Meditation for April 29, 2009
From The Rev. Peter A. Munson
1 John 4:17-21
17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 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. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers and 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. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
Love and Fear
My parents met on this date in 1944. My dad was 25 and my mom was 23 at the time. They got married 78 days (11 weeks and one day!) later, on July 16, 1944. (When Julia and I got engaged less than three months after our first date in 1986 - I was 29 and Julia was 30 - and my folks said, "So soon?", I knew I had some leverage. I reminded them of their courtship, and they quickly fell silent.) A few weeks after their wedding day, my dad was sent with his Army unit to Burma. After the war ended, he spent another year looking for MIAs in China. This is how my parents' marriage began. It was not at all unusual during that time in our nation's history. They had been married almost 52 years when my dad died in 1996.
They met, they fell in love, they got married. People (like their parents) told them they were rushing things, but they did it anyway. Their love for each other got them through a lot. It got them through career and family moves to Alaska, London, Charleston and Virginia Beach. My dad had Parkinson's disease for the last 14 years of his life, and especially during the last three or four years of that time, my parents went through hell. I used to see the fear in my dad's eyes. But then they would go out for their daily walk, and my mom would hold my dad's hand - partly out of habit, but partly to help him keep his arms swinging, so he wouldn't walk with the stiffness that is often associated with Parkinson's. And my dad would get those long arms and legs of his going, and he'd get into a rhythm, and he'd be hard to keep up with. For years and years, those daily walks were the most sane parts of their day together. The fear would leave my dad's eyes, and all would be well - at least for a while...at least for the duration of that 3 or 4 mile walk.
Perfect love casts out fear. I think this is true on a number of different levels.
Thanks to God's amazing goodness and the gift of Julia in my life, I know something about perfect love casting out fear. When I am unsure of myself and feeling fearful, I sit down with Julia, or even talk to her for a while on the phone. This beautiful person who has loved me through thick and thin for almost 23 years now listens to me, says something helpful that shifts my perspective, and the fear dissipates. And by the grace of God, I sometimes do the same thing for her.
When you or I are tempted to be overrun by our fears... when we get too caught up in the bad news of the world, and forget the good news... when we pay too much attention to those who would try to get us to orient our entire lives to fear of the unknown, fear of what might happen (swine flu, anyone? national security alert raised to orange, anyone? - we could go on and on), then we can be sure that we need to reconnect to the One whom the writer of 1 John named Love. "God is love " (1 John 4:8; 1 John 4:16) And when we do reconnect to our God, who - even more than our spouse or our good friend, exhibits perfect love - our fears our driven away, "cast out". We suddenly remember to pray, to call on God for help in our time of need, and before the last word of the prayer is even formed, we often feel the peace of God filling our hearts. For in the moment we open ourselves to the transforming love of God, our attitude and our very life is shifted, and fear cannot find a suitable habitat in us anymore.
Reaching out to our brother or sister in love works to cast out fear, too. Not just the fear in the brother or sister that we reach out to, although that might be a part of it. When we reach out to another person on the planet in love, our own fear is cast out. Suddenly all the things we were worrying about and afraid of... - Will this person reject me in some way? Will I make a connection with him or her? - when we lose ourselves and our ego long enough to just make some gesture of love toward that person, and be kind in a real way, the fears are suddenly gone. They have been cast out, as God honors are very attempt to love another.
We humans are innately social beings, designed by God to love. It is when we become too isolated that we are more prone to fear. When we lose our connection to God, when we lose our connection to our partner, when we lose our connection to our friends, our co-workers, or our fellow Ambrosians and become too isolated, then fear starts to raise its ugly head all over the place.
At the end of their life together, the one scripture quote that my folks had on their refrigerator was 1 John 4:18-21, the last few verses quoted above. My folks, like all of us, certainly had struggles with being fearful. The scripture on the refrigerator was there to remind them of the antidote to fear. That antidote is not macho posturing - using your power in threatening ways to make others fearful of you (sort of the idea that "I'll get rid of my fear by making you fearful of me.") No. The antidote to fear is love. We must connect to the source of love in the universe - to God - if we want to move beyond our fear. For "perfect love casts out fear."