8 January 2015 - close to home

If anyone says, “I love God,”
but hates his brother, he is a liar;
for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen 
cannot love God whom he has not seen. 

God is not simply abstraction. Love is easy when it is distant and theoretical. It is free from the nitty gritty of daily life. We can be "amazed at the gracious words" of God. Yet we can choke on these same words when they are spoken too close to home. "They also asked, 'Isn’t this the son of Joseph?'" We have similar filters to this. We exempt the common and apparently mundane from our attention. We say, "I love God" but we all have ways that we keep his message at a distance. We all have ways that we keep our brother whom we can see at arm's length. The people in Nazareth like the message but they don't like it coming so close to home. We excuse ourselves from loving in little ways because we imagine that there are more important things to worry about.

We are happy to hear about glad tidings for the poor and liberty to the captives. But when we are called to be a part of it? That's a different story. Often it something as small as a smile that proclaims that glad tidings. Often it is something as small as a kind word that releases prisoners of anxiety and self-doubt. But there is so much vulnerability when we enter into this mission. We are afraid to hurt and be hurt and so we hold ourselves aloof.

If we actually listen to the message of God we do not hear an abstraction. We hear a message with concrete implications.

In this way we know that we love the children of God
when we love God and obey his commandments. 

His message gives us a measure to see if his love is truly at work in us. It is not simply a set of rules. He wants us to be his children which means living as his children. He shows us just what this means when he insists that we live in love in the small things as well as the big. We cannot do this on our own strength. By this measure which he gives us he shows us what we are capable of when we live in him. He gives us the power to live this life and when we do it we do not find burdensome commandments. We actually find victory.

And his commandments are not burdensome,
for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. 
And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.

When we do live this we find, contrary to all expectations, that we are living in a year acceptable to the Lord.

May his name be blessed forever;
as long as the sun his name shall remain.
In him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed;
all the nations shall proclaim his happiness.