Love is more than the message ...

In case you didn’t know it, Jesus saves. That is what the church signs promote and the old-time revival hymns proclaim. Jesus is the savior and so it’s the least we can do to let him save us so he can continue to be the savior and we can be the saved. And once you’ve been saved, unless you are the jealous, selfish type, then you will want others to be saved. So you’ll let them know that Jesus saves. He can do it; yes he can, because he is the savior.

So it made sense to us then, when I was a child and my hometown Baptist church purchased Old Man Barkovitz’s house after he died, the white rambling house next to the church, for us to ask how we might use his house, now our house, to save others. 

Mr. Barkovitz was the patriarch of one of the only two Jewish families in our town. The Barkovitzes were Lithuanian Jews, though I did not know where Lithuania was. 

I was always less impressed by their Jewish roots than by the fact that the Barkovitz grandchildren, my contemporaries, had the first Atari game system I had ever seen. Now that was impressive. And even though he was Jewish, Barry Barkovitz, my best friend, always received more Christmas gifts than anyone else. Truly, these were God’s chosen people. 

So, how could we best use Mr. Barkovitz’s house to save others? Some folks suggested we use the additional space for Sunday school classrooms. Or maybe we could add extra space for youth events. Or could it be a house for that one man we only saw when he was drunk? 

No, we decided if you wanted the house to be an instrument for the Good News of Jesus, to be a tool for saving others, for introducing them to the Savior of the World, then the best use for the house was obvious—turn it into a haunted house. 

Not just any haunted house, but a haunted house able to scare the hell out of everyone, so that every man, woman, and child who entered that house expecting to be spooked by goblins and ghosts, would instead encounter all the frights and fears that Jesus needed to save us from in the here and now. They would enter our haunted house, a lost people, but they would exit changed, possibly unable to sleep without the lights on for several nights, but definitely saved.

It made sense to us that if Jesus is the savior and the point is to be saved and to save others, then the means did not matter. Whatever it takes, by any means necessary, we had to do everything we could to convince everyone we could that Jesus saves. 

So for three consecutive Octobers, we traumatized people from all over southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas with the merciful message of Jesus. All those things that went bump in the night, all those devilish images that we had placed in your head for a modest entrance fee—Jesus could wipe away all those manufactured fears. He could save you from us.

From I John, we hear that God is love and the way to God is love and the response from finding God is love. God’s love is a perfect love. It is a love that casts out fear. 

Now, the idea that perfect love casts out fear, when I hear it, having heard it so often, can sound trite and hackneyed, like Mom, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Yet, several years ago, I heard a woman turn the phrase around and say that perfect fear casts out love. 

That startled me. Perfect fear casts out love. How many times have we encountered some kind of perfect fear? The source of such fear can come from religion or politics or it can come from a selfish spirit that believes there is only enough if I hoard what I have. 

It was perfect fear that placed Jesus on a cross. The Empire and the Temple were confronted by Jesus’ message of perfect love, of sacrificial love, and instead chose to sacrifice love on a tree. 

The response of Jesus to the perfect fear he met on the cross was perfect love. Even as he died, he forgave those killing him. When the tomb was broken open, he did not leave in order to seek revenge, but rather to find his friends and heal the divisions between them. They had betrayed him and left him. He sought them out and breathed peace on them. That is perfect love. 

There is a documentary about to be released later this year on the PBS series, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. The documentary is entitled, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? 

I have lost track of how many times I have watched the 3 minute trailer promoting the documentary. In the trailer, the late Fred Rogers himself says, “Love is at the root of everything--all learning, all relationships, love or the lack of it.” I challenge you to watch the trailer for the film without tearing up. 

When I watch the trailer, I found myself initially nostalgic, missing the simple and profound message of Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood where everyone was welcomed as neighbor and friend. 

But like so much nostalgia, my nostalgia for Mr. Rogers is situated in a falsehood. Yes, like many people my age, I watched Mr. Rogers. But truth be told, I only watched this TV series about love and neighborliness and respecting the dignity of everyone for a very short time. 

For you see, it wasn’t too long before an older boy named Gary, during recess one day, told me that only babies watched Mr. Rogers. I did not want Gary to think I was a baby. So, no more Mr. Rogers for me and perfect fear once again wins the day. 

So, I’ll watch the documentary this summer as a way of making penance, of confessing all the times when I gave into perfect fear and did not trust that God’s perfect love was strong enough to change the world. 

I once heard the writer James Carroll speak of Jesus, not as the Savior, but as the Revealer, the revealer of God’s love. 

If our mission is to save others, we will always treat others, those not saved we think, as people God needs us to fix, to save, to complete. And if the point is to save them, then how we get there will not matter as long as it is effective.

If someone figures out that what our church really needs in order to save the others is a steamroller, then before you know it every Christian leader will be writing new books on how to steamroll others towards salvation. And those books will be bestsellers. But the news won’t be Good, especially if the steamroller is headed your way. 

My brothers and sisters, we are invited to follow the way of Jesus, but the Jesus we follow is a Revealer, a revealer of how God loves, how God loves us and how God believes we can love, both God and each other. 

The commandment is to love. But love is more than the message—it is also the means. 

The world is filled with saviors, ready to save us if the price is right or we sign the right pledge and offer the proper allegiance. But first the latest savior has to convince us just how lost we are. Before they can save us, they have to give us something to fear. Then, they can save us.

How about if we agreed to stop trying to save everyone and instead simply tried to love them? If we are following the One who leads the way by revealing love to us, then we are called to imitate him by loving others, by outdoing each other in love.

“Abide in me as I abide in you.” Rest in God as God’s love rests in us. Abide, remain, take up space in the very One who is the Revealer of God’s love. 

Such an image of abiding is an image of the world made right, perfected, completed, once broken and now made whole. The gift of such perfect love comes from God, who chose us while we were still afraid and anxious, we who were sharing imperfect fear with accomplished perfection. 

The call to us from God is to love. That might sound trite. Until you realize the other choice is to fear, and to share fear with others. If we choose that, we choose death. 

So, let us love, imperfectly attempting perfect love, because we have been loved. We have been found by the Crucified God who revealed the true strength of love. 

Such love is what saves us from eating any longer at the table of fear.