Plant Corn, Get Corn—September 1, 2023

 

Plant Corn, Get Corn—September 1, 2023

“So 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. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, 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 he first loved us. Those 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. The commandment we have from his is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” (1 John 4:16-21)

I am forever indebted to the Pennsylvanian saints who have taught me the expression, “Plant corn, get corn.” That little proverb has taught me a great deal about this passage from 1 John. And about the love of God everywhere else, too.

Surely, such an obvious truth would have been a no-brainer to even a child of the suburbs like me, but for whatever reason, it has only been in the recent years, where I picked up that expression, that it all clicked. You plant corn, you are going to get corn. No question. And the usual application of that pithy little aphorism is equally true, too. Most often, I hear it in reference to family resemblances: so-and-so acts just like her mother, or such-and-such a person ends up in the same patterns as his father. It’s no surprise to anybody when those things happen, because, hey, you plan corn, you are going to get corn.

And, oddly enough, that’s just how it is between us and God. We, who have been grabbed hold of by the love of God, we are going to love others, too, the same way, because God’s love has taken root in us. It really is almost an organic connection between God's action and ours. God's love produces exactly what you would expect in us—little echoes of that same love. It's not like a vending machine where you put in coins, and something very different—candy, or pop, or gum—comes out on the other side. It's not that God puts love into us and expects to get something else back as payment or something worth the cost of that love out of us. It’s more like planting seeds. God plants seeds of divine love into us, and—of course, it's only natural!—that same kind of divine love sprouts up in the soil of our hearts, putting out buds and fruit for others, and even sending out little missionary seeds like dandelion wisps to take root in others, or new stalks of corn with new kernels to become the next year’s crop, if you want to stick with the same plant in your mental picture. God’s love for us, which always comes first, then does something within us so that we bear that love to the world; and the world will see what God is like because they have seen it in us. Plant corn, get corn.

That’s why 1 John isn’t bogged down by fears of God’s judgment in all of this passage about loving others. We don’t have to be afraid anymore of whether we are doing “enough,” or whether we are going to be “zapped” for our lives not looking godly enough. That is the thinking of fear, and as John says here, genuine love casts out fear—the same language the biblical writers use for what Jesus would do to a demon: exorcize it. We don’t have to be afraid that our efforts won’t live up to our quota, or that God will one day wake up and realize that we aren’t carrying our share of the load and kick us out of the family. No, God’s love is going to do its thing in us. God has planted corn—we are going to be the corn that God planted. It may take a while, and we may waste a lot of time complicating things for God, too, because we are still in a lot of ways stinkers. But God is going to bring love out of us because God’s own life dwells within us. God, John says, “abides” in us, and we “abide” in God, too.

So, in the end, if we find ourselves having to ask the question, “Why should I do good, loving things to other people?” we are missing the point. It’s not a matter of being afraid we’ll go to hell for not doing a sufficient amount of good deeds. We don’t do good things in order to get on God’s good side or rack up heaven points, either. And yet on the other hand, they are not merely an optional “extra-credit” assignment for those select few who want to ‘wow’ God. It’s not about fear, and it’s not about bonus-points. It’s just what happens when God loves you first—love transforms. Love works its way into the nooks and crannies of your soul. Love eventually seeps out of you. God has planted it in you—what else do you expect will come out?

Lord God, let your love take hold and take root in us, and then let us be more and more moved naturally to do what your love leads us to do. Grow corn in us today, God. Grow corn.