Genesis 22:1-14; 1 Corinthians 13; John 15:12-17

Tis’ the Season: Love

            There’s no doubt that people change during this one month out of the year. As Christmas rapidly approaches, people try to be nicer and kinder to one another. You all know those common holiday songs... “Tis the season to be jolly...” Tis the season, indeed. It’s a season full of emotions and feelings that just don’t compare with other times of the year. To be honest, I believe when we all think about winter, we’re often thinking about Christmastime. It’s the picturesque moment of everyone spending time together, huddled together by a fire, warm blankets, hot chocolate, opening presents, and just enjoying life. These are the moments that often escape description. There’s a feeling there that can’t be explained. In this season of Advent, I want to attempt to put into words that exact feeling. I want to express those common emotions we all feel but never talk about. As Christians, we know that Christmas offers us so much more than just a feeling. But this truth that we proclaim wells up within us such feelings as few can explain. For this is the season of love, of hope, and of peace. It’s these three that we will focus on each week. 

            This week, it’s all about the love that fills the season. On Christmas, we wish to be close to all those we love, our family and friends. And as is normally the case, we give gifts and send cards, and offer our love and appreciation to them. Yet, we don’t want to confuse love with what our society defines it as. No, here we must come to understand the love in this season with God’s description. Love is so much more than a feeling. So, let’s dive in and find out...

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            If I asked you to define love, I’d imagine that many of you would be scrambling for words. Love is something that we just find difficult to define because we all understand there are different forms of it. There’s a love between a parent and a child. There’s a love between spouses. There’s a love that exists only between friends. There’s a love that exists between family, and even our love for God. Thus, if we try to define love, we want something that encapsulates all of these with the nuance of these relationships and expressions. This is why we must first decry our world’s effort to define love. What our world says is love is solely based on feeling. Love to our world is feelings of attachment to any person. This is why our world has no issue with love disappearing. It has no issue with seeing marriages fall apart because love’s foundation is what someone feels within themselves and no one can tell you any different. Quite frankly, the world’s definition is no definition at all. The world leaves it all up to you to decide what love is or isn’t. And this just won’t do for us today.

            This brings us to Abraham and Isaac. God calls Abraham and says, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you,” Genesis 22:2. Abraham loves Isaac. This pains Abraham to his core that God would make such a request. Abraham’s love for Isaac isn’t just feelings of attachment. Abraham is his father, the one who gave life to him. Adam’s description of Eve is applicable for all children, “This at last is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” When a parent has a child, they realize that part of their very being is present in this child. I can only imagine that Abraham wished the best for Isaac, his son. That’s part of what love is. It’s desiring the best life, the best everything for another. This can also be seen from Jesus’ commandment to his disciples, as we read, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends,” John 15:12-13. Love desires the best... so it’s also about giving up the best for someone else. Love is sacrificial. We make sacrifices for those we love. Parents sacrifice some of their wants and desires for the care of their children. Parents might even sacrifice just to put presents underneath the Christmas tree. Perhaps, we begin to see that love isn’t so much a feeling, as a responsibility. We feel love... but that love requires us to act, to do, to sacrifice. Love isn’t about “me, me, me”. It’s about you. It’s about others.

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            When we begin to talk about Christmas and it being the season of love, we should come to realize what that really means. To say that God loves us isn’t saying that God has warm fuzzy feelings. It’s not saying that God is simply attached to us. No, when we say that God loves us, what we’re saying is that God makes himself responsible to us. Consider the conclusion of the story of Abraham and Isaac, “And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns.... So Abraham called the name of that place, ‘The Lord will provide’; as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided,” Genesis 22:13-14. God shows his love to Abraham and Isaac by not making Abraham go through with sacrificing his son. Rather, God provides a ram, a substitute for the sacrifice. God makes himself responsible for covering the offering. And I can’t leave off the great chapter of love from St. Paul, as we read, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. When we love, or better yet, when God loves us, love is the act of caring, providing, and supporting another in every circumstance.

            Let us learn then that it was love that gave us Christ. It was God’s love that cares for our every need. It was love that makes God maintain the world in his good order so that He may meet our every need. God has made himself responsible for us even when he owes us nothing. God takes upon himself the need and requirement to rectify our sins. This is the true love in Christmas. God loved us so that he gave us Jesus, his only Son. For on the mount of the Lord, it will be provided. God provides the sacrifice. God provides the lamb. God provides Jesus to be born for our sake and die in our place. Greater love has no one than this that one lay down his life for his friends. Indeed, this is what we learn tonight:

GOD’S LOVE IS TO PROVIDE FOR OUR EVERY NEED.

            By God’s love, he cares for us so that we may care for others. God loves us in such a way that we may love others. That’s what Christmas is all about. It’s our recognizing that God has already provided for our every need that we may now turn our focus on our neighbors who also need the love of God. This is love, that God would send Jesus to be our savior! In Jesus’ name! Amen!