6 May 2012

“Drenched … to bear fruit”
5 Easter B
1 John 4:7-21 / John 15:1-8
6 May 2012


Like today, it was the second reading in that worship service … which happened to be our wedding.
Unlike today … back when Julie stepped to the reading desk and began to pronounce the words … they came out like this:
Perfect fear casts out love.
Well, some of us chuckled at that mistake … which Julie quickly corrected, to be as the text is before you today … because it was a wedding and everyone’s nervous at weddings and Julie’s mistake “broke the ice” and calmed us down … but, years later, every time I hear this text from 1 John read in worship … I think of it the way Julie read it at our wedding …
Perfect fear casts out love.
… and I realize anew the utter truth of that statement.
On an initial level, in this year of our lectionary cycle, the season of Easter starts out with a text on the morning of the Resurrection with words, not of rejoicing, but of fear … Mark’s resurrection account has the women who find the empty tomb, running away from it in fear and silence, afraid to tell anyone of what they have seen and found there, of what they have heard there from the one who told them that Jesus had been raised.
The following week, we heard that yearly-repeated story from John’s gospel, of the disciples after Jesus had been raised, they, locked away in fear not once, but twice … huddled together and shut away from the world … yet Jesus, the risen Jesus, comes to them anyway, showing himself first to everyone except Thomas, and then, particularly to Thomas, to overcome fear and unbelief.
Initially, at least, perfect fear casts out love … in that the women, the disciples, remain frozen, unable to move, to be, to do, to live into their calling to ‘go, make disciples,’ … and yet, and yet, Jesus comes to them … perfect love, casting out fear … and turns them around and sets them on the discipleship path.
That’s the textual prelude to where we are, here, today.
Now, as we’re deep into this season of resurrection and new life … Mary and the women, Thomas and the disciples, warm fuzzy sheep fading into the liturgical and textual background for us … this week, we have Jesus’ words from John, painting us another word-image for discipleship, one most appropriate at this blossoming and growing time of the year … the image of the vine bearing fruit.

Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.
My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Jesus’ wish, invitation, desire for his disciples, those who follow him, those women at the empty tomb, Thomas and the others, you and me … is that we would be drenched in his words of hope and promise … drenched in the water and word of our baptism … drenched and filled with the wine and bread of Holy Communion … drenched and sent forth to bear fruit … to tell others, to spread the word of the first-best thing that has ever, will ever happen to the world … that in Jesus, death itself is dead, death itself has been put to death in Jesus’ death on the cross, and in Jesus’ rising, we too have been given the promise that, even though we shall die, we shall also rise, to, for, with him.
Drenched … to bear good fruit.
It’s a good Word … the best Word, for us, this day, this season, as we continue in the Resurrection Word of Jesus. It’s the Word, the way, for us, walking wet, drenched in that Easter promise, charged to bring that word of life into the world … “bearing fruit.”
There’s just one thing which can dispel this saintly optimism.
Perfect fear casts out love.
Fear is like an umbrella, it keeps us from getting drenched. In the Seattle rain, that’s a good thing, but with the Reign of God, that’s the worst thing.
Our fear will hold us back … hold us back from being drenched in God’s Word of love and life … hold us back from bearing God’s good fruit and becoming Jesus’ disciples.
It should come as no secret to you that “perfect fear” rules the day and the hearts and minds of so many. The past week gave us enough public examples:
• The black shirted cowards in downtown Seattle whose “protest” was nothing more than idiotic mayhem;
• The stock market and oil market’s reaction once again to a weak jobs report – big losses;
• Even the report on KING 5, about how, at the rate the current Mariners are hitting, we will likely finish with the worst record in team history this year.

Well, that last one’s probably accurate … but you get the point.
And this culture of fear which surrounds us can weigh us down personally, too. When fear is in charge ... there’s no room for experimentation, exploration, expanding one’s horizons … it’s all about self-preservation, “fight or flight,” our “reptilian brain” or “instinct autopilot” takes over … the fear umbrellas come up … and the drenching Word of God’s love doesn’t stand a chance of getting to us.
Perfect fear casts out love.
This is a terrible way to live. Dry, stunted disciples … unable to bring the living water of God’s Word into other’s lives because they have prevented it from entering their own … dusty, dead congregations, no life, no hope, unable to speak any word of life into a world so desperately in need of it because they haven’t, they won’t, receive it themselves.
Perfect fear casts out love.
If any word explains the state of the world we live in today, a world which so desperately needs to hear the voice of the Church truly reflecting the voice of Jesus … not the evangelists of fear, the loudmouths who get the microphones and grab the headlines … if any word explains the state of the world we live in today … well, that’s it.
The complete opposite of what it is to be a disciple of Jesus.
Perfect love casts out fear.
Now, I realize, people of God called Nativity, I realize that you are a people who don’t like umbrellas. Not just for preventing the Seattle rain, but also the fear kind that keep away the Reign of God.
I’ve seen that here, living and being with you, over the past eight years.
And during the past month, I’ve especially felt it from you, your reflection of the love of God in Jesus Christ, drenching me as I’ve been walking through my own personal desert of death, warming me during a difficult time in my life, your reflection of Jesus’ perfect love so generously shared, casting out my fear.
Thank you.
But more … that’s precisely what our texts are calling forth from us all, toward and into the world, all the time.
Perfect love, the love of Jesus, shared generously, into a world ruled by fear and loss and death.
Perfect love, the love of Jesus, shared generously, bearing good fruit.
Drenched disciples, walking wet and fearless in our baptismal promise and heritage, the gift of God given to us freely in Jesus, forgiveness and warm, shepherded love … drenched disciples, drenched to bear fruit, good fruit, in our homes and families, our schools and teams, our jobs and places of volunteering, in line at the gas station and Costco, Fred Meyer and Bartells,
on community boards and in corporate boardrooms …
Drenched disciples, walking wet and fearless in our baptismal promise and heritage, sharing that gift precisely and particularly with those to and for whom it is “prickly” … where the world cries in perfect fear, “don’t” … yes, it’s easy to share the love of Jesus with people who we know, and like, and love, and agree (most of the time) … but “perfect love casting out fear” means sharing that love with those who are not ‘just like us,” those who are outside our ‘comfort zone,” those who don’t look like or sound like or live like or vote like us …
Yet, it’s precisely in that sharing that ‘perfect love will cast out fear.’
And that is our mission and our call, every day, every moment … sharing the love of Jesus in all places, at all times, drenched disciples sharing the love of Jesus in the time and space appropriate ways we are guided to share … we are Lutheran, after all, so we know about “good order” … Jesus’ perfect love, shining through us, so that the voices of fear and loss and death would be overcome, one trickle, one disciple, one fruit borne at a time.
Thank you Jesus. Thank you for loving us so much, that each of us are blessed and loved to go and bear your good fruit into the world you love.
Amen.