This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news:

China bans poet from foreign travel

Chinese Government fears Liao Yiwu

1 John 4:7-21

7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10In 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. 11Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. 15God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19We love because he first loved us. 20Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

“Knowing” in the Hebrew language is used for the sexual act: it always has overtones, therefore, of intimate sharing, which are carried over into the Greek of the New Testament. To love another human being is to know God, that is, to share God’s life, for God is love. Only this writer in the Bible dares to make this explicit identification. But right away he reveals that this love is no vague emotion but an act of God: the sending of his son to rescue the world from evil. It is however, an eternal act, a once-for-all which cuts across all time as it has begun since the before foundation of the universe and continues beyond its end. All creation lives in this act of God’s love. That’s the connection between what seems to be universal, the giving and receiving of love and what seems to be particular to Christian faith, the sending of God’s son: God’s love is the one eternal event of rescue in Jesus, which is known by name to people of Christian faith, but is also shared by all who share in love. Christian faith is a true response to God’s love and the keeper of its story but it is not its source: God is the source for God is love.

"God is Love" in Chinese Script

This passage is full of riches. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” How daring this is: Even God’s love is not perfect in itself because it seeks a response from the beloved. Only Jesus the beloved son responds perfectly in his sacrificial death but if we share in his life we share also in his response

“We love because he first loved us.” Long before modern psychology described the capacity to love as the consequence of being loved by parents, the gospel attributes the human capacity for love to God’s eternal act of love in Christ.

“Perfect love casts out fear.” None of us have loved perfectly yet this saying hits us with the smack of truth.

To be sure, I should spend some time attending to this passage. However good my commentary is I’m just a liar if I don’t love my brothers and sisters.

Luke 4:31-37

31 He went down to Capernaum, a city in Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbath. 32They were astounded at his teaching, because he spoke with authority. 33In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, 34‘Let us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ 35But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ When the demon had thrown him down before them, he came out of him without having done him any harm. 36They were all amazed and kept saying to one another, ‘What kind of utterance is this? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and out they come!’ 37And a report about him began to reach every place in the region.

an unclean demon

This narrative might be a commentary on the text, “Perfect love casts out fear.” The love of God in Jesus encounters the spirit of fear within the man and casts it out. It appears to be a “primitive” story (we’ve got beyond demons, we think) but it shows clearly how the afflicted man wants to hold on to his affliction-“Have you come to destroy us?”-and how the calm authority of love enables him to let go.

We could use this same diagnosis for our social and political pathologies; for the demon of conspicuous consumption, for example, and the demon of aggressive militarism. Both arise from fear; both can only be cast out by love.