1 John 4:7-21
What are you afraid of? Intellectually I’m not afraid of much. I don’t like scary movies, but, sitting in this room with people I know and love, I can say: I am not afraid. All my life I have enjoyed doing stuff this side of dangerous. I love roller coasters and motorcycle rides. I love to travel and most places in this world do not scare me. I’ve even traveled to Venezuela by myself. I’m not afraid of spiders or bugs. I am not afraid of heights or tight spaces. I am the one who is typically willing to try anything.
Except that I’m not. I thought I was a reasonable person. I thought I was fearless… until Jay and I took the girls ziplining. Here I am, the girl who always wanted to hang-glide, wanted to soar like the birds…. And standing on that platform, I was terrified. I finished the course, screaming, miserable, holding on for dear life. Not that holding on would have done any good…. If I was on a platform I was fine but the minute it was my turn to trust this wire to hold me, my knees went weak, my hands grew clammy, and my heart raced.
Maybe hang-gliding sounds better if I watch someone else do it.
Our scripture says that perfect love casts out fear. Well, clearly, I don’t have perfect love.
Fear is one of those things that God gave us to protect us. We fear the dark, scared of a person with a gun, scared of eating certain foods, scared of going places we perceive to be dangerous, scared of heights, scared of snakes. All these things protect us from potential danger. If we didn’t fear we would have all walked off the edge of cliff or tried to pick up poisonous snakes a long time ago and our species would be extinct.
So then, what is 1st John telling us? Is John telling us if we love God enough we won’t be afraid? No, what he’s saying is that a relationship with God changes how we perceive fear. He is telling us because God is love. Because God loves you, you don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to worry about the decisions you made as a youth. You don’t have to worry that you don’t pray enough or read the Bible enough or work hard enough. That type of fear is a perversion of God’s love used to manipulate others into specific behaviors.
Many of you may have heard of “scared straight”. It was a program designed to take teenagers who were in the court system and give them tours of adult prisons and have adult inmates talk about their crimes and how horrible prison is. The idea is that if kids saw what the consequences would be, they would be less likely to commit a crime. The interesting thing about this theory is that they were wrong. Kids who went through “scared straight” were significantly more likely to end up in the prison system. You see, fear is only a temporary protective factor. https://www.crimesolutions.gov/PracticeDetails.aspx?ID=4
Fear may prevent me from Bunge jumping but after I watch enough people do it, after I have done it once, and survived, the fear response gets diminished. God created us this way too because some fears are irrational. Some fears need to be overcome. 1st John tells us over and over, God is love. Scripture tells us over and over, God loves you. For God so loved the world. This perfect love is a perfect gift from God and is given to those who trust God and accept that love so that we can follow God without fear. Lasting positive behaviors and choices stem from love, not fear. God does not want us to be afraid of him.
The thing about fear is that most of the time when we do what God is calling us to do, even if we are afraid, it doesn’t turn out nearly as bad as we thought it would. Now, I haven't counted them myself, but someone once said at a Lay Witness weekend that the there are 365 places in the Bible when scripture tells us “do not be afraid”. If we live our lives out of love for God, if we love people with the same love that we have been given, we don’t need to be afraid. God has promised to go with us into whatever situation we are being called. God has given us an abundance of love so that we can love others. And when we think of the love God has for us, we realize the love we are called to give is the same undeserved, unconditional, forgiving, merciful, compassionate, love God gives to us.
This isn’t an easy love to offer. We have been conditioned by society that there are some who deserve our fear, our hostility, and our contempt. The illegal immigrant we have been told is here to steal, rape and kill or at least take our jobs. The Muslim whom we have been told are all terrorists. The gang member, the homeless person, the used car dealer, the door-to-door salesman or the shady construction worker who comes by after a storm. We are told to put up our guard, they want to take advantage of your generosity and your vulnerability.
Fear has gotten so prevalent that we fear anyone we don’t already know and trust. And our fear prevents us from getting to know some really great people. Our fear prevents us from seeing the God we profess to love because we never get to know the wide variety of people whom God loves. Our fear we actually prevent us from knowing God. Verse 8 tells us the person who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, because God is love. Jesus tells us in Matthew 5: if you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? And if you greet only those whom you already know what more are you doing? Don’t even non-believers do these things? Therefore love with the Love of God, showing love to everyone.
Our scripture from today expands on this by telling us that it is in our love for others that people see God in us and it is in the love that we receive from others that we experience God’s love for us.
When we look around this room, when we show love to one another, we see the face of God. But God desires for us to know love even more than this. Our ability to experience the love of God is limited if we limit those we love. And it is only in our willingness to put aside our fears, to trust in the love of God, that we can enter new, loving and rewarding relationships. When we enter relationships and conversations with an attitude of love, even when we fear them or vehemently disagree with a person, we can still love them. This isn’t easy.
When we disagree with someone on deep moral and emotional levels, when we fear them, it is hard to remember that they are a beloved and valued child of God. But when we remember that we are loved and valued by God, even when we do things that God dislikes, when we do and say things that break God’s heart, when we fail to love others, God still loves us. Then we can continue to grow in that love. The more we accept God’s love for us when we are unlovable the more we can extend that love to others when they are unlovable to us. This is not something that is instant, without consequence or something we will do perfectly. Just like we often reject God’s love for us, just as we resist the sacrificial, unconditional love of Jesus in the cross, just as we betray God’s love for us, others will reject, resist and betray our love for them. But it is still worth striving for.
Because the reward of patient persistence is one that is worth the work. It is a love beyond our imagination, a love that comes with rewards in this life as well as a growing reminder of God’s unlimited and eternal love. This is an infinite cycle of love. The more we experience God’s love, the more we seek to love others, the more we experience God’s love. This cycle of Love, when multiplied into more and more relationships is a force that cannot be stopped. It is a force that can change our families, a force that can change our community and a force that can even change the world. It is a force that overcomes all fear and initiates changes that will outlast any fear mongering motive.
It is in this love, not fear, that we will see the face of God. What better reward could we want?
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