What Has Love Got to Do with It?

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Lately, I have been thinking a lot about love. Not the kind of romantic love that conjures up warm and fuzzy feelings when thinking about that someone special in our lives, but the love of God made real for us in Jesus Christ. The Incarnation of God’s unwavering love for all creation.

The greatest disease in the world is not tuberculosis or leprosy; noted Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The greatest disease “is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.” One might also point to the sickness of simply not seeing others as God’s beloved children.

Recently I read a story by Brian J. Pierce who writes about a photo exhibit of Peruvian children who had suffered greatly during twenty years of warfare and social upheavals. Many of the large panels included quotes from the children depicted on the large black-and-white panels. Beneath the photo of a malnourished eight-year-old boy named Gabriel, was a card that read, “Saben que yo existo, pero nedie me ve” (“They know I exist, but no one sees me”).

Sadly, invisibility is one of the greatest societal diseases of our time. As people of privilege, we often lose sight of the inherent dignity and worth of all of God’s children. In so doing we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to encounter the living Christ who shows up in the places and people we often overlook or ignore.

Some 500 years earlier Martin Luther reminded congregants that “remembering the poor” was a lived response to the “Happy Exchange” that comes to us during the sacrament of Holy Communion — sacred space where “Christ and all of his holy ones take our wretchedness and, in exchange, give us their blessedness.” In response to this gift, writes Luther, we are to direct ourselves toward our neighbors in need, continuing this exchange. Because the fact of the matter is that God does not need what we have to give, but our neighbors do. “As love and support are given to you,” continues Luther, “you in turn must render love and support to Christ and his needy ones.”

“We can cure physical diseases with medicine,” notes Mother Teresa, “but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. Many people in the world are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love.”

What has love got to do with a life of faith? Everything!

Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus

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During Advent, many congregations sing the beautiful hymn Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus. For good reason. The hymn speaks of our desire to be set free from our fears and sins while also expressing a yearning for Jesus, the “joy of every longing heart.”

When evening falls on December 24^th, Advent will give way to Christmas, a time when we will have the opportunity to attend worship services to celebrate and give thanks for the long-awaited Messiah’s birth.

No doubt many people had expected the Messiah to overthrow the Roman oppressors and restore Israel’s power. While still others hoped for a royal Messiah who would restore the glory of King David’s lineage.

“But as the prophets warned,” notes Mary Elizabeth Sperry, “God’s ways are not our ways.” God is not bound by human expectations. And though we cling to the promise that God will come to us, be prepared to be caught off-guard. Rest assured, God will come, but more often in unanticipated and surprising ways. Coming to us not in power and might, but more often in the ordinary, routine, and unexpected of everyday life.  

Instead of coming to us as an all-conquering hero, Jesus’s entry into history could not have been more unassuming. Who would think of looking for a Messiah in a stable? Only a few lowly shepherds and sign readers from the East even noticed.

“Christmas is not really Jesus’ birthday at all,” writes pastor and theologian David Lose, “rather, it is ours. Christmas is … the day we celebrate our birth as children of God, the keeping of all God’s promises, and the beginning of the restoration of all creation.”

The heart of the Christmas story is the Incarnation, a living and evolving tale of God’s activity in our lives. For as the ancient saying reminds us, “The wood of the manger becomes the wood of the cross.”

Born Thy people to deliver,

Born a child and yet a King,

Born to reign in us forever…

God, Are You There?

Lately, I have been struggling to come to grips with the ongoing reports of warfare in Eastern Europe, the increasing death toll of civilians trapped in a hellish war zone in Gaza from which they cannot escape, and the ongoing pandemic of gun violence and bitter partisan divisions closer to home.

If you are like me, you may be asking yourself, “Where is God in all of this? Has God abandoned us?” Like the prophet Isaiah before us we cry out in desperation, begging God to tear open the heavens and come to save us from the world’s violence, hatred, and brokenness (Isa. 64:1). To save us from ourselves.

When asked the same question following the chaos triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Reverend Rafael Malpica-Padilla replied: “God is walking with the refugees. God is at work in the families opening their homes. I see God in the volunteers giving of their time and care for the people coming their way. I see God dying in the streets of Ukraine.”

God has not abandoned God’s people in our time of need. Far from it. God is in the midst of God’s people, especially with all who are suffering, grieving, and dying. And God invites all of us, with the gifts entrusted to our care, to participate in God’s healing mission for the world.

“Faith,” writes theologian Walter Bruggemann, “requires a ‘thick memory’ that is always letting ancient miracles be reenacted in fresh and daring ways.” If that is the case, then it should not surprise any of us that the prophet Isaiah’s voice resounds throughout Advent. Though Isaiah never flinched from the reality of human suffering or the consequences of sin, he could always see beyond it.

When the prophet’s dire warnings of divine judgment finally occurred, Isaiah’s condemnation, anguish, and anger turned to HOPE. Not some pie-in-the-sky pipedream, but a prophetic hope grounded in the assurance of God’s abiding presence. Even in the aftermath of military defeat, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and forced exile in a foreign land.

When their world had been turned upside down, Isaiah reminded people of God’s saving activity throughout Israel’s history. Reassuring the exiles that God had not abandoned them. Proclaiming loud and clear that God was faithful, even when God’s people were not. Thereby imaginatively recasting a new future amid the ruins of the present by recalling God’s saving and liberating activity throughout history: leading the Israelites out of slavery, swallowing up Pharoah’s chariots in the Red Sea, making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

With Isaiah as our guide, may we cling to the promise of God’s ongoing creating, redeeming, and saving action through the entirety of history, even as we call upon God in our time of need to come and save us.

The season of Advent invites us to be honest about our human condition by confronting us with the reality of human brokenness and the need for God’s presence in our lives. Helping us, especially those who struggle to perceive God in the broken spaces and places of everyday life, to experience anew the many ways that God with us IS!

Although it is tempting to see Advent only as a 4-week prelude to Christmas — a time set aside to check off all of the items on our Christmas to-do lists — Advent offers us so much more. Advent taps into the ‘thick memory’ of our faith. Helping us to first remember and then to experience, God’s abiding presence in our lives, in our congregations, and our world.

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isa. 43:19)