Perfect Love Casts out Fear

Perfect Love Casts out Fear

            So no one needs me to say that we humans are not perfect in our loving so I should not be surprised that fear is so prevalent in our culture but can’t we do better than this?  I have no need to throw stones at our present leadership in our country because there are already enough being thrown from “both sides.”  Suffice it to say that no matter who you want to blame, since the last election the fear genie seems released from whatever bottle in which it may have been somewhat contained.

            Or maybe a better analogy is that the bottle has been shaken and the contents are spewing out like so much champagne from some sports victory celebration, but the victor is not us; it is fear itself.  We are afraid immigrants will get what they do not deserve so we are going to wall ourselves in as if that will really help.

            We fear our long time enemies in places like Iran and Korea so we hurl words of intimidation forgetting that those who throw mud end up with dirty hands and then wonder where the dirt came from.  We fear that we might get behind in the economy so we throw out agreed upon limits to try to stop filling the air with the stains of our progress and go backwards thinking it is the way forward.

            We fear that our rights might be infringed upon so we will not even discuss limits on assault weapons or background checks all the while watching the ongoing narrative of innocent people, including children, being slaughtered.  We hear sayings like “guns don’t kill, people do.”  But as a people we seem to be reverting to a kind of fear-filled animal state.  “Don’t Tread on Me” flags start to again be flown.

            Why are we so afraid?  Of what are we afraid?  It is like we need a “security system” for our very souls.

            So let’s go the other direction because I do not know if I can answer why we are so afraid.  What about the direction of perfect love. 

            I am not sure what it might look like but I think it begins with listening to each other instead of throwing rocks from behind walls.  In the play Our Town, Emily is allowed to come back from death to relive one day of her life.  She picks her twelfth birthday but as she observes everyone without being able to say anything to them she suddenly says to the Stage Manager.

“EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe...they do some.”

            We are like the good news/bad news joke when the airline pilot comes over the intercom and tells the passengers, “I have some good news and some bad news ladies and gentlemen.  The bad news it seems we are lost.  I have no idea where we are.  The good news is that we are making excellent time.”

            We sure are going fast but where are we going?  We seem lost in a sort of self-indulgent, fear based race for security.  We do not realize life because we are going too fast to notice.

            Our souls often dry up from lack of the water that truly quenches the deep places that we are ignoring.  “Don’t tread on me,” but what about us? Where is the “us” in our midst.  It is all about me and mine.  No wonder perfect love is hard to find.

            Perfect love has always been about the us.  Perfect love comes from that word for love in the New Testament, agape.  It is a kind of love that is concerned for the other.  It is other-directed love that does not seek first the good of the one who offers the love but rather asks about the well being of the one to whom love is given.

            In John Denver’s haunting song “The Box” he tells of a box that is chained with chains and locked with locks with a note attached proclaiming, “Kindly do not touch it’s war.”  But then of course because of fear someone breaks open into the box…

“Someone battered in the lid and spilled the insides out across the floor. A kind of bouncy, bumpy ball made up of guns and flags and all the tears, and horror, and death that comes with war. It bounced right out and went bashing all about, bumping into everything in store. And what was sad and most unfair was that it didn't really seem to care much who it bumped, or why, or what, or for.

It bumped the children mainly. And I'll tell you this quite plainly, it bumps them every day and more, and more, and leaves them dead, and burned, and dying, thousands of them sick and crying. Cause when it bumps, it's really very sore.

Now there's a way to stop the ball. It isn't difficult at all. All it takes is wisdom, and I'm absolutely sure that we can get it back into the box, and bind the chains, and lock the locks. But no one seems to want to save the children anymore.”

            Denver’s song is explicitly about war but it seems it can describe the kind of fear that has been let out of the bottle or the box.  Perfect love has always been about taking chances.  It may mean we do not get our way or get what we deserve.  Perfect love takes risks.  It does not begin with, “What’s in it for me.”

            Ancient words describe this kind of love but those words are often lost in the midst of the many wedding ceremonies when the words are most often used.  We forget that those words are not for the starry eyed couple only.  Those words are for us who get so easily captured by fear.

 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

            I have told many couples as I stand before them that while they may be in what I call “LUV” that they may not really know how to agape because agape is a gift from God.  It is given to those of us who so easily slip away from our spiritual souls into a kind of animal like need for security that so easily gives in to fear.

            Maybe I am simply being done in by a kind of naiveté.  So be it, but what I am observing of late is a country that seems to be almost cherishing fear and clinging to it by filling our minds and even our souls with sound bites from whatever polarizing stance we take.  But we are making excellent time.

            O God, grant us your gift of perfect love.  We need it more than ever.  Help us to realize life while we live it.