Love Resurrection

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Sermon for Pentecost 2023

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

Whoever fears has not been made perfect in love

Fear kills Love

Fear puts up boundaries  behind which we hide – it is the fig leaf behind which we hide – from God. God in Jesus calling us like Lazarus to rise from the death which is Fear, to the Light of Life

Last week we explored part of the work we had to do ahead of Pentecost – to embrace one another in love – to come heart to heart that the healing power of Christ might dwell amongst us – in that lovely image I shared from a colleague who dealt with a very difficult congregation member by hugging them – coming heart to heart . . . (we too readily understand that metaphors are always bodily because we bodily creatures. People talk about a heart to heart, because they know the power of the embrace of love.

And so fear is shown the door. Kicked into the lake of fire where it belongs with all of Satan’s works, for fear is the work of the devil, and the death of Jesus is about nothing if it isn’t about destroying the works of the Devil amongst which the chief is fear. My friend had a aggressive anti vaxxer in his congregation and in the imagery we used last week of Christs vulnerable embrace of All mankind upon the cross, he walked up to him and hugged him, and the healing started to flow between them. Our faith is SO bodily!

As I said the other week when Lisa shared her story about her flight attendant friend – we all have this power in us – for Christ is in everyone, and we are in Christ, the only difference is we know it and so are set free from the Slavery of Fear

Years ago my old diocese sent all the clergy to have a full medical checkup – sort of thing that would cost several hundred dollars. I remember being asked if I engaged in any hazardous activities – I laughed, ‘you mean, apart from my work?’ He was wise enough to get the joke, and then I walked into Dunedin Diocese, the first Boudaries coruse – ‘Keeping ourselves safe in ministry’ Jesus wept. Followers of ones who goes to the cross in the name of love? Or just fans?

One of the reasons we don’t see Pentecost – which is as we said last week, and again Lisa to pick up on that beautiful phrase, is that we haven’t inhaled Jesus DNA. We are stuck on the far side of Good Friday. When Jesus first appears to his disciples they are still there – rumours of life but they are gathered together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews. After all they were his fans, not his followers, not yet his disciples for they’d turned back from following because they were slaves to fear. If the Jews had killed Jesus, wouldn’t they also be out to kill his followers – indeed . . .

Peter we know is driven by fear. When Jesus says he is about to go the way of the cross, he rebukes Jesus, ‘Lord this must never happen to you’,  . . . he’s a fan, not a follower – and Jesus sees his oldest adversary facing him with that old lie about keeping safe. Get behind me Satan. Satan controls Peter – he in slavery to fear . . .

Peter doesn’t get this – he wants to make up for his failure so bangs on about how much he loves Jesus – he really loves Jesus – I will never desert you . . . and then he does. He is afraid, and in that moment speaks a truth we miss – he says ‘I never knew the man’ – and that isn’t a lie – it’s the truth. The ‘Jesus’ he loved was not Christ in Truth. He didn’t know him or love him.

This is why Jesus knows Peter will deny him, because he sees Satan pulling Peter’s strings. Satan is sifting him like wheat, but Jesus loves Peter. As he says to Peter, and all the others who will not YET take up their cross and joyfully follow him for Love’s Sake – as he speaks with them at the last supper, he says ‘where I am going now you cannot come [because you are enslaved by fear], but you will come after’

Nd then on the cross, Jesus, who himself took on our frail human flesh which is the soil in which fear takes root, takes on fleshly fear and triumphs over it by Love.  and he pours out his life on his followers – breathing on them, receive the Holy Spirit  . . . receive the Indestructible Life, the Eternal Life that is Love. Breathe in my DNA – be born again as children of God, not ruled by fear, but compelled by Love. As St John puts it, this is how we know we are from God, that we love our brothers and sisters . . .

Fear kills Love. People refuse the Cross of Love because we are afraid. The fear of Peter abandoned Jesus to his fate, and the fear of the crowds, the fear of Pilate, the fear of the Pharisees killed Love incarnate . . . Fear kills Love – as St John tells us, the one who fears has not been made complete in love for Love casts out fear.

But, as St Paul reminds us, Love never fails . . . I often see love most clearly in the lives of those wmongst us who most people don’t notice, just quietly getting on with loving in often terrible circumstances – revealing love, suffering long, keeping no record of wrongs, rarely speaking about Jesus, because they have become Jesus . . . they have his DNA woven into them

For it is Love that is indestructible. You can kill it, out of fear, but it just gets up! And walks right back into the lions den . . . this is Pentecost. And look at the difference in Peter! Jesus has poured out his DNA and now Jesus is back! The Body of Christ, the disciple body is gathered – and Peter standing with the eleven, stands once more before the crowds. Here is Christ again, facing the Jews, the Jews whom if you remember the whole speech says ‘this Jesus whom you crucified’ – they are witnessing to Jesus by doing the Jesus thing – rising from the dead, turning the other cheek, coming back over and over relentlessly, doing good to those who hate, blessing those who persecute, revealing themselves as Children of God, living by the power of the indestructible life of Jesus.

The eternal Life of God who Is indestructible because he Is love

St Peter no doubt would now echo the words of St Paul

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In Peter, but more in the disciples body as a whole, Jesus is present once more. Going back to Love once more those who have slain Love once, Love returns. Love Resurrection.

And we know what happened next – the church starts to grow. Why? because people need to know that love is unconditional before they respond. They will hit out and thrash like a toddler tantrum wanting to know that it is true, that there is nothing that they can do that will separate them from love, for the world screams out the satanic lie ‘Love is conditional’.

For some that means over and over again suffering for their sake, ‘In the name of Jesus’ – but this is of course to use Lisa’s lovely phrase – Jesus DNA. They have received the Holy Spirit, breathed in his DNA – and have received the gift of Eternal Life – Life that can go on and on receiving all that fear will throw at it, and over and again rise from the dead.

Over the years as the church learnt, the blood of the martyrs was the seedbed of the church, but it wasn’t simply that death, it was the quiet patient acts of Christians who with the life of Jesus in them, blessed those who persecuted them, blessed and didn’t curse – who were not overcome by evil – by fear – but overcame evil by good. It wasn’t simply that they were doing what Jesus told them. No! We Must understand this – it was not simply that they were being obedient to Jesus, Jesus was inside them by the Spirit. They had the same Jesus who endured the shame and humilitation of the Cross in the name of Love, who would die for those who hated him, who knew the power of the indestructible power of Love.

So Peter along with the other disciples step back into the public square, not in their own power but that of the Holy Spirit, with Jesus DNA in them, driven to Love, facing death in the face of the Roman Authorities, maybe even some of those who had driven the nails into Jesus, acing death in the faces of the Scribes and the Pharisees who hated Jesus and wanted him dead  – facing death in the faces of the crown, many who had cried out ‘Crucify him!’ Indeed St Peter says, ‘this Christ, whom YOU crucified’ . . . In the face of Death, Love gets up – Love Resurrection . . . Jesus is back.

For those who are united to Christ – The only thing to be afraid of is fear itself, which destroys the soul . . .

Love Crucified Arose. Jesus is back!

Alleluia, Amen.