Adults mistakenly think that children always need to learn from them, but perhaps it would behoove adults to learn a thing or two from children from time to time. I will never forget what occurred one Sunday when I offered the Dismissal at the end of Mass. As I chanted the words, “Let us bless the Lord,” I extended my arms towards the congregation, as I usually do. And as I did so, a child in the congregation immediately echoed this gesture back to me.
It was a beautifully profound act. It was unsolicited. No one else in the congregation was doing it, but this child instinctively discerned that it was only natural to respond to what I had done.
This open receptivity of children is what makes them such excellent learners of languages. Before the weary jadedness of adulthood enters in, children know how to respond without censoring themselves. They respond, in kind, to how they are treated. A funny face will frequently elicit a smile or laugh from a baby. A facial expression of distress may very well provoke a state of anxiety in a child. And extending arms out as a gesture of bidding, results in a similar gestural response.
It is no wonder that children can also teach us something about loving God. The role of formation typically lies with adults, but perhaps we adults can learn a few things from children. And the behavior of a child might even point to an initiating gesture from God.
It is terribly tragic that the older we get, the harder it may be for us to reciprocate God’s own gesture towards us. When we respond in our own ways, we most likely believe we are being true to how God has acted towards us. But it is possible that we have misinterpreted this action.
If we were to ask those around us how they imagine God’s stance towards humankind, what do you think they would say? Would they picture God with arms extended in love to us, or with a finger wagging in chastisement? I’m guessing that many would choose the latter. If my own experience is accurate, I think that most people’s conception of God is one of fear.
Fear can, of course, be holy fear, or fear shot through with great anxiety. Holy fear is entirely appropriate. It reinforces our understanding of God as God, and us as mere human beings. Holy fear engenders awe and inspires worship.
But anxious fear is toxic. This is the obsessive fear of condemnation and of being punished. Although fear can be intended to command devotion, it usually results in lack of respect and disintegration of relationship.
The author of the First Letter of John is quite clear: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” The fear of which John speaks is the fear associated with judgment. It is about the future of our souls before God. John is not so naïve as to believe that we will never be afraid in our lives. But John also understands that fear is a useful barometer for the state of our souls.
If we are in a state of unholy fear, then it may be telling about our own spiritual health. For if love means to walk as Jesus would have us walk, then our own anxious fear about salvation may be an indicator that we are not walking as we should walk. Fear, in this case, is a helpful guide as we seek to change the way we live.
But John states that God and unholy fear do not mix. Indeed, they cannot mix. It is like one of those electronic forms where you can choose one option, but not both. You cannot click the boxes for both love and fear. And if God is love, as John tells us, then fear cannot exist if we truly know God.
Why, then, do so many Christians seem to live in a constant state of anxious fear? Fear has often been the tactic used to make people attend church or say their prayers. It has been used to enforce specific standards of morality. Fear has been wielded to keep people in line, whether for their own sake or for the sake of those in authority.
This baseline of fear has spread beyond the Church to the world around us. Fear is a constant. People are afraid that they will lose their money or their status. They are afraid of being unloved or of lacking approval. They are terrified of being wrong. And often this circle loops back to a fear of God, because if they are afraid of being wrong, they are ultimately afraid of God’s anger when they are wrong.
We would be remiss in denying the numerous Scriptural depictions of God’s wrath and anger. But we would likewise be remiss in ignoring the constant gesture that reappears in Scripture from beginning to end. It is the gesture of God extending his arms out to humankind in love.
And John illustrates this most forcefully in the iconic image of love. It is the visible sign that God’s posture towards us is one of extended arms rather than a wagging finger. This visible sign is the gift of his only Son for the salvation of the world.
This gift is the visualization par excellence of God’s arms reaching out to us. Jesus Christ, offered to the world so that it may have life, is the corrective to all our misshapen images of God’s relationship with us. The Son did not fight against those who opposed him. He did not seek revenge, nor did the Father. But the Son willingly laid down his life, even for his enemies. Indeed, he broke the cycle of revenge in the world.
If we keep this image at the forefront of our minds, then we begin to understand that throughout the long history of Scripture and even to our present day, our fallible human minds have distorted God’s gesture towards us into a humanly interpreted gesture. The gestures that we have received from our fellow sinful neighbors have been echoed back to one another, and even ultimately back to God. We have projected our own anger, deceit, hatred, and fear onto God, who has revealed in Jesus Christ that his gesture towards us has only ever been one of arms extended out in love.
At what point did humankind begin to substitute its own actions of chastisement and revenge for God’s central act of love? Was it at the Fall? Was it at the first hint of human betrayal? Was it at the first experience of suffering or tragedy? And the anxious fear that has resulted explains so much of the world’s sin. If we cannot accept the image of God’s arms extended out towards us, it is difficult ever to accept that we are loved. And if we cannot accept that we are loved, it is nearly impossible to treat others with mercy and compassion.
It is then a vicious cycle, for every accolade that another receives is one that we do not receive. Every dollar given to a person in need is one taken from us. Every gift bestowed upon another is something we lack.
And when we refuse to accept God’s gesture of love towards us, even the good actions we undertake are undertaken from a deficit mentality. We must engage in good works because it is necessary to win God’s love, because we are scared to go without it. Every prayer said and every Mass attended without being a response to love then become the fulfillment of an obligation, because otherwise, the gesture of extended arms is contorted into one of a wagging finger.
Fear is the root of so much evil and spiritual unhealth. But love is the antidote. This antidote is not sickly sweet or saccharine. It is not amorphous and oblique. It is concrete and direct. Love is not even really visible in our actions towards our neighbors, because even these can be deceitful. But this true love is active in the primal response to God’s first gesture towards us.
Love is seeing God’s arms beckoning to us and then instinctively responding with our arms open to him, and consequently to our neighbors. Love is a response; fear is a reaction. Love is not one more thing to gain favor with God or others, but it is simply who we are when we respond to God’s gesture towards us. Love does not employ guilt or shame or manipulation. It simply breeds more love because its goodness is contagious.
But fear is when we turn God into a god that can never be appeased. It is a hungry god that feeds itself by sadistically withholding love and using the wagging finger as a motivation for control. Fear, ironically, is our own idolization of humanity’s sinfulness. And the angry god of our own devising is no god at all, because it has no relationship with us.
But love for the God who created and redeemed us is nothing short of pure worship. Love is not one more thing to do but who we have to be because of who God is towards us. And it all stems from that gesture that is all about God and not so much about us. It is the Son, the image of the invisible God, who has affirmed that the posture of God towards his beloved children has ever only been one thing, no matter how much humankind has misinterpreted it. And this gesture is a loving Father, with arms extended in love, waiting and waiting and waiting until one day, his children finally see what he has done for them. And then they reach their arms back out to him.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 2, 2021