In the well-known Thirteenth Chapter of 1 Corinthians St. Paul notes that Faith, Hope, Love remain and the greatest of these is love. Having looked at Kindness, Peace, Joy, and Hope over this Advent season, we now come to the core—to Love. To the “Reason for the Season” as popular memes put it.
Love—this is not a hearts and flowers sentimental,
commercialized version where everything looks like a Currier and Ives Christmas
painting with everything pristine and white and happy.
The Love of God is something much different. It is the
promise found in Isaiah 11:1-10 which imagines a world where the wolf shall
live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the
lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them…They will not
hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain… Speaking about this promise, Br.James Koester of the Society of St. John the Evangelist says, “As Christians,
we wait not so much for Christmas, as for the day when God will reorder all
creation, so that predator and prey will live in harmony, and the most
vulnerable will live in peace and security. This is the vision of Isaiah, and
the hope of Advent. It is the work of Jesus, and the prayer of the faithful.”
The Love of God looks like a Jewish baby born into a humble
family in the midst of a world held in tenuous peace only through the might of
Roman occupiers.
The Love of God looks like a teenage girl saying ‘Yes’ to the
unimaginable and even dangerous task of bearing a child into the world of
oppression and danger.
The Love of God looks like a foster-father racing with his
small family to Egypt to save their lives.
The Love of God is the found in Jeremiah’s call to action
that tells us For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope
(Jeremiah 20:11). We are part of bringing the Love of God to the hurt and
brokenness of our world. Our world of pandemic and division and racism and fear
and hopelessness hopes for a new way, a true hope, a real Love.
The Love of God is, as Presiding Bishop Curry noted in an interview in October, “[when] people to build relationships across differences and face painful truths…'How do we talk about love to people who don't want it?' he was asked. 'Love them anyway.'”
The Love of God is you and me seeking to acknowledge,
forgive, and heal our own woundedness so that we can see everyone (even those
we don’t like or even fear) as bearing the imprint of the Holy and deserving of
the same Love we crave.
The Love of God can be found in the small acts of kindness,
peace, joy, and hope that we offer one another daily. Let’s enter the new year
with the intention to build up and not tear down, to heal and not rend, to offer
an open hand and not a closed fist.
May your Christmas be filled with the Love of God.
Image by Laura James on Pinterest
