Bible Lesson: I Thessalonians 3:9-13
“May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.” (Excerpt)
Advent is my favorite season in the church calendar and the first Sunday the day of my deepest, most profound feelings. Even when I was a child, this season was always a wonderful time for me, filled with hope, expectation, love and excitement. Anticipation has always been one of the key emotions of this season, looking forward to Christ’s second coming as well as His first.
However, as the last sentence above implies, Advent has its dark side. The Bible often speaks of the second coming of our Lord as a time filled with joy, but also with judgment and terrors. During Advent the church reads many such scriptures and preaches sermons encompassing both mercy and judgment. So we have hope on one side and apocalypse on the other. What could possibly bind these opposites together?
The answer of course is Christ’s love. This love, called “agape” in the New Testament, is infinitely purer than the selfish love that we can summon within ourselves. Mere human love breeds the desire for control, and sadly, control is the destroyer of love. Often our own tiny love contains the seeds of its destruction, as well as hurting the ones we say we love. Christ’s love comes to set us free, to liberate us from the need for control that consumes so much of our lives.
I remember a time, when I was a child, when I caught my first frog. I put it in a large jar with leaves, sticks, insects, and so on, hoping to create an environment it would like. At the same time, I could watch it, have it close, and keep it “under my thumb” so to speak. Of course, I punched holes in the lid of the jar for air, and gave the small animal plenty of water. Presto! I was proud of my first living terrarium.
My pride lasted for only a day. The next morning, I pulled out my jar, and the frog was dead. Sadly, I took the jar outside, emptied the pitiful contents into a small hole and buried it. Yes, I did control the frog for a time, but it simply could not live under such constrictions. My terrarium was really a prison for the little thing. Without freedom, it soon died.
So does our own control-seeking love threaten to wreck the lives of our loved ones and finally ourselves. Our one hope to escape this terrible cycle of love and its destruction is to enliven ourselves with the pure love of Jesus. Such love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” according to St. Paul in I Corinthians 13. This love never ends. It is our eternal hope.
Yes, the Bible speaks of a Christ who will come on the Last Day to liberate us and a world filled with sin and selfishness. This is our abiding faith. Also, He can come into our hearts daily, provided we let Him, Here and now, Jesus can free us from controlling love that only destroys. Just as the Bible speaks of a Last Day that brings the annihilation of the old, so we must allow the crucifixion of our own selfish love. In doing this, we can experience Christ’s real love within ourselves and for others. So the darkness of Advent can become the light and hope of Jesus’ perfect love.
Here is an eternal, immutable law of God and the cosmos: Before something truly new can come into this world, the old must pass away. During Advent, let us remember a dark and mournful world over 2000 years ago, and time that waited for Jesus and His love. Such were the days of the ancient Hebrew prophets who foretold the coming of a Messiah.
However, when Christ was born, lived and resurrected, that old world died. May our own small-hearted and control-obsessed love die as well. Dear God, help us grasp the opportunities we have each day to show Jesus’ selfless love to all around us in a world of direst suffering and need.
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