A Word from Pastor Lisa: Love Came Down at Christmas
Dear friends, let’s love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born from God and knows God. The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love. This is how the love of God is revealed to us: God has sent his only Son into the world so that we can live through him. This is love: it is not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our sins. Dear friends, if God loved us this way, we also ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, God remains in us and his love is made perfect in us.
–1 John 4:7-12 (CEB)
This pandemic has awakened my senses. Perhaps it’s the slower pace of life. Perhaps it’s the extended time at home. Even the most ordinary moments seem stronger, brighter, and more lovely to me.
While I’ve experienced all of these before, I’m more alive in my own skin. I sense them more deeply than ever before. To me, that’s what incarnation is all about – becoming fully human. When God put on flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, God was becoming fully present in the ordinary circumstances of our lives. God had covenantal relationships with the people long before Jesus, but something amazingly special happened in that moment. The fully divine became fully human, and the world was no longer the same. “This is how the love of God is revealed to us,” says 1 John 4. “God has sent [God’s] only Son into the world so that we can live through him.”
This Sunday we will light the fourth candle in our Advent wreath as we explore Mary’s song. Traditionally, this is a Sunday focused on God’s love for us. I wonder how in this difficult and non-traditional year, you might find signs of God’s love and light around you. Maybe you’ll send a Christmas card or call a long-time friend. Perhaps you’ll share a meal over Zoom. Maybe you’ll listen to your favorite carol or snuggle up to a holiday movie. Perhaps you’ll give a gift given to someone you don’t know with no expectations in return. There are so many ways to love each other with the love that comes from God.
When we love each other in this way, we become more fully human. In his 2016 artwork, The Fierce Guide, Brian Andreas writes, “Let love guide you, even in the smallest things, because that is what all of life is hungry for.” May God’s love guide us into a deeper experience of our humanity in Jesus during this holy season. Amen.