Love, Fear, and Purple Flowers

Transcribed from the sermon preached June 7, 2009

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 6:1-13, John 4:7-21, Romans 8:12-25

There are a lot of things to be afraid of in life.  Feliciana is afraid of caterpillars. Ever since I saw the movie Willard and read about the plague in Europe, I am afraid of rats.  One of the great, fundamental fears is the fear of our own inadequacy, the fear that we are not worthy, the fear that we are weak, to weak to deal with the challenges and trials life throws at us.

I imagine the fear of our own weakness comes in part as a caution in our animal nature.  To fear that we are weaker than a bear or a lion  or shark just may keep us alive.  Sometimes hiding is better than fighting.  Honest self-assessment enables us to find a niche, to fit in.  Sometimes fear is a justified assessment of the truth.  Still, we would hope, fear would not prevent us from using ingenuity or love to overcome.

Lord, give us the courage to change the things that should be changed, the grace to accept those things that cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.  I have given up on trying to get my wife to like caterpillars.

As you may know, we often have troubled people come by the church looking for help.  Not long after I arrived at St. John’s, one particular man about my age, I will call him Johnny, met me by my office one Sunday morning.  Johnny was deeply disturbed, psychotic, reeked of alcohol and days without a bath.  I had had ten years of ministry dealing with troubled people so I thought I could do a quick job, deal with him and get back to planning worship.  But I have to admit he threw me off my game.  He made me feel uncomfortable and afraid.  It wasn’t that he was physically imposing; far from it; he was pale, weak and frail; it was just that he was unpredictable and bonkers. After his disturbance on Sunday, we had to formulate a plan to deal with getting someone out of worship.

Setting a premeditated plan for exclusion and safetywas one of the most painful things I have had to deal with in the ministry.  It hurt badly for a minister and a church, which takes pride and strives to be inclusive to have to admit that there are limits to our ability to love. 

I am not the only minister or Christian who in some small portion of my brain entertains a savior complex; the illusion that if we just had the chance to communicate our love, world peace would break out immediately, estranged brother and sister, rich and poor, democrat and republican would dance together in the street. We dream of giving great speeches like Isaiah or Obama’s in Cairo, and envision Iran giving up nukes, and Israel giving up settlements, and extremists who stop using terror as a tactic, simply on the basis of our eloquence.

To reach out and try to help someone and fail, to reach out and try to love and be rejected threatens our faith in love.  But I think the more personal issue is that rejection hurts our ego, our sense of self-righteousness, the sense that we should gain entrance into heaven, into the haven of God’s love, because we have earned it.  How dare they be so hurt and fearful that they refuse to be helped by us!

Our gut level reaction to rejection is anger and rejection back.  Fear turns to anger, anger to hatred, hatred to violence and coercion.  Either that or we close up: we create physical or psychological bunkers.  Many of us withhold a little bit of ourselves for safekeeping; we refrain from commitment, from really giving our all. 

Partial commitment serves a couple of purposes.  First we have something left that hasn’t been hurt, and second, by partial commitment, we foster the secondary illusion; when we are rejected or fail we can imagine that if we would have given it our all, then we would have succeeded, then they wouldn’t have rejected our love. We become slaves to worry, slaves to half love, slaves to lashing out in fear when we are threatened.

M. Scott Peck: “If you move out to another human being, there is always the risk that that person will move away from you, leaving you more painfully alone that you were before.  Love anything that lives – a person, a pet, a plant – and it will die.  Trust anybody and you may be hurt; depend on anyone and that one may let you down.  The price of [connection] is pain.  If someone is determined not to risk pain, then such a person must do without many things: having children, getting married, the ecstasy of sex, the hope of ambition, friendship – all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant.  Move out or grow in any dimension and pain as well as joy will be your reward.  A full life will be full of pain.  But the only alternative is not to live fully or not to live at all.” (Peck. M. Scott.  The Road Less Traveled. P. 153)

If, as Christ showed, we are loved unconditionally by God, then we are free to move beyond the fear of not being strong enough, not perfect enough.  We are forgiven.  Then we perform acts of kindness, when we can, not to prove how good we are, not because we know it will succeed in changing the other, but because the God of love calls us into such an act.  The power to love is not ours but God’s.  Love draws us forth. Whom shall I send. Here I am Lord, send me!

Paul calls this human tendency to be self-centered, to reject others and close ourselves off in fear the “life of the flesh.”  But by the grace of God we no longer need to live this life.  “We are debtors, not to the flesh… for if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  For all who live by the Spirit are children of God.  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.  When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.  I consider that the sufferings of this age are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.

John says “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.”  Fear looks at the negative.  Love the positive.  Fear is self centered, cutting or retracting.  Love is power and expansive.

Well Johnny, the man who disturbed me and the church made the “do not admit list” the “people we are afraid of list” for St. John’s.  In our attempt to be loving to a whole range of people, children, user groups, staff and members, we have to limit whom we can serve.  This is a painfully humbling act, but at times, by the grace of God, this is our choice and responsibility.  The issue is that our problem people are very good at forgetting they have been barred from the building.  It is very common that after someone has caused a big enough scene to be excluded, they disappear for a couple of months and then, one day, they show up again.

Johnny came back.  We kicked him out quickly a few times, but not without fanfare, and then, after a year or two, his attitude changed a bit.  He was less confrontational, not quite as delusional.  I talked with him enough to see if he was getting the help he could from the government.  He asked for money.  I gave him work.  He did a good job and thanked me profusely. 

Then one day he came in, his pale, emaciated body bleeding all over the place. He had been attacked again. He wanted help and a safe place.  He got it here.  Our staff settled him while the fire department came.  Eathen, our head custodian quarantined and cleaned the area. 

A month or so later he came back for work.  Swine flu was the rage, so I gave Johnny a cleaning spray bottle and some paper towels to clean all the handles and plates people touch, doors, elevator, window handles.  He did a great job. 

He wants to come back more often than we can handle him, financially and or psychologically.  He likes to talk and he thanks me for the Church has brought some meaning and stability to his life. 

Passing through the office Wednesday morningI noticed the most beautiful little purple flowers on our secretary Jean’s desk.  What gorgeous flowers I said.  Johnny gave them to me, said Jean. Jean and I shared a smile that words can’t describe; part sweetness, part awe, part joy, part dumfoundednesss, part fear.

Johnny is not off our people we are afraid of list.  He cannot be in the building unless supervised by Eathen or me. He angers me a bit too: for he reminds me how complex sin and evil twist peoples lives, not only his but our lives too, making us live from fear rather than love.  Johnny threatens my ego; he evokes in me feelings of anger and fear, because I am not yet off his list of people he is afraid of.  But he is less afraid, and has shown a deep desire to share beauty and perhaps, a tiny bit of love.  When he was don Wednesday, Johnny said, “you are my friend.” 

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but today I have a sweet memory of tiny purple flowers and I thank God for springtime.  I thank God for friendship, in all its strange and wonderful forms.

All in all I think I as a minister and we as a church have little impact on people’s day to day lives.  There are exceptions when God reaches down and uses us to affect people’s lives in deep and powerful ways.  For most of us, if we are lucky, we share an hour, two or three, a few times a month. But I hope and pray you are reminded in your worship and relations here, and then are able to be open in the many, many hours of the rest of your life, that love is the great impact.  God is love and God is worthy of worship, every Sunday and also everywhere in every moment of our lives.  Even in it most ethereal, fleeting moments love sings of eternity. 

The longer I work in the ministry, the more I have come to believe that church membership means less and less.  Being a member of the church means a lot in the sense that we understand that we are children of God, coheirs with Christ, and have decided to commit our lives to a community dedicated to the Spirit of love.  But the love itself, God’s sovereign love is so much broader, and God calls us into a communion that includes so many more people, even Creation itself.  Despite our limitations and theirs, God is faithful still.