Dr. Mark Owen Fenstermacher
NEW DAY LIVING: Love’s Hardball
May 6, 2012
Text: I John 4:7-21
First United Methodist Church
P.O. Box 936
Bloomington, IN 47402
Why is it we remember some things and not
others?
Why is it some phrases “stick” and others are soon
forgotten?
You may not have known much about the small
New Testament letter of First John before we began this
series of messages we are calling New Day Living. You
may not have known much about the letter, but that
middle section of verse 18 may be familiar: “There is no
fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” (NIV) The
New Revised Standard Version says it with these words:
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”
Why is it that we may easily forget some songs,
some memories, some passages from the Bible, and we
clearly remember others?
I am curious about this because I remember the
phrase “perfect love casts out fear.” That line from the
small New Testament letter of 1st John has stuck with me.
It’s a line from the Bible I can’t get out of my head. Why?
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Each Bible translation I have mentioned, notice,
uses a very active verb to describe what perfect loves does
to fear.
Perfect love drives out fear.
Perfect love casts out fear.
John, the first century Christian, doesn’t say perfect
love nudges fear out of the way a bit. He doesn’t say that
perfect love suggests fear should leave the room and
quietly close the door behind it. He doesn’t say perfect
love tells fear to wait its turn. No, John says that perfect
love casts out fear…drives it out…tosses it out of our lives
on its ear. John says perfect love orders fear to leave. Hit
the road!
When I first looked at this passage of scripture for
the sermon today, I had this image of love as a baseball
pitcher who throws hard and clean. I had this image of
love as an athlete that throws fear so hard that it makes a
“popping” sound when it hits the leather of the catcher’s
mitt. Love is active…love throws hard…love has “heat”
when love throws fear out of our lives.
Why is it we remember this phrase and not so
many others?
Maybe it is because there is so much fear out
there…around us…and inside us.
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Now before we go any further this morning, it is
worth stopping and noting that there is good fear and bad
fear. Good fear is that warning signal inside us that goes
off when danger threatens us. Good fear is that God-given
round combination of intelligence, experience, and
intuition that helps us avoid needless danger.
You might even call good fear “judgment.”
“Discernment.” “Perception.”
Good fear helps us avoid bad decisions and make
good decisions.
Bad fear is something else.
Bad fear gets in the way of living.
Bad fear gets in the way of healthy relationships.
There are all kinds of fears.
Fear of heights.
Fear of spiders.
Fear of enclosed spaces.
Fear of water.
Fear of numbers.
Fear of speaking in public.
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Fear of never having enough. I know an 83-year
old multi-millionaire who can’t sleep at night. She has
more than six million dollars and she says, “I don’t think I
have enough.”
There are all these things to fear.
Bad fear can wreck our lives.
There is good fear.
And then there are these bad fears that get in the
way of living well. The fears that haunt us.
There is bad fear in the church, you know?
I know a church up in northern Indiana that, like a
good many United Methodist congregations, was growing
older and smaller. The leadership of that church sat down
and looked at the numbers. They studied the
demographic profile of the congregation and the
surrounding community. “We aren’t reaching children and
young families!” people said to one another. Then,
someone else pointed out that the church-run daycare
ministry had more than eighty children enrolled Monday
through Friday. Most of the families belonging to those
children didn’t have any kind of a church home or faith
community! The truth is that there were children and
young families all over that community…all around that
church.
So the leaders of the church decided they would
begin partnering with the daycare ministry. Offer
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programs for young parents and children. The leaders of
the church decided they would become intentional about
having greeters helping the daycare workers welcome the
children. They decided they would do a better job of
getting to know the families and the children. They
decided they were going to do something about their
musty, out-of-date looking Sunday school classrooms.
Then, something happened. People began to
notice that the children attending the daycare program
were a little different. Many of them came from families
where there was only one parent. They came from
families that lived in mobile homes or apartments. They
came from families without a whole lot of money or
formal education. They came from families where people
didn’t look like the typical member of that city
congregation. Leaders lost their nerve. The people in the
church stopped talking about reaching out, and inviting,
and welcoming, and getting to know these young families
and their children.
They let bad fear take over. Crowd out hope and
faith.
That failure of nerve took place about ten years
ago.
The church is getting ready to close.
There is bad fear in the church.
Approximately eight years ago First Church went
through a financial crisis. Things were tight. Some of the
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leaders here worked hard, prayed hard, and helped us
work through it. But the lingering effects of that chapter
are still around. They haunt us now and then, don’t they?
We look at the future, we look at opportunities, and we
think to ourselves, “Where is the money going to come
from? Who are we going to take on new missions, new
adventures for God, new projects, when the last step out
in faith nearly ended so badly?” So there is this lingering
fear of not having enough…running out of resources.
Although God has given us more than we need to do what
God needs done. You know that. I know that. We walk
around wondering where the money is to do what needs
to be done. God has already given it to us! We’re sitting
on it….
Just over a year ago some of us were anxious,
fearful, about this new preacher, weren’t we? He was an
IU grad and that was okay, but what about that Duke
degree? What was up with that? He walked around like
some kind of Hoosier story teller dropping his “g’s” here
and there. “Is he a comedian or a theologian?” we
wondered to ourselves (and maybe to others). “The man
talks so much about sports you wonder if he ever opens a
book, don’t you? What is it with all this Jesus talk…what is
that about? Sometimes I half expect to hear him start
offering altar calls…that just isn’t our culture here at First!
Did you hear…someone told me he listens to Coldplay as
well as Mozart, Johnny Cash as well as Vivaldi…how can he
be right for First?”
Not long after I arrived in Bloomington, someone
came up to me and said, very matter-of-factly, “People
know you are pretty liberal.” I said, “Huh?”
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That was just after someone had come up to me
and said, “You were sent here to make us more
conservative weren’t you?” I said, “Huh?”
We get fearful…anxious…don’t we?
There is bad fear in the church.
But this bad fear goes deeper. It isn’t just a church
thing…it is often a faith thing.
The bad fear is about God.
There is a lot of fear-based religion out
there…around here.
Some of us have grown up in that kind of faith
place.
Some of us have barely survived that kind of fearbased view of God.
Now, just as there is good fear and bad fear when
it comes to life, so there is good fear and bad fear when
we talk about God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning
of wisdom,” the Bible tells us. Often when the Bible uses
the word “fear” it is synonymous with the word “awe.” A
recognition of the greatness of God, the mystery of God,
the truthfulness of God, the power of God to give life and
create beauty, is the beginning of wisdom. That is good
fear. The sense of awe that sweeps over you when you
look up at the stars, or when you come face to face with
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the mysteries of string theory, or hear Bach’s Passion, or
when you read a passage from the Bible and know it was
meant just for you at this moment in your life: this is good
fear.
A great friend of mine grew up with a father who
was an Evangelical United Brethren pastor. His dad usually
served smaller congregations and then was a traveling
evangelist. When worship was especially rich, when the
Spirit of God filled a place and a people, sometimes my
friend’s dad would shout “Glory!” and kick his leg high in
the air.
My friend, who serves a very large United
Methodist congregation in a large city, was overwhelmed
with worship on Easter Sunday. After the choir had sung a
particularly great piece of music, my friend walked to the
pulpit, told them about his dad and what he would do
when he was overcome with the glory of God, and then glowing with the Spirit of God- my friend shouted “Glory!”
and kicked his leg out as high as his waist. The choir
roared and congregation shouted “Glory!” back.
There is good fear that is awe. There is good fear
that is the recognition of the mystery, and love, and glory,
and majesty, and creative genius of God.
And there is bad fear.
This is the fear that sees God as eager to condemn.
Nearly impossible to please.
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We’ve heard the stories.
We may have read the stories.
Exodus 19 reports to us the meeting of God and
Moses up on Mount Sinai. God promises that the people
will be his treasured possession. Then, God tells Moses to
warn the people not get too close to the holy mountain.
God says (:12), “Warn the people that anyone who
touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.” What
kind of God gets so protective -or possessive- of a holy
mountain that this God would put people to death for
even touching the foothills of that peak?
Later on in the Bible, in 2nd Samuel 6, the ark of
God is being brought into the city of Jerusalem under the
leadership of David. The ark represents the holiness, and
mystery, and otherness of God. People are dancing and
singing as the procession winds its way into the city. Verse
5 says, “David and the whole house of Israel were
celebrating with all their might before the Lord with songs
and with harps, lyres, tambourines, sistrums and cymbals.”
People aren’t holding back. They’re like those early
“shouting Methodists” on the American frontier. Shaking
the rocks and the buildings with their shouts of praise and
their songs.
Then, a strange thing happens. One of the oxen
pulling the cart on which the ark has been placed
stumbles. Uzzah, one of David’s friends and a leader of
Israel, reaches out to catch the ark so it won’t fall to the
ground. The Bible says “The Lord’s anger burned against
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Uzzah because of this irreverent act; therefore God struck
him down and he died there beside the ark of God.”
It’s an awful thing.
A terrible moment.
What kind of God is this?
The Bible tells us David was angry with God
because “The Lord’s wrath had broken out against Uzzah.”
This particular verse makes it sound as if God has anger
issues. As if God has anger that, like some rumbling
volcano, is ready to come to life. Just waiting for an
excuse to erupt.
Some of us have grown up in a faith world where
God’s holiness, and wrath, and perfection were stressed.
God was always disappointed with us, and we were always
messing up. I remember a preacher who, every Sunday
night, did his best to terrify each and every one of us in
that small sanctuary into “getting saved.” When I would
talk to him about God he spent more time talking about
fear and judgment than truth and grace.
There is fear.
The fear that God is eager to condemn.
The fear that God is impossible to please.
It is this fear that John is talking about in his 4 th
chapter.
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The fear that God is eager to condemn you?
The fear that God is impossible to please?
Something happens in Jesus to cast out, drive
away, this fear.
In today’s reading, John says that our life together
is to be a life where we love one another. And the reason
why we are to love one another is that love comes from
God. Love is not an option for us. Love isn’t something we
can take or leave. If we say we know God, then we will
love because God is love.
“God is love.”
Is it possible that this is true?
You tell people who have lived their lives thinking
God is eager to condemn and impossible to please that
God is love, and they are going to ask that question
(whether out loud or to themselves): “Is it possible that
this is true?”
They may also think, “What is the evidence you
have for that statement? After all I have heard and read
about this God who kills people for touching his holy
mountain, or trying to catch the ark before it hits the
ground, what is the evidence that God is love? After all
the suffering I have seen and experienced, what is the
proof that God is love?”
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John points to two key pieces of evidence.
He says God gave the world his Son to let us know
we are loved. We see in Jesus that the love of God, the
love of Abba, is big enough to cover the mess of our sin.
Listen to John’s words in verses 9-10 (NIV): “This is how
God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only
Son into the world that we might live through him. This is
love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent
his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Some of you have seen the film -or read the novelThe Hunger Games. The story takes place in the future
after a civil war has been fought. A rebellion has been put
down. The government decides to hold an annual
competition where two young adults, representing each of
the twelve districts that form the union, are chosen by lot
to fight to the death. Only one will survive, and that one
will receive all sorts of honors.
There is a scene in the film where the young adults
in one very poor district are gathered together. Each has
put their name onto a slip of paper, and those pieces of
paper have been placed in a large glass bowl. Two names
are chosen.
One of the names belongs to a young girl by the
name of Prim. People -especially her family and the older
sister- are stunned. The younger girl was terrified of this
possibility, she knew she would never survive the ordeal,
and the older sister –named Katniss- had been telling her
she had little to worry about. The odds against her name
being drawn for the games were great.
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As Prim is about to be led away, her older sister,
Katniss, shouts out that she will volunteer. She will take
her sister’s place. People are stunned. The older girl walks
through the crowd and towards the front of the arena
where the competitors are to be taken away for training.
The members of the crowd, in honor of the sacrifice that
Katniss is making, take three fingers of one hand, brings
those three fingers to their mouths, and then salute the
older girl’s willingness to take her younger sister’s place by
silently sweeping their hand away from their mouth.
That decision by the older girl, at that moment,
tells you about her heart.
That decision, that moment, that willingness to
sacrifice, tells you about her love for her little sister. It
tells you about her character…her soul…who she is down
deep.
How do we know God is love?
John, the early Christian, tells us that God showed
his love among us by sending God’s only Son -the person
God loves most, the one with whom God and the Spirit
share the cosmos- into the world that we might live
through him.
What is the evidence that God is love?
John points to the gift God gives us in Jesus. John
points to the willingness of God to step forward and give
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God’s own life to prove once and for all we are
loved…forgiven.
The second piece of evidence is to be found in
verse 13: “We know that we live in him and he in us,
because he has given us of his Spirit.” The very power of
God to move forward, to heal, to step into new life, to
form new creation, to know God’s grace and truth in Jesus,
has been shared with us.
My granddaughters, Ella and Olivia, have been
talking a lot lately about sleeping beauty. About how the
princess pricks her finger on a spindle and falls into a deep
sleep. She dies. In the middle of the day, in the middle of
a meal, they go into this whole drama. One of them
swoons, and the other comes racing over to get someone
who can kiss the sleeping princess back to life.
Sometimes, during a single meal, this will happen
two or three times. The princess falls into a deep sleep,
dies, slumps in a chair, and someone has to kiss her back
to life.
The giving of the Spirit is the sharing of God’s gift
for life...with us.
God gives us the Spirit, and we begin to see things
we have never seen before. We begin to find meaning
where we never found meaning before. We understand
Jesus in ways we have never understood before. And, as
Paul says in 2nd Corinthians, we find that in Christ we are
becoming a new creation. We are, in a sense, “waking
up.” Coming to life.
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Whenever we baptize people we ask them if they
believe this. We ask them if they accept for themselves
the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil and
injustice in whatever forms they present themselves. We
are, in essence, asking people if they believe we are not
helpless, but that God has given us God’s Spirit so that we
can overcome evil and death.
The giving of the Spirit is another piece of evidence
that God is love.
God doesn’t leave us where God finds us when
Jesus steps into our world, but God provides power, and
energy, and truth, and wind -God’s breath- to bring us to
a new and deeper kind of life.
So it is, as verse 16 says, that we know God’s love
for us.
We know this love when we know Jesus.
And not only do we know this love, but -and this is
key- we “rely on the love God has for us.”
To know Jesus as the Son of God, to know Jesus as
the Savior of the world, is to not only know the love of God
for us, but to rely on that love. Not to take it for granted,
but to count on it. First, last, and always.
When I was very young I lived with my
grandparents on a street on the near east side of
Indianapolis. My Grandpa and Grandma Owen, Bill and
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Zenith, helped raise me. They took us in when our world
fell apart in Africa.
Their house was small, but their home was big.
Love does that, you know? Love makes a home big.
In their small front yard of 1912 North Leland there
was a big tree that stood on a small hill. They ended up
having to cut down the tree, but the hill was always there.
When I was very young, it looked like Mount Everest.
When I became a man the mountain looked like a very
small rise, a few feet higher than the surrounding yard,
that I could walk across in a few steps.
Here is the thing: the hill was always there.
We would go away and come back. Things might
have changed in so many ways, but the hill was always
there.
We traveled to Europe and lived there. Far away.
We came back. The hill was still there.
We went up to northwest Alaska and came back.
The hill was still there.
I graduated from high school and would come back
to visit. The hill was still there.
I went off to IU and would go back up to Indy to
visit. The hill was still there.
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I was married. Went off to North Carolina. Came
back. The hill was still there.
When we had our first child, and I gave him my
grandparent’s last name as his middle name, I walked into
my Grandpa’s office and told him that piece of news. I
stopped by the house and the hill was still there.
The hill was always there.
I could count on the hill being there.
Others things came and went, but the hill was
always there.
I could rely on the hill being there.
Sometimes, when I was a young man, I would step
up on that small rise of dirt, look around at the yard, and
remember….remember so much…give thanks for so much.
I know how the world is. I know all things come
and go. I know someday a family or a business may decide
to level out that ground, and the hill will be no more.
But even when that small hill is long gone, God’s
love for us will still be. I am counting on that. I am relying
on that.
So I’m not afraid.
I’m not afraid that God will stop loving us.
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I’m not afraid that on the day when our lives are
judged we’ll look around, and God will be impossible to
please. Looking for a reason to condemn us. I’m not
afraid that when God values our lives like some episode of
the traveling antique road show where things odd and
beautiful and big and small are valued, God will say, “Toss
him…toss her.”
It isn’t the fear of punishment that drives me
towards God, you see, but it is gladness… gratitude…for
the gift of his saving, healing, constant, deep love in Jesus.
I’m not afraid.
Because I know Jesus.
And because I know Jesus, I know God is love.
That doesn’t change.
That will never change.
I am counting on it.
I know it, and I am relying on it.
So I’m not afraid.
So how about you? Do you know the one whose
perfect love drives out fear?
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