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Love is A Many Splendored Thing
I John 4:13-21

Nay 18, 1969

Rev. John M. Buchanan

The trouble with trying to preach a sermon from a passage like
that (I John 4:13-21) is that it is literally loaded with theological and
ethical freight. There is a lot here - far more than can be articulated in one
sermon. And so, as I worked through the text this week, I chose three ideas to
discuss ~ three separate statements about the word "love". Each says some thing
different about love — and yet they are bound together by the fact that they each
begin with the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

The three statements are these:

~ God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and
God abides in him.

- There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

— We love, because he first loved us.

Three statements - one strictly theological regarding the nature
of God; and two containing very contemporary psychological and ethical relevance.
Let's examine them more closely.

First, God is love. That means that when you talk about God,
love is where you start. I+ means that love is not just one of many divine
attributes, but the very essence of the divine. God is love. And everything
else that is said about him is defined by the fact that essentially his nature
is love. For instance, if we say that God is powerful, we need to understand
that we are not talking abou raw, naked power — but powerful love. If we say
that God is just - we need to understand that we're talking about a loving justice.
God is love -— and the final definition of that love - that God - is a lonely
cross standing on a hill outside Jerusalem.

That love, the author of this little letter was saying, is the
primal reality in the universe. Men have always looked into the darkness and
wondered what is there. Some have felt a fareless power; some have felt an
arbitrary fate; others have felt nothing. “Love is there", says this writer.
Love is the final reality. And furthermore, a man who loves deeply is participating
in the fundamental nature of things.

One commentator suggests that. . . "All deep human love strikes
down somewhere into the divine, though it may strike darkly and with a dim feeling
after Him who is not far from anyone." (Findlay in I, B) I think everyone of
us has felt something like that, even though we are not able to find the words
to express it.

A parent stands beside the crib of his sleeping child and feels
something so powerful within him that he knows it is of God. A husband, a
wife, feels sheer amazement at the fact that this one matters most in all the
world. A Christian at Communion hears the words he has been listening to for
years, and suddenly they are filled with meaning. These people — these friends
and strangers; these ones I have worked with and argued with - these and all
who have gone before - are one — and are given a unity by the very love of God.

To love is to drink deeply of the water of life. To love deeply
is to do what you were created to do: it is to participate in the very essence
of being a man.

God is love. That is the first statement and it undergirds
all that follows. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear."

For the author and the readers of the letter this statement had
a dual relevance. They were gripped by two very real fears: the fear of judgment
and the fear of persecution. In the first instance they fully expected the end
of the age within their own life time. And naturally, there was more than a little
fear involved with their anticipation of that event. But love casts out fear. Your
judge is God and he is love, and he loves you and there is nothing to fear.

In the second instance, the era of Roman persecution was just
beginning. The handwriting was on the wall. Very soon it would be dangerous

palit

to be known as a Christian. Already men were being tortured and killed — all
in all a rather frightful prospect. But love can cast out even that kind of
immediate fear.

For us there is no immediate fear of persecution, nor is the fear
of divine judgement the powerful force it once was. And yet fear remains as one
of the notable characteristics of our particular generation. .

We know that the human animal enters the world afraid of nothing
except loud noises and falling. These are the only fears that are built-in ;
all the rest must be learned. Fear can be good or bad. As an early warning system
the fear response prevents us from doing things which might prove to be self—
destructive. Fear also has motivated men to remedy whatever environmental
conditions caused it in the first place. Fear of floods motivates men to build
dams and dikes and that, of course, is very healthy.

It was Sigmund Freud who described healthy and neurotic fear
in terms of a man's attitude toward snakes. It is healthy, Freud noted, to be
apprehensive about the possibility of being bitten by a snake while walking through
the jungle. It is another thing altogether to wake up.in the middle of the
night to check for snakes under your bed.

Neurotic fear is usually linked with a childhood experience
the psychiatrists call traumatic, and is best dealt with by the skilled under-
standing of a psychiatrist or psychologist. Sometimes, merely understanding the
root of our fear is enough to banish it. Angelo Patri has noted that, "Education
consists in being afraid at the right time."

But far beyond the personal level, in which it can be defined
as either healthy or neurotic, fear operates on a broad sociological base and
is one of the most powerful motivators known to man.

For instance, consider the use made of fear to ridtivate people
in religion. It was said of Billy Sunday that on a good day his listeners could
feel the very flames of hell burning around their seats. It is an operational
maxim for the traveling evangelist that if he can frighten people badly enough
they'11 do what he wants - even to the point of making a "decision for Christ".
The supreme irony is that this charade is then called a "Christian Conversion.,"
Of course, we are not involved with this sort of thing, and yet fear - in an
unspoken way - does play a role in the religious motivation of all of us.
Christianity, for many people, is little more than an eternal fire insurance
policy. But. . ."there is no fear in love."

Or consider the use to which fear is put by the skiliful
politician. It is always astonishing to be reminded that Adolf Hitler was
elected to office because of his extremely skillful use of fear. Students of
political science were fascinated by the machinations of another great poli-
tician - Charles DeGaulle. When DeGaulle wanted something he would play his cards
one by one, reserving his ace until the end. And without fail he would play it -
an unadulterated appeal to fear. And for many years it worked.

Fear is probably the most important phenomenon in the world of
politics in other nations and, unfortunately, in our own. Whenever the military
decides it is time to overthrow the elected government of a nation, inevitably
the fear of Communism is the rationale. And in our own nation — the far right
wing has become a power to be reckoned with by peddling fear; fear of fluoride
in the water, fear of sex education in the schools ~— fear of that sinister
communist conspiracy the enlightened ones are able to see everywhere in our
common life. Sometimes it is almost humorous until we remember the -~ tremendous
power of fear.

Fear is at the bottom of a lot of the things we are doing as a
nation —- and a lot of the tensions that currently afflict us. Tear breeds
tension and then hatred. That maxim is documented in nearly all the external
and internal problems we have. :

We fear the Russians ~ we fear the Chinese even more. The
Russians fear the Americans and the Chinese. The Chinese fear the Russians
and Americans. And on all three sides this fear motivates a great deal of

me

what we do in the world - on all three sides our mutual fear has become the
midwife of hatred. JI think the greatest irony of our age is that we are

spending nearly 80 billion dollars a year to soothe our fears and it's not

working, and furthermore it's never going to work. Currently we are debating the
relative merits of the A. B. M. Safeguard System, a system that will cost billions
and billions of dollars with absolutely no assurance of efficiency whenever it

is completed. But we'll probably do it anyway -— because we're afraid -— and

we've been conditioned to cope with our fear by making the other side even more
afraid than we are.

On a more modest level, we find ourselves on the long end of a
growing generation gap ~ because we're afraid of what the campus radical is and
what he is saying.

We find ourselves hating the homosexual because we fear the
threat he poses to our own manhood or womanhood.

Most immediate of all, we find ourselves in a brand new racial
climate - and this time we're afraid. It is one of the interesting anecdotes
of our history that racial hatred has increased whenever the white man discovered
he had some reason to be afraid. There was no need for the Ku Klux Klan so long
as the black man was property. But a free black .man —- a free black man whoge
mother was brought here in a ship, and whose father was the plantation owner-
is something else again.

Thus fear -— and then hatred. For two hundred years Southern
white men violated black women at will. And then as the conscience of the nation
slowly awakened so did the fear that the black man would retaliate. When the
civil rights marchers walked through Cicero, Illinois, one phrase was shouted all
along the line - "If you think you're going to come here and rape all our women
you'll be a dead nigger first." (p. 67 Why Black Power, Joseph R. Barndt )

It always comes out - this terrible hatred rooted in fear and
spawned by guilt. The very phrase "Black Power" frightens us - and fuels our
htred -— even though we live in a world of political and economic power. The
late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. summarized it well: "A guilt ridden white minority
fears that if the Negro attains power, he will without restraint and pity act to
revenge the accumulated injustices and brutality of the years. A parent, who
has continually mistreated his son, suddenly realizes that he is now taller than
his parent. Will the son use his new physical power to repay for all the blows
of the past?" (p. 139, Strength to Love)

Is the Gospel relevant here? I+ is -— but only as Christian
people put aside fear — and realize once again that love is powerful —- that there
is no fear in love ~— that not only our welfare but our survival, depend on someone
breaking us out of the trap of fear in which we seem to be caught. I don't know
anything more relevant than that.

But how? How can we love that much? How can we incarnate
that perfect love which casts out all fear - which runs roughshod over all hatred
and bitterness? "We love, because he first loved us." That's how. We can't do
it alone - something like a miracle of grace has to happen to us. We need help -
even in our loving.

But again, this is how it is with all men. We are not born with
built-in love for all men. In fact, we are born with the equal capacity for love
or hate. An infant loves when he learns to love himself; that is, when he
experiences his own loveableness. A parent calls forth love within his child by
extending his own love. Reuel Howe describes it well, "Only those who have been
loved and who love themselves are free and able to love others. The ability to
love is always theresult of having been loved. This is true of the child's
relation to the parent,and it is true of our relation to God." (p. 82, Man's
Need and God's Action)

sialhiee

All of us have read, or been told, that if we really love our
children everything will be all right. And then we've had the sensitivity to
see that our family tensions haveresulted from the fact that when our children
really needed our love ~ i.e. when they were being unlovable, we have not given
it. We have been unable to respond to unloveableness with unmerited love. We
are very much inclined, even with our children, to love to the degree that they
love us or earn our love. We need help — even in our loving. We need a miracle
of grace — to become the kind of people we want to be.

We love, because he first loved us. God is love. God loves us-
even as we are unloveable. And that love - the recognition on our part that
God's holy love is ours — frees us to become agents of love. \le are enabled
to love because we are loved. That is the good promise of the Gospel. That is
the miracle of grace that keeps happening in our midst.

We have ranged widely this morning. Perhaps it would have been
preferable to f cus. But love is A Many Splendored Thing - particularly the
enabling loveof a Holy God - that casts out all fear.

Amen.