Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 14, 2006

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We’ve all heard it, although perhaps most of us couldn’t have said where it comes from. God is love. We’ve all heard it, but have you ever really thought about what great good news it is? God is love! God is not hate. God is not condemnation. God is not exclusion. God is not rules. God is not law. God is not a thing. God is not a place. None of that. Rather God is love. Pure and simple. God is love, and any supposedly religious teaching that is not love is not of God. God is love, and all the rest is gloss.

Do you know what that means? The First Letter of John tells us what it means. That letter says: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear...." 1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love, it says, but I have to ask: Are you ever afraid? I am. I’m afraid all the time. I fear getting old. I fear getting sick. I fear death. I worry about the future of this church and my future that is now so tightly bound to it. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen me panic about money, not that there isn’t reason to be concerned about money here. I can’t deny it. I have a lot of fear. Maybe you do too.

Well this morning I say to myself and to you: Get over it! God is love! There is nothing to fear! Do you know what the central message of the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments is? It’s not the Ten Commandments. It’s not any kind of law. It’s not live right or believe right or be damned. It’s none of that. Rather, the central message of the Bible is: Fear not. In the Bible, virtually every time an angel or some other manifestation of God appears to people, the first thing the angel says is: Fear not. Virtually every time the risen Christ appears to people the first thing he says is: Fear not. That more than anything else is what God wants to tell us. God doesn’t want to say be afraid of me--and by the way the common expression in Hebrew Scripture "the fear of the Lord" doesn’t mean be afraid, it means be in awe of and love God. So that one doesn’t get us off the hook and let us live in our fear. God’s call to us throughout Scripture is: Fear not.

And we can fear not because God is love. Do you want to know more about what that means? 1 John tells us a little bit about what it means. The letter says God showed us God’s love by coming to us in Jesus Christ. True enough. If you want to know what God’s love is like, look to Jesus. Or maybe it’s easier to look to a passage in the writings of the Apostle Paul. He told us what God’s love is like in the famous thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. Paul says that love--agape, the same word 1 John uses for the love of God--is patient, kind, modest, and considerate. That’s how God is with us--patient, kind, modest, and considerate. So there is no reason to fear. Paul say’s God’s kind of love doesn’t insist on its own way and that it bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a That’s how God is with us too. God insists not on what is good for God but on what is good for us. That’s the kind of love God is, so fear not.

So again I say to myself and to you: Get over it! God is love, and there is nothing to fear. There is nothing to fear, but that doesn’t mean that God’s love has no consequences. Far from it. God’s love does have consequences. 1 John tells us what the consequences are. The author says:

Those 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. The commandment we have from God is this: Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. 1 John 4:20-21

Our letter also tells us why we have this commandment to love our brothers and sisters: "We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:19. He being God of course. The letter says: "Beloved, because God loved us so much, we ought also to love one another." 1 John 4:11 God’s love is free; but it isn’t cheap, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us. It makes demands. We have nothing to fear, but we do have something to do. God loves, and so must we.

1 John says we are to love our brothers and sisters, but who exactly are our brothers and sisters? Jesus answered that one for us himself. When a scholar of the Jewish law asked "who is my neighbor," which is basically the same question, Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Luke 10:29-37 In that parable he told us that everyone is our neighbor. Not just our family or friends. Not just our fellow Americans. Not just our fellow Christians. Not just those who look and live and love like we do. Everyone is our brother or sister, especially the ones we think aren’t. We are called to love them all, because God first loved us and because God loves them too.

And because God first loved us, because God is love, we can love boldly. We can love when it’s easy and when it’s hard. We can love when the world says love and when the world says hate. We can love when it’s popular and when it isn’t. We can love when it’s safe and when it’s dangerous. Perfect love casts out all fear, so let us love fearlessly. God is love. God is the perfect love that casts out all fear. So my friends, live in love and be not afraid. Live in love, and when you do, know that God is with you always, loving you right back. Thanks be to God. Amen.