If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1

Beloved of God,

What a gift these days of light at the beginning of 2016 have been!  After December’s record rains and weeks on end of gray skies the return of the Sun’s brilliant light has lifted my soul upwards.  Our family spend much of January 1st at Lincoln Park as Kai and Naomi tried out inline skates—gifts from the grandparents who know how important it is for young bodies to be in motion.  The sun’s light is a fitting accompaniment to this Season of Light, when we mark how the Starchild Jesus, now grown, begins in his public ministry to shine the light and love of God on our dark and weary world. The plea of a favorite hymn springs to mind:

Christ, be our light! Shine in our hearts!  Shine through the darkness.

Christ, be our light! Shine in your church gathered today!

This month a series of special worship services help to focus that light for us: The Baptism of our Lord (1/10); the annual commemoration of the life and witness of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1/17); Reconciling in Christ (RIC) Sunday (1/23); and our Annual Meeting Sunday (1/31). Each occasion focuses the light of Christ in specific ways, and we’ll be hearing some new voices as well as familiar ones.  (Read more about them under OUR WORSHIP LIFE below.)

In this season after Epiphany we’ll be hearing a series of readings from Paul’s first letter to the Christians at Corinth.  In his first letter to this troubled community—so gifted and yet so competitive that they’ve forgotten what their gifts are for—Paul moves point by point through each conflict they face, calling them to unity of purpose and commitment. By the time he reaches the 12th chapter, he’s ready to propose a powerful new analogy for who the people of God are—diverse members of the one body of Christ.  “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:12-13)

The whole letter leads up to chapter 13—the love chapter.  When couples choose a reading from chapter 13 for their wedding, I often remind them that while Paul says much about love in this chapter, never does he say “love is blind.”  God does not turn a blind eye to our faults and thus is able to love us.  No.  In Christ God sees us clearly—through and through—and in spite of all our faults and failings, loves us nonetheless. This is the heart of the gospel—unmerited grace!  We can’t do a single thing to earn it—it simply IS.  And because we are claimed by this love that “will not let us go” this assurance frees us to stop counting up points (it’s not a competition!) and instead to focus our response on practicing love. For no matter how gifted we are—as individuals or as a community—those gifts won’t mean anything if we fail to communicate the unconditional love of God.

Perhaps you know someone who is particularly gifted at loving.  Have you ever wondered how they do it?  How they show it?  What you can learn from them?  This is a season for turning our thoughts toward the light and toward those whom we recognize as light-bringers.  I’m reading a book right now that follows a family in Warsaw during World War 2.  The book, The Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane Ackerman, is based on the journals of Antonina Zabinski who, with her husband Jan, was a caretaker of the world class Warsaw Zoo when the war began.  It follows their harrowing journey through the loss of the zoo’s rare animals during the initial German blitzkrieg, their care for surviving animals of the two-legged as well as four-legged kind, their efforts to feed and harbor friends and strangers, Jew and non-Jew alike, and their connection to the Polish Underground resistance—all while raising their young son Rys and bearing a second child, daughter Teresa.  It’s a remarkable story, and one in which, time and time again, I have been struck by how big Antonina’s heart is—how ripe to take risks for others in spite of her fear—how large her capacity to love.  In the end, around 300 people survived the Nazi occupation of Warsaw due to the Zabinski’s advocacy and provision of safe haven.

As we begin a new year, there’s plenty of evidence in the world that hate is alive and well.  But Paul’s testimony is that the love with which God loves us, “bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things,” will never end.  As we see such love bursting forth and refracting in Jesus’s life and ministry, how can we resist following?

Pastor Erik