Sermon at the Sung Eucharist on the Fifth Sunday of Easter 2018

Rosie Keville lives with the consequences of fear. Every day Rosie is confronted by terrified young men, the victims of stabbing on London’s streets. Rosie is a trauma caseworker with the St Giles Trust, and it is her job to help young stabbing victims to turn their lives around. You may have read about her work in the papers a couple of weeks ago.

Rosie is based in an NHS trauma ward in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. The ward is dedicated to providing care for those, mainly young men, who have been stabbed. She is with them when they arrive alone, scared and in pain on the trauma ward. They are terrified of what awaits them when they have been patched up and have to return to the streets. She speaks of a 17 year old “with a serious reputation” who was recently injured in a revenge attack by two 14 year olds. The older boy was not going to take the attack lying down. Rosie had to get the younger boys moved out of the borough altogether.

Sometimes a lad Rosie is working with is killed – fear has won the day. But there are also successes. Five years ago nearly 50% of the patients who had been stabbed or shot would be readmitted to the ward. Now the readmission rate has dropped to 1%. But sadly, there are more first-time stabbing victims than ever.

What drives this violence prevalent in some parts of London, and other urban centres across the country? Fear is one of the crucial drivers, say those who are dealing at first hand with stabbing victims. Fear of losing face, fear of not belonging, fear of becoming a victim in turn; fear drives the perceived need to carry a weapon: fear of being hurt, fear of being rejected, fear of not being able to cope, fear of revenge attacks. Fear all too often leads to the unthinking, swift and sometimes fatal use of knives and guns. Fear fuels the cycle of violence.

When he wrote his first letter, I don’t suppose that John was thinking about knife crime on urban streets. But he was thinking about God’s purposes for creation, and in particular about God’s purposes for us human beings. He writes of the day of God’s judgement, the day when all truth will be known: the truth about ourselves, and the truth of God’s love and mercy for his creation. This is what he says:

Love 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. There 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. We love because [God] first loved us.

John is not suggesting that we who are Christians are already perfect in love, and that we have no fear. That simply isn’t true, as we are all too aware. What John is doing is reminding us that good, healthy relationships arise out of the experience of being loved. Our first experiences of being loved are usually centred on our parents, or at least on those people who care for us in babyhood and childhood. For those lucky enough to be born and brought up within a stable and loving family or its equivalent, the experience of being loved freely and generously is life-giving and life sustaining. It enables us to thrive, to learn what it is to live in community, to form healthy relationships, to grow in wisdom and understanding, and thus to take advantage of the opportunities which life has to offer.

But for those who do not have the opportunity to experience being loved in their early years, whose experience of parenting is one of neglect or abuse, or of simply being ignored, or rejected altogether, it is challenging to learn how to form and sustain healthy relationships. It’s not impossible, but it is often very difficult. Those who have to fend for themselves at a very young age soon learn to be very careful whom they trust; the seeds of fear can be sown deep and early.

Of course, St John is making the point that all people, without exception, are first loved by God, without any strings attached. We are simply loved for who we are, as we are. God loves us first of all, before we make any response to God or to each other. Yet we know God’s love most often through our experience of human love. When we’re young, we all explore what it means to belong to different groups – family first, then groups of neighbours and friends; and eventually, we discover a sense of belonging in intimate relationships which we choose to enter, and among work colleagues, and here in a community of faith, and not least among those with whom we share leisure interests and so on. And if we find faith, we’ll very often do so within the group or groups where we feel most accepted, most at home. So we, and the Christian tradition as a whole, speak of God as our Father, of Jesus as our Friend – the analogies run deep in our human experience.

But if those dependable relationships with adults simply don’t exist, or are deeply damaged, you’ll look elsewhere for your sense of belonging – to a tight-knit school group, to a sports team, maybe to a gang with all its attendant complications. It’s all too easy to fall into destructive, defensive, fear-driven behaviour. That’s what Rosie Kelville is dealing with day in, day out.

So what do Christians have to offer in communities where violence is driven by fear? What can we do to help our society, the communities where we live and work, to live more by love and less by fear?

I want to suggest just a few simple steps which any of us might take to put into practice what it means for love to cast out fear.

First, cultivate courtesy and respect towards everyone – and I mean everyone - with whom you have contact, whatever their age, their education, their background. Know your own fears, and don’t do people down behind their backs or even face to face. Practise thinking well of young people, whatever their culture, wherever they live. Even the most violent gang members want to be loved; even the most destructive teenager is longing to belong. They may not put it that way. They may want to swagger and boast. And they may have yet to discover that it is possible to learn how to trust, and to live well, not driven by fear. But you may just have the word, or the kind act that will help a young person to begin to learn to trust, and not to fear rejection.

Second, if you are someone who uses social media – Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or whatever – learn to use social media well. Campaign for the better regulation of social media. Campaign not as an act of censorship, but in order to help to curb the worst excesses of social media: the expression of anonymised hatred without any comeback. How often do we hear of people driven to self-hatred and self-harm because they are bullied on social media? This is not love casting out fear; this is fear-driven hatred poisoning people’s self-worth. This is fear-driven bullying pure and simple. In our use of social media, we need to learn how to take better care of our neighbours. No gossipy, nasty posts or emails; no photos of which someone might be ashamed. Self-restraint in self-expression can be a real act of love in our current age.

And finally, be honest with yourself and others about your own fears. Of what am I afraid; of whom am I afraid? Why? And offer those fears to God; ask God to help you to handle those fears well. Let his generous love have free rein in your own life to transform your fears into the trust and respect and freedom which he longs for you to enjoy.

Courtesy, self-restraint, honesty before God – all can result in acts of kindness which can change us and our relationships: nothing drastic, nothing impossible, just simple acts of kindness.

Rosie Keville recounts a telling story of a group of seven teenagers huddled around a friend, in a state of high anxiety. She says, “I could see one was bleeding. Been hit with a hammer, his nail was hanging off. I heard them shouting to get a ting [a knife to you and me]. I knew exactly what was going on.” They were planning revenge.

Rosie marched straight up to them. “I said, ‘Look, I don’t want to get involved, but you’re bait. Is this guy worth it? Are you ready to go to jail for him? Sort it out. God home, and let your mum clean up that cut up.’ They said, ‘Yes, Miss.’”

Honesty, courtesy, boldness, truthfulness – that morning saw a simple act of love go a long way to casting out fear.