All for Love
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
--I John 4:16
These words could well cover Joseph and Mary, who by now are well into their trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
Look at them.
They are love personified--a love that erases all our romanticisms and reductions of love into something manageable and malleable. They know the difficult work that loving others entails. They know the risks that love demands. They know the pain that comes when you truly seek to love another human being. They know the lengths to which one needs to go to keep love alive and breathing.
Joseph allows love to guide him in an unimaginable place. His betrothed appears unfaithful, but rather than fall to vengeance or retribution, which was his right by law, he instead chooses righteousness, the walk with God, over human definitions of justice. He chooses to spare the one who hurt him deeply, and that choice brings him face to face with God who affirms and accepts his decision as the way of holiness.
That does not mean life now sorts itself out into some glorious edenic joyride. No, Joseph now will literally go the extra mile. To stay true to his love, he will flee as a refugee to another country that may or may not really welcome him.
The New York Times tells a wrenching story of such a refugee this week ("Wonder and Worry as a Syrian Child Transforms"). Uprooting, leaving, fleeing, and having no real idea what awaits is no path into ease, bliss, or peace. A strange land is a strange land. Our own country grapples now with an incoming leader who vows to shut out all such wanderers, retreating into fearful angst at their presence. Reread Matthew 2 this Christmas, listening for the resonance very few of us ever imagined actually finding in our time and place.
Joseph will do whatever it takes to preserve his child and wife. He will empty himself. He will lose himself in their needs without a thought to himself.
Mary allows love to force her to become an adult well before she was probably ready. Most scholars now agree we are speaking of a young adolescent when we speak of Mary at Christmas. Any of us who have worked with 8th or 9th Graders know what a morass of confusion, growing, maturing, uncertainty, insecurity, foolishness, joy, and wonder these humans are. Now imagine God entering the mix calling for a radical transformation and transcendence of all of that to become theotokos as our Orthodox siblings name her--the Bearer of God.
I return to the young girl in the The Times. Her world upended, her expectations left blank confusion, her insecurity, and the total newness all work on her, shape her, and lead her. How will it turn out when all is said and done?
Prayerfully and hopefully, we can long that she will find love. Real love. Embodied love. Love that will empty itself so she can be full.
We cannot escape the need for love in our world. We are interconnected. We are interdependent. We may deny it, but we cannot escape it. Mary and Joseph lead us into a wonderful way of meeting Christmas, now one week away. They open us to love that carries them into God.
Think of that young Syrian.
She is nearer to us than we might imagine, for she is but an example of the myriad like her in any given community--those whose hope, success, and realization will only come through how we take responsibility for her, creating a communion in which to actualize who and what she will be.
--I John 4:16
These words could well cover Joseph and Mary, who by now are well into their trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
Look at them.
They are love personified--a love that erases all our romanticisms and reductions of love into something manageable and malleable. They know the difficult work that loving others entails. They know the risks that love demands. They know the pain that comes when you truly seek to love another human being. They know the lengths to which one needs to go to keep love alive and breathing.
Joseph allows love to guide him in an unimaginable place. His betrothed appears unfaithful, but rather than fall to vengeance or retribution, which was his right by law, he instead chooses righteousness, the walk with God, over human definitions of justice. He chooses to spare the one who hurt him deeply, and that choice brings him face to face with God who affirms and accepts his decision as the way of holiness.
That does not mean life now sorts itself out into some glorious edenic joyride. No, Joseph now will literally go the extra mile. To stay true to his love, he will flee as a refugee to another country that may or may not really welcome him.
The New York Times tells a wrenching story of such a refugee this week ("Wonder and Worry as a Syrian Child Transforms"). Uprooting, leaving, fleeing, and having no real idea what awaits is no path into ease, bliss, or peace. A strange land is a strange land. Our own country grapples now with an incoming leader who vows to shut out all such wanderers, retreating into fearful angst at their presence. Reread Matthew 2 this Christmas, listening for the resonance very few of us ever imagined actually finding in our time and place.
Joseph will do whatever it takes to preserve his child and wife. He will empty himself. He will lose himself in their needs without a thought to himself.
Mary allows love to force her to become an adult well before she was probably ready. Most scholars now agree we are speaking of a young adolescent when we speak of Mary at Christmas. Any of us who have worked with 8th or 9th Graders know what a morass of confusion, growing, maturing, uncertainty, insecurity, foolishness, joy, and wonder these humans are. Now imagine God entering the mix calling for a radical transformation and transcendence of all of that to become theotokos as our Orthodox siblings name her--the Bearer of God.
I return to the young girl in the The Times. Her world upended, her expectations left blank confusion, her insecurity, and the total newness all work on her, shape her, and lead her. How will it turn out when all is said and done?
Prayerfully and hopefully, we can long that she will find love. Real love. Embodied love. Love that will empty itself so she can be full.
We cannot escape the need for love in our world. We are interconnected. We are interdependent. We may deny it, but we cannot escape it. Mary and Joseph lead us into a wonderful way of meeting Christmas, now one week away. They open us to love that carries them into God.
Think of that young Syrian.
She is nearer to us than we might imagine, for she is but an example of the myriad like her in any given community--those whose hope, success, and realization will only come through how we take responsibility for her, creating a communion in which to actualize who and what she will be.
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