Love Casts Out Fear

This Sunday I attended a most beautiful ceremony at The Church of our Lady in Copenhagen. This church, which was originally built in the 12^th C., has been burned down or destroyed 5 times in its history. But, the Danes continue to rebuild it as a testament to faith it self. When the English ships blew the bell tower off the church with their mighty cannons in 1807, they opened the doors again in 1821. And as the Queen of Denmark walked proudly by me singing with the congregation, I felt proud of my Danish heritage.

The capacity crowd was treated to music from 3 choirs; Church on the Rock, Aavaat, Greenlandic Choir and the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir. The procession of global leaders from around the world including Archbishop Desmond Tutu were followed by citizens from the far ends of the globe carrying three symbols of Climate Change: Glacier stones from Greenland, dried up maize from Africa, and bleached chorals from the Pacific Ocean. It was a grand opening that highlighted the growing concern for the reality of Climate Change…

What most moved me was the sermon of Dr. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I would like to share some of the highlights of his talk. His talk was  entitled “Love casts out fear”, and he said that our “confidence and fearlessness is built by seeing love at work through us.” He went on to say,” “We cannot show the proper kind of love for our fellow humans unless we also work at keeping the earth as a place that is a secure home for all people and for future generations… At the present moment we are faced with the consequences of generations of failure to love the earth as we should. We are also faced with the choices that might make those consequences less destructive than they would otherwise be.”

“Each of us as an individual, each international business concern, each national government, all of us have choices. We are not doomed to carry on in a downward spiral of the greedy, addictive, loveless behavior that has helped to bring us to this point. Yet, it seems that fear still rules our heats and imaginations. We have not yet been able to embrace the cost of the decisions we know we must make. We are afraid because we don’t know how we can survive without the comforts of our existing life style. We are afraid that new policies will be unpopular with the national electorate. We are afraid that younger and more vigorous economies will take advantage of us. Or we are afraid that older historically dominant economies will use the excuse of ecological responsible to deny us our right to proper and just development. There is in a word no shortage of excellent excuses for turning away from decisions that will mean real change. But, at least let us be honest about where they come from — not necessarily irrational fear, not even necessarily purely selfish fear, but fear all the same. So long as that dominates our calculations we are stepping back from love. Love for the Creation itself… Love for one another and for the generations still unborn who need us to do whatever we can to guarantee a stable, productive and balanced world to live in.”

“Love casts out fear. The truth is that what is most likely to get us to take the right decisions for our global future is love. The temptation is to underline fear so as to dissuade one another of the urgency of the situation. Things are so bad, so threatening, that we have to do something and indeed there are moments when we might think, rather bitterly, that the human race is not frightened enough by the prospect of what it has served up for itself, but this is to drive out one sickness by another. That kind of fear can simply paralyze us as we all know. It can make us feel that the problem is too great and we may as well pull up the bed covers and wait for disaster. What’s more it can tempt us into simply blaming one another or waiting for someone else to make the first move, because we don’t trust them. We need more than that to make life-giving change to happen. And that is what we are here to say today…”

The Archbishop completed his sermon by asking us two questions: first, “how do we show we love God’s creation and secondly how can we learn to trust one another within a world with limited resources. There can be no trust without justice, knowing that my neighbor is there for me when I face insecurity or risk. How can we build international institutions that make sure the resources get to where they are needed? That for example green taxes will deliver more security for the disadvantaged and transitions and economic patterns will not weigh most heavily on those least equipped to cope. Love casts out fear. He concluded by saying, “Don’t be afraid. Act for the sake of love.”

In the end we followed the Queen and procession out of the church, lit candles in hand, hope in our hearts and urgency to act in our minds.