to consider trust and other people.
Consider this statement from Wiking, “People who trust other people are happier, and trust does make life easier.”[1] Do you agree with that statement? Or maybe you would qualify it — I trust some people (family, church friends, whatever), but if I trust everyone, people will take advantage of me. Or, trust is for people who don’t know better, and aren’t as smart as I am. I’m a ‘trust but verify’ kind of person.
People from 31 countries were asked if they had a high level of trust in others. At number 1, the country where 89% of people expressed a high level of trust is . . . Denmark. Closely followed by Norway, Finland, and Sweden. At the bottom of the list, where only 12% of people trusted others was Chile. Would you rather live in Denmark or Chile? Incidentally, the US was 22nd out of 31, reporting that Americans trust 49% of people in the US.
Wiking reproduced an experiment to measure trustworthiness first done by Reader’s Digest Europe in 1996. It’s called the wallet experiment. Wallets containing a name, address, business cards, family photos and about $50 in local currency were dropped in fourteen cities in European countries and a dozen cities in the US. Twelve wallets were dropped in each city. The experiment was to see how many wallets would be returned with all the money still inside. In two countries, all twelve wallets were returned intact: guesses? Norway and Denmark. How many wallets do you think were returned intact in New York City? 8. I’m not going to ask you what you would do if you found a wallet with $50 and the owner’s contact information inside, but I can tell you what a couple of the people said when asked why they returned the wallets. A woman from Poland said “If you find money you can’t assume it belongs to a rich person. Maybe it was all that person had left to feed their family.” Someone else said, “Once I lost an attire bag, but I got everything back, so I know what that feels like.”
Both of these statements illustrate the connection between trust and empathy. If we can’t understand other people and what’s important to them — or don’t want to make to the effort to try — it’s hard to trust them. And frankly, the better we know and understand other people, the easier it is to calibrate our level of trust to their level of honesty and reliability. Of course, if we are not trustworthy, it’s pretty hard to expect trust from other people. Dishonesty and trying to prop up an image of ourselves which is not accurate undermines our relationships and takes a lot of effort on our part. Mark Twain quipped “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” It is certainly a fact that our lives will be easier, happier, and more relaxed if we don’t have to keep track of what we told to whom, and what version of ourselves we have shared with which people. If you have lived with, either as a child or as an adult, someone who is not trustworthy, you know that kind of stress I am talking about.
So what does trust mean for us in the church? Frankly, part of being trustworthy is being the same people at church as we are everywhere else. We are not holier here, more honest here, or even happier here. What I hope the church can provide is a place where everyone is trying to meet the standard of being reliable, keeping our word, and respecting confidences which have been entrusted to us. There is more to the Christian life, for user, but honesty and authenticity are a foundation we must build, or everything else falls apart. We do this as part of our commitment to God and out of loyalty to our sisters and brothers in Christ. Loyalty to people who are not present demonstrates loyalty to the people who are present. That kind of trust builds more trust. It is the foundation of our faith in God, and it is part of Jesus’ commandment for how we should treat one another.
I want to share one more example from Wiking’s book, because I believe it relates directly to what you have been doing at Creekside for the past month and beyond. There was a hospital ward in Copenhagen whose employees were experiencing low job satisfaction, and high rate of burn-out and employee turn-over. Management instituted an Employee of the Week program — with a twist. Anyone could recommend a fellow employee for the excellent work they were doing. The award went to the person who made the recommendation. In other words, you got an award for telling your supervisor about a colleague’s good work. This strategy reduced staff sick days by almost 75%
We should be about recognizing and encouraging one another. This is, of course, what the Bless Your Heart cards are about, and why we are so happy to print as many of them as we need. I noticed the other day that Betty Snyder’s Creekside mailbox is full of greeting cards. I told her, “Betty, you need to clean out your mailbox.” She said, “I keep those there on purpose so I can re-read them if I’m having a rough day.” We all have rough days; we all need that card, that phone call, that text which says I am thinking of you and you can count on me. That, my little children, is what we ought to be doing for everyone — children, fathers, mothers, young people, older people. That is what we do for the love of God. That is what Christ did for you. That is Jesus’ commandment, and there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. Amen.
[1] Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Lykke: Secrets of the World’s Happiest People, Harper/Collins 2007, p201.