No Fear

Sunday May 6, 2012

Easter 5B

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton) Warsaw VA

Text: 1 John 4:7-21

⁷Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. ¹³By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

¹⁴And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. ¹⁵God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. ¹⁶So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

¹⁷Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. ¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. ¹⁹We love because he first loved us. ²⁰Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. ²¹The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

The logo below the words that are set in a gothic typeface is that of a skull and crossbones, and the crossbones are made of pistons. The ‘No Fear’ company made its debut and rose to popularity in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and became a staple of tee-shirts and window stickers with teenagers and young adults, usually found on the sport versions of cars and trucks. ‘No Fear’ became the official drink of the WEC – World Extreme Cagefighting, one of many extreme sports that the brand chose to associate with that coincided with it’s message – set aside fear when confronting the challenges you face – in this case, challenges having to do with racing downhill at breakneck speeds, with little protection, and with a fair amount of risk to life and limb involved, or in the case of cagefighting, lose your fear of your opponent in order to beat him to a pulp and conquer him. But their name didn’t come from this passage of scripture. In fact, the underlying message seems to be the opposite of what the company would like to communicate – that it is through force and strength that fear is overcome.

In case you were wondering, that is NOT what John is trying to communicate with his words in this morning’s text.

It is a beautiful passage.

Sections of it are ones that have been incorporated into the ‘distilled’ version of the Gospel that has been shared for centuries – that version that puts the gospel into a nutshell – that help us, in a few short minutes, introduce the Good News of Jesus Christ if we happen to be able to have a conversation on the topic, but there’s a lot more going on here. A LOT more.

I’ve been pondering the idea of ‘living without fear’, and have come to the conclusion that I’m not very good at it, to put it mildly.

Yes, as much as I believe it, and as much as I teach and preach that we are not to allow a spirit of fear to rule our lives, I’m lousy at it myself.

I fear that the odds are increasingly against me when I get in the car to drive somewhere, because I have been driving for over three decades and have never been in a serious accident.

I fear the possibility of developing some kind of cancer – skin or otherwise – because of the exposure I received to the sun as a child and an adolescent. There was this one class trip in tenth grade that we took to northern Chile, and we went to the beach and I fell asleep, first on one side and then on the other – and got sunburned to the point of blistering – and I’m just watching to see what shows up … 

I fear for my wife, my mother in law, and my children – and my extended family – for their health, their safety, their future and wellbeing.

I realize this fear is born out of concern and love, but then I read this passage, and I’m thinking, does that apply to what I’m feeling? Are we talking about the same thing?

I step back and read the phrase ‘judgment day’, and my first thought is to that time when we will each stand before the throne – the idea that has been a part of my upbringing and that I’ve heard time and time again referenced in sermon after sermon; that we will each have to give an accounting of our actions or inactions at some point, and there is a degree of fear attached to the thought, because in all honesty, I blank on the inaction part. I’m pretty aware of what I’ve done, but I’m not always aware of what I’ve NOT done. That’s just the way it works. If I’ve NOT done something it’s because I didn’t THINK about it, hence I didn’t DO it, and that by definition makes it harder to REMEMBER it.

But then I step back even further, and realize that that ISN’T what John is talking about in the passage. At the time of the writing of the letter, ‘Judgment Day’ was much more likely to be a reference to that day in the believer’s life when the ruling authorities were going to come to their house, or break into the worship service, or show up at their place of work, and take them in to be questioned, and probably imprisoned, and possibly executed for their beliefs and claims. John was writing to a congregation that was undergoing persecution, or would be, shortly.

That was just the way things were going at the time.

And what are his words to them, in the face of this impending persecution, this forecast of suffering and possible if not probable death?

Love each other. That is how God has provided for us, how God shows God’s self to us, and how we can show God to others. Love each other because God loved us first, and we are able to know God inasmuch as we share that love with each other.

He goes even further, he says that if you DON’T love each other, if you SAY that you love God but DON’T show love to each other, you are … liars.

He doesn’t beat around the bush with that one, does he?

This past Wednesday we heard John Walton, the Old Testament professor at Wheaton College, say this about Genesis 1, and scripture in general, ‘it is written FOR us, not TO us.’ That was a phrase that stood out to me. It helped clarify a distinction that I needed to hear. In the context of his comments, he was talking about integrity of communication, and how the writer understands what he or she is saying and the reader or the listener understands what they are being told or are reading.

He is addressing an issue that is an ongoing one for the church today: how do we apply words that were written thousands of years ago to people thousands of miles away with a REALLY, REALLY different life experience from ours to what WE are living in today’s world?

The answer is both simple and complex. We take the words and internalize them – as much as we can, we explore and understand the context in which they were written and received, and we draw parallels with our experiences. Because even though our contexts are radically different, our environments may be extremely distant from each other, there are still truths that apply in any circumstance, that cross cultural and historical barriers.   

And this is one truth that crosses just about any cultural barrier: if you say one thing and do another, what you say doesn’t amount to much. What you DO, that is what tells how you REALLY feel about something or someone.

And that is a truth that we face every day.

It is a truth that we choose to live by or set aside – that WE have a choice in making a part of our lives or not EACH DAY.

So much of our culture, so much of our environment is informed by fear, and primarily of the unknown – if we’ve experienced something, we actually end up not so afraid of it – BECAUSE we have experienced it – it takes the edge off, so to speak… something we’ve lived through is something that we’ve been able to apply some kind of perspective to – whatever it is – the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, a serious illness, an accident or an attack of some sort – the fact that we are on THIS side of the experience provides us with a sense that it is not the end of the world. It may still be overwhelmingly painful, and incapacitating, and even devastating, but by the simple fact that we are looking BACK at the experience, there is something that tells us that there is more beyond it – there is still life to be lived, and people to care for and to love, and to be loved by, and it is all a reflection of the love that God has been planted in us.

It is that same love that is able to pick up and carry on, in the face of persecution, in the face of suffering, in the face of death, even. It is that love that faces the worst the world has to give and still responds with open arms and an open heart, that takes the suffering in and begins to heal it, mend the broken, calm the fears, and ultimately show them out the door.

There is NO FEAR in love.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

For us, it is a prompt, an invitation to examine how we view the world, how we view our neighbors, how we view the community around us, and define to what degree do we respond in love, and to what degree is our response born out of fear … fear of the stranger, fear of being rejected, fear of being taken advantage of, we can go down a laundry list of fears, there’s no shortage of them.

It is for us to take this simple statement: There is NO FEAR in love, and make it emblematic of who we are, how we interact with each other, and with our community, the folks we see every day as we drive up and down History Land Hwy or Mulberry Rd, or any OTHER road, for that matter.

¹⁶So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

May our lives reflect that abiding love.

Let’s pray.