There Is No Fear in Love

As I said last week, I John is almost impossible to outline – more like jazz than classical music with the dominant themes of love and truth repeating and overlapping and developing. Or like an abstract painting with layers of paint interplaying. Or maybe I John is like a nautilus shell. Circling around and around the themes of love and truth, broadening with each rotation.

At the center of our lives is the question or whether we live in the light of in the dark. If we say we have fellowship with God while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth. Then we move out from ourselves and encounter others. If we walk in the light, as Christ is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. The fellowship we seek is the fellowship of spiritual relationships – relationships that are based on a common desire to grow closer to God, to know more of Christ, to love unconditionally, without calculation. As we live in relationship, if we see someone in need and have the ability to help and are not compelled to help, then God’s love cannot abide in us. God is love.

This is a radical claim. God IS love. God is not stalking us to catch us doing something wrong. God is not waiting anxiously to judge and punish us.

The theme of love that began as how an individual lives life in the light, then expanded to fellowship with others, then expanded to knowing Christ, growing closer to God, then expanded to God’s love dwelling in us and us living as Christ in the world caring for others, now moves beyond mortality to life eternal. “On the day of judgement we will have confidence, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.”

There is no fear in love. The Greek word here is “phobos” – the same word we get the word “phobia” from. In ancient times, Roman and Greek gods were to be feared and appeased.

They were like The Trunchbull in Roald Dahl’s story Matilda. The Trunchbull is the headmaster at Matilda’s school. He describes her this way, “She was a gigantic holy terror, a fierce tyrannical monster who frightened the life out of the pupils and teachers alike. There was an aura of menace about her even at a distance […] “”Looking at her, you got the feeling that this was someone who could bend iron bars and tear telephone directories in half. […] She had an obstinate chin, a cruel mouth and small arrogant eyes. […] She looked, in short, more like a rather eccentric and bloodthirsty follower of the stag-hounds than the headmistress of a nice school for children.”
The Trunchbull likes to throw children out of windows, pick them up by their ears and hair, use them as objects to throw shot-put, she force feeds one little boy a giant chocolate cake, she locks them up in a box called “the chokey,” She’s someone to fear. There is no love in her.

And then there is Miss Honey. Miss Honey is Matilda’s teacher and the Trunchbull’s niece. Roald Dahl describes her as “a mild and quiet person who never raised her voice and was seldom seen to smile, but there is no doubt she possessed that rare gift for being adored by every small child under her care.” “Some curious warmth that was almost tangible shone our of Miss Honey’s face.” She loves her students, and they love her. There is no fear in relationship with her.

John is writing to people who have been told all of their lives that the gods are like The Trunchbull – looking for an opportunity to punish – reminding them that God sent his Son to show his love among us.
And we come to this Table to remember the curious warmth that was almost tangible that shone on his face, the way he looked at you and you knew he knew everything about you and not only accepted you but loved you still, the hands that healed, the arms that held children, the words that instructed and inspired, the power as he sacrificed his own life willingly for ours, the love. We come here to remember.

I have known people who were afraid to take communion – afraid they weren’t worthy, afraid they weren’t believers enough, afraid they didn’t understand it enough. This bread and this cup are offered to you in love. There is no fear here, only love, and you are invited to receive. Thanks be to God. Amen.