Doing love : John 3:16, Who is your neighbour? : Luke 10:25-37
Love came down at Christmas
Cold nights, twinkling lights, warm fires, the smell of pine, nativities, carols, good food, mulled wine, cards, presents, family, friends, laughter, and love.
Christmas is a magical time.
It’s a time when we remember that Jesus came to us; as a cute baby who didn’t cry, surrounded my animals who didn’t smell, to a perfect world full of cute angels and handsome shepherds.
Or maybe not.
I can remember asking a man I knew who was homeless and had no family what he was doing on Christmas day. He asked when Christmas day was and I told him it was a week away, he thought, and then replied ‘nothing, that’s just another Tuesday’.
I sat in a church prayer meeting and someone asked that we pray for the church that it would grow and people would hear the good news at Christmas. They went on to say that some people struggle to hear the message because of the situation they are in. How can you know God’s love when you have an empty stomach and no home to go to?
How should we share the good news?
The reality of advent and of Christmas is that in a cold dark stable, with dirty straw and the outcasts and ordinary people of the world coming to see the birth of Jesus. God’s love for all people is expressed in this humble beginning and is a place for us to start to understand the challenge of loving God and loving our neighbour.
One of the most famous verses from the Bible is John 3:16 ‘God so loved the world that he gave his one an only son…’. I’m sure many of you could have recited the verse with out much trouble but it’s a verse we don’t often think about in great detail.
First let’s look at the word world. It’s a big place with a lot of people on it (7.125 billion) and God loves all of them, plus all who have and will live on this earth till the end of time. That is a lot of people.
Jesus in a conversation with a young man talks about who our neighbour is and after telling the story of a man robbed and left to die we discover that our neighbour is anyone in need, whether they are our enemy or friend. We are called as followers of Jesus to count all people in need as our neighbour. We are called to love all people as God loves all people (that’s 7.125 billion).
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Love is a doing word not just something we talk about.
How should we share the good news?
By loving all both God and Neighbour. To not just talk about the love we have for others and the love God wants to share with them but also showing others what that looks like.
This advent let’s do love as well as talk about it.
Further Reading
Sex God (Especially Chapter 6 : Worth Dying For) : Rob Bell
Questions
What stood out in the two stories at the beginning of this section? how did they make you feel? What would you have done to change the experience of the homeless and hungry?
How would you answer the question, how should we share the good news? What ways can we share the love of God with others in a meaningful way?
Who do you find it difficult to love? How can we seek God’s help in loving these people?
Love is a doing word. What things do you do to show God’s love to others? How can we as a church community show God’s love to people who may never enter our building?
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