Thomas J Parlette
“The Cardiac Signature of a Christian”
1 John 3: 16-24
4/25/21
We all know that there are certain physical characteristics that are totally unique to each individual. Your fingerprints, for example, are entirely unique – no one else has fingerprints exactly like yours. The pattern of your iris, the colored part of your eye, is also, totally your own. So is your DNA. But did you know that your heartbeat is completely unique as well? Every person on earth has a different heartbeat pattern, or “cardiac signature.” Your cardiac signature cannot be altered or disguised. So, if someone can measure your “cardiac signature,” they can identify you, even in a big crowd of people.
In fact, according to an article in Technology Review, the Pentagon has built a laser that can identify people by their heartbeat from 600 feet away.(1) Sounds like something out of an Avengers movie – but it exists. There are positive uses for this technology, of course. Doctors could monitor your heart health from far away. This laser could also be used to track criminals or terrorists from long distances. But, again, for those of us concerned with privacy and civil liberties, the thought is a little disconcerting.
Did you ever imagine that your physical heartbeat – your cardiac signature – could be so distinctive? Who knew?
In today’s scripture lesson from 1st John, we hear the wise old pastor talk about what may be the cardiac signature of a Christian. The heartbeat of the Christian is to love others with the sacrificial love of Jesus. Not a warm and fuzzy feeling. Not with good intentions or encouraging words or even thoughts and prayers alone. But with loving actions. Actions that cost us something. As verse 8 says, “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” Talk is cheap, says John. Real love is costly.
This passage, indeed the whole epistle, was written to encourage church people to be more loving toward one another, and to those in need. If we can’t do that, says John, then we’ve missed the very heart of the faith Jesus gave us.
Al Lingren, a professor at Garrett Theological Seminary, once had a conversation with his teenage son. Lingren’s son asked, “Dad, what’s the toughest thing God ever tried to do?”
Now they teach you a lot of things in Seminary. But they don’t exactly cover that question. Lingren wracked his brain for an answer, and then asked his son, “What do you think it was?”
The boy said, “Since taking science in school, I thought the creation of the world might be the hardest thing God ever tried to do, and in Sunday School we got to talking about some of the miracles, and I thought the resurrection might be the toughest thing God ever tried to do. But after thinking about it some more, I decided the toughest thing God ever had to do is to get us to understand who God is, and that God loves us.”(2)
That young man was onto something. The toughest thing God ever had to do was to get us to understand who God is, and that God loves us. How did God do that? First, through the Law and the Prophets. And then through coming to us in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, we understand that God loves us because Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead to save us from sin and death.
John knew that if he didn’t make it perfectly clear what Christian love looks like, we would try to define it for ourselves. But he doesn’t give us that option. In verse 16, he writes, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.”
The essence of the Christian faith is love – it is the “cardiac signature” of the Christian.
Many years ago, Jeffrey Collins was director of a non-profit group called Love and Action. This is an organization that ministers to AIDS patients and their families.
Collins tells of receiving a phone call at 5:00 o’clock on a Friday afternoon as he was trying to leave the office. He had just worked a 60- hour week – he was exhausted and wanted to just ignore the phone. But he picked up anyway.
The voice on the other end was Jimmy, a client of Love and Action. He was very sick and scared. Collins confesses that his first reaction when he answered the phone wasn’t compassion – he felt a bit of anger. He just wanted to go home and relax. He wanted a couple of hours at the end of the week when no one needed him. But Collins knew that God’s calling isn’t dependent on how we feel, but on how badly someone else needs our help. So Jeffrey Collins headed over to Jimmy’s house to check on him.
Jimmy was on the sofa, shivering and feverish and covered in vomit. The smell was horrible. Though he was careful not to show it, Jeffrey’s anger and annoyance grew. As he knelt down and scrubbed the carpet surrounding the sofa, Jeffrey prayed an angry prayer to God.
But then a friend of Jimmy’s named Russ came in to find Jeffery kneeling beside the sofa cleaning up after Jimmy. With an astonished look on his face, Russ said, “I understand! I understand now!”
“What Russ?,” said Jimmy in a whisper. “What do you understand?”
“I understand who Jesus is. He’s like Jeff!”(3)
It isn’t always easy to love. We tend to withhold love until someone passes our “approval test.” We love those who we think are deserving – which is exactly opposite of Jesus’ love. Jesus didn’t love us because we were easy to love or because we deserve it. Jesus loves us with the very love of God.
Just as Christ laid down his life for us, so we are called to lay aside what we would like our lives to be for others. That means loving all people – even those who take advantage or misuse us, even those we might not approve of or agree with.
Laying aside our lives, our self-interest means leaving our comfort zone from time to time for acts of extraordinary concern.
Laying aside our self-interest means encouraging gun laws that preserve our 2nd amendment rights, while also keeping assault rifles out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
Laying aside our lives means contacting our elected representatives and officials and encouraging them to support changes in our policing standards and procedures.
Laying aside our lives and self-interest means acknowledging it’s not safe to be anything other than white in our country – that racism is real, and it is systemic and it cannot be tolerated anymore.
All these things are expressions of love – and love is the essence of the Christian faith.
That kind of self-giving, unselfish love is our primary witness to the word – it is our calling card. As the old song goes, “They will know we are Christians by our love.” Love is the cardiac signature of a Christian. As John puts it, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?” And the answer is, it doesn’t.
Frances Havergal was an English poet, pianist and hymn writer in the mid-1800’s. Her most famous hymn is probably, “Take My Life and Let it Be,” which begins with the words, “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.” In each verse, Havergal offers some part of her life for the Lord’s service. Take my voice, take my hands, take my feet, take my love. She asks God to use every part of her life to make a difference for others.
The fourth stanza begins, “Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold.” And Frances Havergal really meant it. In her journal, she wrote about packing up a jeweled cabinet that belonged to her family, along with other ornamental pieces worth a great deal of money and sending them off to the Church Missionary Society to fund missionaries in other countries. She noted in her journal that day, “I don’t think I need to tell you I never packed a box with such great pleasure.”(4)
She saw brothers and sisters in need, and she was determined to help. Love is our primary witness to the world.
Love is more than just an emotion or a feeling. Love is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and the imprisoned. Encouraging effective gun laws. Changing our policing standards and procedures, and acknowledging that racism is real and it is not something we can tolerate anymore. Love is not a passive verb, but an active one. And it is the primary way we share Christ with the world. They will know we are Christians by our love.
Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Pure love is not a natural attribute of humanity – it is of God. Our nature is to strive for survival, to strive for our own well-being. God’s nature is self-giving love. The closer we are to God, the better able we are to love others. As John says, “By this we know that God abides in us, by the spirit that God has given us.” And that spirit is love.
There is an old Twilight Zone episode about a gambler who died. He wakes up in a room full of gaming tables. And no matter what game he plays, he wins. He wins every time. A gambler’s dream come true! This must be heaven!
But as the gambler goes from table to table, winning and winning and winning – he comes to realize that he didn’t wind up in heaven after all, but in hell. He had everything he ever wanted, but he didn’t have anyone to share his winnings with.(5)
Love is a gift God gives to us. And it is multiplied and magnified when we give it away, when we can love others with the same sacrificial love that God showed us.
In an old cemetery in England, there is a weather-beaten tombstone for an ordinary man. He was not famous in any way. But he must have been a powerful force for good among those who knew him. Under his name and the dates of his birth and death is this simple epitaph, “In the worst of times, he did the best of things.”(6)
In the worst of times, he did the best of things. That’s what Jesus did as well. In the face of persecution and injustice and torture and humiliation, Jesus faced his death with courage and grace, even forgiving the ones who had hung him on a cross. And he willingly suffered his awful fate to show us how far God would go to prove God’s love for us.
John’s words still ring through the centuries – “This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us.” When the love of God truly abides in our heart, we are able to look into the faces of others and see God’s face.
Love is the essence of Christian faith – it is our cardiac signature. Love is our primary witness to the world. Love is a gift from God. We love because God first loved us. Only as we abide in God can God’s love abide in us.
And if God’s love abides in us, in the worst of times, we will be able to do the best of things.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Dynamic Preaching, Vol XXXVII, No 1, pg82.
2. Ibid… pg82.
3. Ibid… pg83.
4. Ibid… pg84-85.
5. Ibid… pg84.
6. Ibid… pg84-85.
