I have seen the words, "No Fear," on the back of cars driven by young men with their caps turned around backwards. I have seen "No Fear" emblazoned on T-shirts. I don't know about you, but the first time I saw those words, "No Fear," I immediately thought of 1 John 4:18:

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

I thought, isn't it wonderful, these kids are so sophisticated in the Bible. Then somebody told me that that is not what "No Fear" refers to. Which caused me some trepidation, because some time ago I borrowed a word from the teen culture to use as a sermon title. I put it out there on the board. The younger members of the staff told me that I would probably want to change the title since the word I put out there for all the world to see had a meaning in the sub-culture that would embarrass me. So now all titles for my sermon go through a committee, headed by Randy Newton. He tells me that it is all right to put "No Fear" out there on the board.

The author of I John is addressing a church that has lost its vision. John writes to them to say it is really very simple. We are here to make real the love that God has for the world. We are the recipients of God's love, those of us who call ourselves Christians, that is given to us, unexpectedly, undeservedly, unconditionally.

In the passage that was read for us this morning, John says,

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Which is the whole point of the gospel. God took the initiative. God loves us even if we are unlovable. God still loves us.

That is the good news, and it is still news for many people who still think that love is to be a reward for good behavior. If you shape up, then I will love you. If you love me, then I will love you. If you do what I want, become the person I want you to become, then I will love you.

We order our relationships with one another conditionally, so we expected God to do the same, to love us when we shaped up. And that was the surprise. God didn't treat us that way.

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us.

Then John makes it personal. Some might feel that he makes it too personal, because if you have received this amazing love of God in your life, as you claim, then it will show. He says,

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Carlyle Marney told about an old man who was asked once, "Have you ever seen God?" He said, "No, but I have known a couple of Jesuses in my lifetime." That is what John is talking about. No one has ever seen God, but what you can see is God's love.

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

And according to John, there are two places especially where you can see that. You can see it when you approach death, and you can see it when you approach the neighbor.

Look first at what the end of life would look like if, in fact, God dwells in us. If God's love dwells in us, then "we will have boldness on the day of judgment." That is the way John puts it. We will have boldness on the day of judgment because "there is no fear in love, perfect love casts out fear."

The fear he is talking about is the fear of what is going to happen to us at the end of our life. It is expected in our time that we will not talk about such things, or at least when we do, we will use euphemisms, or we will rationalize it. Which is what we generally do, we rationalize it. We say death is "only natural." We have analyzed the process of dying, the way science does. We have objectified it. We have laid it out in its various stages. This is what you can expect. So it looks like it's natural. That is the assumption of science, if a phenomenon is repeated enough times, it becomes natural.

Well it may be natural for you to die, but not for me. For me, it is the most unnatural thing that I can think of. The natural thing for me is to keep on living. We are told by the naturalists that there are six phases to human life: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, old age, and death. I can accept five of the six. Five of them are natural. One of them is unnatural. The sixth is not natural, it is terrible.

A woman's mother died. Somebody hears about it and says to that person, "I am sorry. You have our sympathy." Then she asks, "How old was your mother?"

"Well she was ninety years old."

"Oh, well, then it is all right."

As if it matters how old the person is. As if it is less painful. As if it is less a sorrow when we lose a parent, or a friend, or a spouse.

The problem is, we are the only animals that know that we are going to die. That knowledge creates anxiety in us. We cover up the anxiety with euphemisms, objectify it with science, and we soften it with cosmetics. That is the way we handle death.

I prefer the biblical way. In the Bible, death is the enemy, "the last enemy." God has sent his son to conquer it, which he did in his resurrection on Easter. Now because he lives, we, too, shall live. So John says you can have "boldness" in approaching this enemy.

I love the word that he uses, "boldness." It is a word that is used to describe somebody going to battle the enemy. It is the way David approached the giant, Goliath, without fear. I can see David going to face Goliath, wearing only a T-shirt saying "No Fear." David rejected the armor of Saul. He said, "I don't need it, because the Lord is with me." John says if God's love abides in you, then that is all you need. "There is no fear if God's love abides in you, for perfect love casts out fear."

I say, no more of this natural business. I don't want to die a natural death, like a plant. Just fade, wither, and flop over. I don't want that. I want to face death with courage, boldness, and hope, because I know that though I die, I will live, because of the victory given to me through my Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a hymn in our hymnal written by Natalie Sleeth. I get all kinds of notes, incidentally, about the hymns. I get notes saying, "Why don't we sing some contemporary hymns?" Well, this hymn was written in 1985. The hymnal was published in 1989. That is about as contemporary as you can get. On the other hand, I get as many notes saying, "Why don't we sing some of the old hymns?" I figure that as long as the number coming from each side is equal, I am doing a pretty good job in selecting the hymns.

This hymn is a wonderful hymn, hymn No. 707 in our hymnal. It is called the "Hymn of Promise." She wrote it shortly before her husband discovered he had a terminal illness. The hymn was performed as an anthem at a festival of her anthems at Pasadena Community Church in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her husband heard it there, and said that he wanted it sung at his memorial service, which it was. She then arranged it as a hymn and it was accepted into the hymnal.

There are three verses to the hymn. It begins the way Paul wrote to the Corinthians when he talked about death and resurrection. Paul used the analogy of the seed. He said the seed is buried in the ground in one form, and it comes up in a different form. So when we die and are buried, we will be resurrected in a new body. So she began,

In the bulb there is a flower;
In the seed, an apple tree.

She said the inspiration for the hymn came from an evening she and her husband spent with friends. After supper they had wonderful conversation, and it turned to T. S. Eliot, the poet. Somebody recited a line from one of his poems, "In our end is our beginning." That inspired the hymn and the last verse.

In our end is our beginning;
in our time, infinity;
in our doubt there is believing;
in our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection;
at the last, a victory.

That is our hope. No one has seen God. But you can see God's love in the way Christians approach death with boldness, hope, courage and, no fear, "for perfect love casts out fear."

You can also see God's love in the way Christians approach the neighbor. There are no more unequivocal words in all of scripture than these:

Those who say, "I love God," and hate their neighbor, are liars; for those who do not love their neighbor whom they can see, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

John was writing to a congregation that had lost its vision and had turned inward. The Church's vision is outward. They had turned inward, as churches so often do, arguing with one another about all kinds of things. In this case, they were arguing with one another about theology, some saying, "We have all the truth and therefore the rest of you are benighted." The results were predictable. There were hurt feelings, divisions, things said that shouldn't be said, recriminations. You know the way it happens.

John writes to them. If you say that you are Christian, then give the evidence. Not only in the way you face death with boldness, but in the way you face the neighbor in love. "For if you say you love God, and you hate your neighbor, then you are a liar."

If the only way anybody is going to be able to see God, is to see God's love at work in the lives of people, then make that love visible. St. Francis said, "Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words."

I thought it was significant that we read this lesson on this Sunday, which is the convening of the President's Summit on the Future of America. One of our members, incidentally, Frank Till, is one of the ten delegates from San Diego County chosen to represent all of us there at the president's summit. All of the living presidents will be there, except Mr. Reagan, who will be represented by Mrs. Reagan. Mrs. Johnson will be there. The general chairman of the event is General Colin Powell.

It is an effort to revive volunteerism in America by calling attention to the fact that we have these enormous social problems in our society that government has not been able to solve. Now government is pulling back. I firmly believe that there must be a partnership between government and individuals and institutions in our society if we are going to solve the problems that are facing us. It is to the point where we can say, the future of the nation is at stake, because the problems will be exacerbated with the elimination of the welfare safety net that has been a part of the social fabric of this society for sixty years. The citizens who will feel that impact most severely are children and youth.

The neglect of children and youth in our society is already a tragedy. The use of drugs in our society drops to a lower age every year. Thirty years ago we were concerned that there were drugs in our colleges and universities. Now they are in the upper elementary grades. It is said that there are fifteen million youth at risk in this society. Teenage suicide has doubled in the last ten years. We hold the world's record now for teenage pregnancy.

Last week I attended The City Club where Tony Robbins, who is also a part of the steering committee for the summit, analyzed the situation by pointing out that this generation has more information than any other generation in the history of the world and less guidance. Young people have all they want to know at their fingertips, literally. They all know how to work computers. But an increasing number of them have no caring adult in their life to guide them.

It has now been documented through a study of Big Brothers, an institution that discovered years ago that if you are going to save kids, give them a caring adult. They discovered that if there is a caring adult in the life of a young person, the chances are that that person is going to live a productive, happy, joyful life, even in the environment where those without adults caring for them are almost destined to have lives of misery.

It seems to me that the sign of a civilized society, and I don't care how sophisticated the society is, or how advanced technologically, or how wealthy it is, it is not civilized if it doesn't care for its young. It seems to me, and also to the writer of the epistle of John, that the sure sign of a Christian community is that they are concerned about such things, concerned about those who are neglected in our society. And if it says it is a church, and does nothing about it, it is lying. That is the kind of blunt language John uses to the Church.

This church is committed to do something about what is happening in our society. In fact, this church has always been involved in what is happening in our society. But next month you will have another opportunity when Cecil Steppe will be with us. He is also going to speak at a fund-raiser for the Good Neighbor Center. You ought to support the center, the presence of the Methodist Church in a part of the city where there is an abundance of children of high risk. But he is also going to be here on May 18. After he speaks we hope we can organize a task force that will try to come up with proposals that this church can use to get involved in intervening in the lives of people in this city in such a way that it will make a difference.

We should do that for two reasons. The first is, we are an institution set in the heart of this city, tax-exempt. We ought to contribute something to the quality of life in this city. Secondly, we are a Church of Jesus Christ, and we are under a mandate to make visible God's love for all.

You also have, as you heard from Paul Pankratz, the opportunity to make a commitment to the Covenant with Tomorrow to support the Church which for 2,000 years has provided those things that are necessary to insure that the lives of children are going to be happy, productive and joyful.

The evidence is there. No one can deny this. What young people need at the minimum are two things: they need a loving community, and they need an adult who cares for them. For all of these years the Church has been the one enduring institution that has provided that safe environment, that loving environment, and adults to model for young people what the Christian life is all about.

Jim Wallis is the founder of the Sojourner's Community in Washington, D. C. He has also, incidentally, consented to be one of the leaders of the event in Philadelphia this week. I don't think there is anyone who is more articulate in proclaiming that compassion for the poor is not an option for Christians; it is a mandate for Christians.

He tells the story of a friend of his who happened to be in Sarajevo when that city was under siege. He saw a young girl shot by a sniper fall to the street. A man came over, picked her up. Wallis' friend had a rented car. He drove the car over, and said, "Get in. I will take you to the hospital."

They started heading for the hospital. On the way the man holding the girl in the back seat on his lap, said, "Hurry, mister, she is still alive."

A little while later he said, "Hurry, mister, she is still breathing."

A few moments later he said, "Hurry, she is still warm."

They got to the emergency room of the hospital, turned the child over to the doctors. He said, "Hurry please. She is getting cold."

She died. The two men were washing the blood from their hands. The man who had picked her up, with tears in his eyes, said, "I don't know how I am going to tell her father that she is dead."

Wallis' friend was astonished. He said, "I thought she was your child?"

He said, "Aren't they all."

That is the way God looks upon it. They are all God's children.

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. Those who say, "I love God," and hate their neighbor, are liars; for those who do not love the neighbor whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.