Pastor's Blog

Sermon spotlight highlights one of the many sermons on the Pastor's blog. This sermon was preached Sunday, October 30, 2010 at United Church of the Valley on 1 John 4.16-21.

Fear and Perfect Love

The first line of this passage is one of my favorites. It can also be translated: “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.” To me, this is a reminder that those who do the work of love in this world – the work of peace and justice and charity – they are doing God's work. Maybe they call themselves atheists, or agnostics, or Muslims or Sikh, but those who do the work of love do the work of God, and they should be our partners in progress for society. Those who share a love for neighbor are allies in this life. More than we are divided by country, class or religion, we are bound together in love.

Love is the foundation of all good relationships, beginning with our relationship with God. As the passage puts it, we love because God first loved us. It is the basis of all healthy relationships and of all just societies. It is our highest commandment and highest ideal.

I've been thinking a lot about love this week, since I had the honor of performing a wedding on Friday evening in wine country, for Burley and Rachel Wright. Burley grew up in David French's church, and his parents have been long time residents of this community. In my message, I told them that love is so much more than a feeling that they share – it is a daily practice and a powerful force in this world for good.

I really like the idea of love as a practice. The feeling of love is important, but it is incomplete if it is not translated into actions and deeds. Rachel and Burley took the love they felt and chose to commit to each other, to forge a life-long partnership and to live out that love together. Complete love is more than sensation – it bears fruit.

I brought a pomegranate with me today. When Sara and I moved into our home, we didn't know what kind of tree was in our backyard. It wasn't until we saw the fruits that we knew the tree in our backyard was a pomegranate tree. Lemon trees don't produce pomegranates. Likewise, a loving soul does not produce fearful or hateful people.

That is why this passage tells us that people who claim to love God but hate their neighbors are liars. Those who love God love others. Whether they admit it or not, for people full of judgment, hate or fear, something has gone awry with their relationship with God. Perhaps their relationship with God is based more on dogma and damnation than it is on love. Maybe they don't realize it, but something on a deeply spiritual level is out of whack.

That goes for us, too, though. We all experience the occasional flash of anger and resentment of another person. But when we find ourselves hating a brother or sister, something is not wrong with them. Sure they might have human flaws. Maybe they are frustrating and annoying and mean. But when you feel hate, something is not wrong with the object of your hate but the status of your heart.

We all get angry, and we all dislike the company of certain people. But that's different from hate. Hate is something you allow to take root, it is something you nurture. Fear, on the other hand, is trickier and therefore more dangerous.

I don't think the fear of this passage, the fear that undermines perfect love, is anxiety or fright. The letter of John is not talking about people who get nervous in public, or the jolt you get when somebody sneaks up on you and shouts “Boo!” John is talking about the kind of fear that drives actions, the kind of fear you let into your heart, the kind of fear that coerces you to forgo your higher values, like love and peace, in order to obtain the illusion of security. It's the fear that keeps us from being generous and tells us to hoard for ourselves. It's the fear of punishment or judgment that keeps us silent when we see something wrong. We are talking about spiritual fear.

One of my biggest concerns for our society is how common spiritual fear is in public life. After 9/11, we were encouraged to be afraid of terrorism, and that fear was used to justify aggressive surveillance and warfare. In the financial collapse of 2008, we were told that the global economy was going to collapse if we didn't hand over tax-payer bailouts, zero interest federal loans and other special favors to financial institutions guilty of recklessness. With high unemployment, fear of losing a job has been used to get people to work harder for less money.

Now truly, some of those things we are told to fear are scary. They are certainly a lot scarier than haunted houses or any Halloween costumes you might see tomorrow night. But perfect love does not succumb to fear, but castes it out and defeats it.

Today's passage tells us that, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” What I hear in this passage is that love is courageous. The loving Christian is not some child who fears his parent. We don't practice love because we are afraid of punishment – we practice love because we have love in our heart, for God and for our neighbor. A mature faith is motivated by concern for one's neighbor, not a fear for one's self.

So when we confront things like global warming and terrorism, issues shrouded in fear and intimidation, we don't ignore them, nor do we approach it with a base and selfish concern for our individual welfare and security. Let love motivate us. We should protect our neighbors from violence because we love them. We should preserve and enrich our environment not because of God's wrath because we want God's creation to thrive.

Our passage today points to the irony of claiming to love God but disdaining God's creation. We are told, “those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” In other words, if we cannot handle God's creations in the here and now, if we cannot even love God's own children, how can we possibly love something as big and mysterious as God?

But here's the flip side – the more we learn to love our neighbors, the more we learn to love God. That is why it is important to set aside a Sabbath, why it is important to take time to worship God in fellowship with other people who are also committed to love, peace and community. Community events, like tonight's pumpkin glow, can be opportunities to go about the practice of love for one's neighbor.

One of the great things about church community is that it throws random and sometimes disparate people together who might otherwise never get the opportunity to interact. This leads to great blessing, but sometimes it leads to social conflicts. As long as there has been a Christian church, there has been infighting. That's why this letter was written, because brothers and sisters weren't treating each other right. But I firmly believe that people committed to living in love and living in God, can not only find a way to be together in peace and harmony, but can amplify love and do so much more together than they could individually.

So when you feel anger, frustration or hate with another person – maybe it's a coworker, or a boss, or a friend – realize that anger is natural but hate is an affliction on the soul. And when you feel fearful about the present or the future, let the love that is in your heart cast that fear out. Let your better angel prevail, and do allow yourself to be controlled by fear, but rather motivated by love. If you cast our fear, you can love your neighbor not because you fear hell or because you expect reward, but for this simple reason: “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” AMEN.