By The Rev. J.C. Austin
A few years ago, I remember seeing a viral video of people running into Central Park in New York City, but running as if they were running urgently towards something, not running away from something.
Now, when I say “people,” I mean literally hundreds 
of people; and when I say “running,” I mean surging like a massive wave into one of the park entrances. They were literally jumping out of cars in the street to try and get there, or over them if the cars were between them and the park entrance. They were excited, and they were motivated, but it wasn’t clear what was causing all the excitement. I assumed it was an impromptu celebrity music concert, or someone handing out free samples of the new iPhone, or something like that. But then my eyes traveled to the title of the YouTube video, and it said “Pokemon GO mob gathers in New York City.”
If you don’t know what Pokemon GO is, it’s a game that you play on smartphones, based on a popular Japanese cartoon franchise, in which you walk around in the real world but trying to catch virtual monsters called “Pokemon” that show up randomly in the game in certain locations in your town.
Apparently, your phone alerts you when a monster appears nearby, and some monsters are much more rare than others. So it seems that what was going on in the video was that a particularly rare monster had spawned in Central Park, and word spread quickly enough in the community of people playing the game that hundreds of them rushed to Central Park trying to be the one to “catch” this extremely rare (and extremely not real) monster.
When I saw the video, the game itself had just come out and was something of a sensation, with literally millions of people downloading it and playing it in that first week, which is when the video happened. And, like many people who aren’t themselves part of the newest craze, I have to admit: I downshifted immediately into moral superiority.
“These people are crazy,” I thought; “look at them following this game like a bunch of sheep, completely obsessed with catching imaginary animals on their phones. It’s kind of pathetic.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one reacting that way, though, as the viral video circulated, because I finally saw a Facebook post by a friend responding to it all. It said, “Okay, I get it: you don’t understand the appeal. Here’s the thing. There’s murder, chaos, fear and anger all around us. Like many of you, I find myself reacting less & less with shock & grief and more & more with the numb acknowledgment that this is our new normal…. So along comes a game that in just over a week has millions of people out walking, exploring, traveling and congregating around the shared desire of catching (mostly) cute little virtual creatures. Add to that a healthy sense of competition with minimal conflict, zero gore factor, a team-based approach for those who desire it, and you have a cultural phenomenon that could have a positive, lasting effect on many areas of our life….It’s perplexing that anyone would waste their time criticizing a point of light in a sea of darkness.”
And you know what? He was right. Why would anyone be against that, even if it’s not their thing. We need all the light we can get in the world these days.
Neither that friend nor I thought that Pokemon GO could solve the problems of our world. But, at the very least, it certainly wasn’t contributing to the problems. And, oddly, the game itself actually undermines the logic and values that are feeding the flames of violence and division and hate in our world: that anyone or anything who is an “other” is to be suspected, feared, contained, rejected, opposed, even destroyed.
That no public place is safe: not a grocery store, not a worship service, not a traffic stop, not a nonviolent protest, not a Fourth of July parade. That our only defense is to be stronger, tougher, better armed, more violent, more remorseless than the hordes of enemies encircling us. That there are subhuman creatures which we cannot see, all around us, who wish us nothing but suffering and death. In its own way, that little game was providing an alternative vision of how the world can be that night. In that crowd headed into the park were white, black, and brown people; men, women, and nonbinary people; adults and children; people of various religions, speaking various languages.
Strangers in the park at night were seen as sharing a common interest rather than hiding a malevolent purpose. A public place was seen as harboring opportunity and wonder and celebration, not danger. And what people could not see was not something to be feared, but something to be sought out and enjoyed. It’s not the light of the world; but it was a little light in the world where there otherwise wouldn’t be, and we need all the light we can get.
Fine, you might say; let them enjoy their game. But what does any of this have to do with Christian faith, with trying to follow Jesus as disciples, with how we should live and serve as the church, the Body of Christ in the world?
The gospel of Luke tells a story of a time when Jesus’ disciples came up to him bragging about how they caught someone driving demons out of people in Jesus’ name, and they tried to stop him, because he didn’t follow Jesus with the disciples. “Don’t stop him,” Jesus replied, “for whoever is not against you is for you.” Whoever or whatever is not against you is for you. Whoever or whatever is not part of the darkness is part of the light. Even Pokemon.
John puts a sharper point on it in our lesson today: “love is from God,” he says; “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” Everyone who loves; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. That’s a deceptively simple statement. A lot of the writings that bear John’s name are like that.
They tend to go in long, meandering circles with sharp and simple binaries: light and darkness, truth and falsehood, flesh and spirit, even love and hate. But notice something very important here: John did NOT say that everyone who is born of God and knows God loves; John said it the other way around: everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Everyone means everyone.
There’s a whole school of thought that interprets all of the writings attributed to John as “insider” documents, meaning that there is a sharp distinction between the followers of Jesus and “the world,” which is everything and everyone on the outside of the community of Christ’s disciples.
And this is especially important when it comes to the issue of love. When there are commands to love in the writings of John, exactly whom do we have to love? Everyone, or just fellow Christians? Now, there are times when it’s pretty clear when the texts of John are talking about followers of Christ specifically.
When Jesus is at the Last Supper in the gospel of John, he says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
It’s quite clear that Jesus is talking directly to the community of his disciples at this point. Everyone means everyone else besides the disciples; those who are not disciples will know that these are Jesus’ disciples if they have love for one another. Here in First John, though, it is the “everyone” whose love is being discussed, not the disciples: everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, not the other way around. Whoever is not against us is for us.
Why is that so hard for so many of us Christians to remember? You’d think it would be easy, given how much hatred and violence is against us and everyone else these days. You’d think we would welcome any ally, any partner, any resource that is not against us; any and everyone who loves so that together we can help heal this broken and hurting world that God loves so much as to send God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to save.
It’s not complicated. It’s pretty simple, actually. But that’s actually the problem, I think. The problem many of us have with love is not that it is complicated; the problem is that it is simple.
Someone who knew how simple and powerful love is was Mister Rogers, the host of the long-running children’s program on public television. Mister Rogers’ whole being radiated simple love and kindness and an unshakeable conviction of the specialness of each and every human being.
He would talk directly to the children watching the show, he made a point of talking to the children watching at home in very simple and kind language, so that he sounded the way that children talk to each other, so they would relate to him as a friend. And when he met children face to face, he would always crouch down so that he was on an equal level with the children he was talking to, and not towering over them and looking down. Mister Rogers wisely understood the true power of simple kindness and love.
Mister Rogers once said something that was typically simple, kind, and wise. He said, “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun, like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” Sounds simple. And it is.
The reason it seems complicated, seems like a struggle, is because when you get down to it, very few of us actually want to love everyone. But First John makes the stakes very clear: “those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”
And yes, it’s probably true that when First John says that, it is talking about brothers and sisters in Christ, not people in general. But if God is love, and everyone who loves is born of God and loves God, why would we accept any reason not to love? Because we need all the light we can get. And when we love, we don’t simply share light; we become light. We experience and embody the very being of God.
Love is simple. But that is not the same thing as easy; not by a long shot. We do struggle as we strive to love others, because of all the complications of our fear and suspicion. Love is hard because it respects no limits, accepts no boundaries, honors no excuses, rejects rejection, makes fear afraid.
Love is hard; but we, and our brothers and sisters, and this whole world need as much as it can get. So we will simply have to do the best we can, and trust that it will be more than enough in the end, because God, after all: “if we love one another, God abides in us, and God’s love is perfected in us.”