Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 10, 2009

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.

Maybe some of you have seen it. I’ve seen in on two separate churches. It’s a sign on some of the churches in Sultan that reads “What if it is true?” It went up around Holy Week, and it has a picture of a crown of thorns on it. Now, I don’t know for sure what the people who put up those signs mean by it. I can’t speak for them, but I know that the churches that are displaying the sign are very conservative, Evangelical or even Fundamentalist churches; and that gives me a pretty good idea of what they mean by it. At least, I can tell you what I hear in it.

The crown of thorns suggests Jesus’ crucifixion, and conservative churches like these always interpret the Crucifixion as meaning that Jesus was the atoning sacrifice for human sin without which God could not and would not forgive that sin. In the question itself I hear the message that you unbelievers who are reading the sign should consider that what we say about Jesus being the atoning sacrifice for sin just might be true. And I hear the implication that you’d better consider that what we say might be true because if it is, and if you haven’t come to believe it before you die, you’re in big trouble. I hear: “If what we say about Jesus turns out to be true, and if you haven’t believed it during this life, God’s gonna get ya! There will be consequences—dire consequences—for you if what we say is true and you don’t believe it. In other words, what I hear in this question is a scare tactic, an appeal to fear, an attempt to frighten people into believing in Jesus. I can’t say for sure that that’s what these particular churches intend by their sign, but I know that a lot of Christians have, for a very long time, used fear of eternal damnation to scare people into saying they’re Christians. Certainly our Puritan forbears in the Congregationalist tradition used that tactic. In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Jonathan Edwards used the image of us sinners suspended over the fiery pit of hell held out of it only by the thin thread of God’s grace to scare people into believing.

It’s an ancient Christian tactic, and it is one that I frankly find reprehensible. I find it reprehensible in part because faith grounded in fear isn’t faith in any meaningful sense. Faith grounded in fear is a defense mechanism not true faith. But I find the attempt to scare people into believing in Jesus and in God reprehensible for an even more important reason than that; and that’s the one I want to talk about this morning. I find the attempt to frighten people into Christianity reprehensible most of all because that tactic denies the very God the Christians who use this tactic are trying to scare people into believing in. Let me explain.

A good place to begin an explanation is with our reading from 1 John. This verse contains the famous and much loved phrase “God is love.” It tells us that love is from God and that we should love one another because God is love. Then it has this line: “There 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.” 1 John 4:18 “Perfect love casts out fear.” And what, or rather who, is perfect love? Why God, of course. God is love. God is perfect love. We all love to some extent, but we do it imperfectly. Only God does it perfectly. God is perfect love, and perfect love casts out all fear. This passage from 1 John is saying that we need not fear, we should not fear, because God is love, and God casts out all fear.

Now, we all know that there is much to fear in life. We all fear illness. We all fear injury. We all fear death. Some of us fear loss of a job or loss of a relationship. We fear for our children’s well being. Maybe there are other things that you fear. Fear is a normal human reaction to life. Life is risky. There’s just no denying that fact, and risk gives rise to fear. So how is it then that we can fear not simply because God is perfect love and perfect love casts out all fear?

The answer to that question is not easy. Many Christians give the easy answer that we can live without fear because if our faith is strong enough and if we pray hard enough God will protect us and our loved ones from all the things that terrify us. They say, if we have enough faith and pray hard enough we and our loved ones won’t get sick. We’ll be spared when the earthquake hits. We won’t lose that job or that relationship. Our children won’t make mistakes and won’t be harmed by others. Some Christians actually say things like that.

And it just isn’t true. I think we all know it isn’t true. We are all mortal. We are all susceptible to disease and injury. Bad things happen to everyone regardless of their faith and regardless of how hard they pray. Good things happen to everyone too, of course, but the bad things are the things we fear. They’re the ones we’re concerned with this morning. It makes no sense to say that we can fear not because God will prevent those bad things from happening. It just doesn’t work that way.

So is there any sense in which it does make sense to say that we can fear not because God is love? Of course there is. There is, but to understand that sense we have to give up our yearning for simple answers. The simple answer to our question this morning just doesn’t work. The more difficult but true answer to how we can fear not because God is love is that God, rather than prevent bad things from happening, is with us in whatever happens. God is always there loving us. God is always there holding us. God is always there to give us comfort and strength to face whatever we must face in this life. And God is there in some mysterious way beyond this life so that we can know that when this life of ours ends God’s love does not. Our relationship of love with God does not. We may not know what that relationship looks like beyond this life, but we know that a relationship there surely is. For God is perfect love, and, as St. Paul says, love never ends. 1 Cor. 13:8a Never. We know that we are safe, and that we need not fear come what may, because God, who is ultimate reality, who is the ultimate power behind all that is, who is our truth and our life, is a God of perfect love who will never desert us, will never abandon us. That’s how and why we can fear not.

So how can Christians use fear to coerce people into believing in the God who lets us put aside all fear? They can’t. They do, but they can’t. Not legitimately. Not authentically. Not if they would be true to the God in whom they are trying to get people to believe. They ask: What if it is true? We don’t have to ask. We know it is true. At least, we know that God is perfect love, and perfect love casts out all fear. No one need be afraid with God because God is perfect love. Perfect love doesn’t require obedience, only conditional love does that. Perfect love doesn’t require right belief, only conditional love does that. Perfect love just loves. Period. Everyone. Always.

So fear not. Really. Truly. Fear not. Fear nothing. Have the courage to face what you must face in life. Have the courage to face death knowing that the God who is perfect love loves you now and loves you always. And that, my friends, is the best news there ever was or ever could be. Thanks be to God. Amen.