by Connie Frierson
1 John 4:7-21
Well Beloved, every Christmas Season I experience something, something baffling and big and awesome, something that only seems to come in the cold and quiet of winter. I want to see if you experience this too. At some time on Christmas Eve or Christmas day or the week after Christmas or even on Epiphany, I get the sense that I need to think about why I am here? What is my purpose? What is supposed to drive my life? This is such a big question that I am not even sure if the question is why, how, what or who. It is the big question of our life. The question comes at funny times, here, in the busiest time of church and family, I might be up to my elbows washing greasy roasting pans in the sink. You know that dishwater that was once soapy, bubbly white and as you work just isn’t anymore. Well I will be scrubbing the worst of the pots, when I look up through my kitchen window and I think who am I supposed to be. Or I might be snatching up armfuls of torn wrapping paper off the living room floor and wonder how am I supposed to live. Or I might be letting the dog out for a short walk in the woods and there I stand with the house full of people and light at my back and the dark winter night before me, In that moment the nebula of the big question descends on me. Does anyone else here have those moments? Does anyone else experience this particularly in the snow and cold of winter and the warmth and the light of Christmas?
Well here we are in the last week of Advent, a time of reflection and preparation before the celebration of Christ’s birth. So now is a good time to prepare for that life question. Our Advent Candle this morning is the candle that symbolizes love. Our scripture passage speaks of God as love. God loving us. God sending his son. God, who is invisible, made love visible in Christ. How we love the invisible God by loving one another. This is a good place to start reflection on the big answer to the big question, the giant snowball question that is why, how, what and who all rolled into one.
People have been asking this question in different ways for thousands of years. The Heidelberg Catechism, that great masterpiece of theological reflection finished in 1562, asked the big question this way. “Q.1.What is your only comfort in life and in death?” Answer, that I belong body and soul to Jesus Christ, who paid the debt for sin, frees me from evil, protects me, gives me life and through the Holy Spirit makes me ready and willing to live for him. I paraphrased but that is the substance. It is masterful, true, and important. But we need a month of Sundays to puzzle it out. There is a simpler answer to the big question. A lawyer asked Jesus the big question like this, “What is the most important commandment?” This is a variation on the big question, “Jesus what is most important?” Jesus answered to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself. If we are to prepare for the big question here is where we need to start, with Jesus’ answer, the Heidelberg Catechism, our scripture today from 1 John 4. These all give us the God’s answer when the big question comes to call some snowy moment in the next weeks. Love with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Belong to Christ body and soul. Love one another. This is the answer to the big question.
My problem is that the answer to my big question is so big that I don’t know how to do it. Love with heart, soul, mind and strength, Love because God is love, Belong body and soul to Christ. Those answers are giant and enormous. Those answers are ginormous. I think our ginormous God can help us with this by thinking very, very small, thinking of babies and old men’s toes.
Those things don’t seem to go together do they, babies and old men’s toes? But when we are looking for the big answers we need to look for those moments when God is teaching us. A teachable moment came to me as I was reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. I think most of you have heard the title, or seen the movie, directed by Elia Kazan and many of you have read, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. The book is largely autobiographical and was written by Betty Smith. It recounts the experience and life and thought of a young girl, Francie Nolan growing up in about 1912 in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. In the particular passage I am thinking of Francie is at the day old bread store, waiting for the trucks to come in for the poor of Brooklyn to buy their bread cheap. Francie is waiting and sees the oldest man she has ever seen. This ancient bent over man is sitting in the sunlight by the bakery window resting. Francie sees what perhaps only an eleven year olds would notice. She looks down and she sees the old man’s shoes are broken open and Francie can see his calloused, narly toes through the broken shoes. Quite frankly Francie is repulsed. Those toes are gray and curling and dirty. Suddenly Francie has a new thought in her 11-year-old head, a kind of scary thought. Francie suddenly knows that this old man’s toes were once as treasured and beautiful and loved as her little brother’s toes. That this broken, older than old, man was once someone’s baby, someone’s treasure, someone’s beloved. And in her mind’s eye Francie sees him at all the stages of his life, kicking his legs in a stroller, toddling, playing ball, courting, becoming a father and provider, so useful and necessary in the meat and potatoes of life. But then Francie becomes frightened because she knows that she herself will become old and curled and calloused like that old man’s toes. This is a true moment, when we see past and present and future melding together, when we see our mortality, when we see others and see ourselves too. For Francie this was a big question moment. This was a moment to see life and death, the old man’s life and death, and Francie’s life and death.
The only thing that can give hope and meaning to life and death is to see both life and death wrapped in God’s love and care. The great truth of God comes out when we see both babies and old men’s toes as being wrapped in God’s love. The thing that gives meaning to all the questions of life is to think that the old man, and the young girl Francie and you and I are loved. We are the beloveds. And we join in with God’s love when we love the old man with the narly toes and the baby he once was and frightened young Francie. “Beloved let us love one another, because love is from God.” We do not see the invisible God, but we see that beaten down old man sitting in the sunlight in the warm bakery. So we are to love God, by loving the one God puts in front of us. We have times of great insight when we see others as God’s beloved.
These are the things I think about in the snowy days of Advent. These are things to think and pray about in this time leading up to the celebration of God’s love come to earth; as a baby, as a boy in the temple, as a teacher and healer, as a broken and bleeding man on an ugly cross. The Beloved son helps us to see all the other Beloveds around us.
I would like to end this sermon with a hymn, In the Bleak Mid Winter. Matthew Ward sang this hymn last Sunday night at his concert here. I have included the lyrics in your bulletin. I had never heard the song before. But the hymn captured my winter reflections on the big question. Here are some things you may think about as Bruce sings; how cold things are before God’s love come into our lives, before love warms us, we are iron and stone; how even heaven could not hold God’s love that spills out to us in the coming of Christ; how Mary worshiped truly by kissing that baby head. Perhaps the question in the final verse is our big advent question. What other gift can we give the Christ Child, but the gift of love?
So beloved, kiss a babies head this Christmas. Wrap the elderly in the warmth of a sunny window. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, because Christ came for love of us. We exist body and soul to return that love to Jesus Christ.
Amen.
