All the Pretty Lights: The Light of Love
John 3:14 – 21
Light is life, and we come seeking life and light in this Advent season. We light candles to remind us of the light of Jesus Christ, and last week we lit the candle of hope as a symbol of Christ who is our hope. This week, we come to light another, and today we lighted the candle of love. I chose to light the love candle today. I could have chosen to light the peace candle. One of the interesting bits of information I’ve learned preparing for this series of sermons is that the Advent wreath tradition is different in different places.
I have to admit we didn’t have an Advent wreath at Chatham UMC when I was growing up. It wasn’t until just before I came to ministry that one of our pastors introduced us to the “tradition” of lighting the Advent candles, and I remind you, I came to ministry in 1991. I’m not certain how long it’s been around FUMC, Monroe, but the “tradition” didn’t really take center stage for a lot of United Methodists until the mid-1980’s.
Everyone’s tradition is a little different. In some places, all the candles are purple. In other places, they’re all blue. Some, like ours are purple with one pink candle. We’ll talk about the pink candle next week, but it’s not from our “tradition.” We light the four candles with the virtues of hope, love, joy and peace in mind. There are some who say the candles were nothing more than a countdown, like 4, 3, 2, 1, go! Church folk being what we are, like for our symbols to have meaning, so we attached meaning, but those meanings have been different. Some light one of the candles for “preparation,” while others have a candle that represents “purity.” While the order and exact wording may vary, the Advent wreath still serves to remind us of who Christ is, and who we are called to be as his disciples. We also find, by lighting today’s candle, who God is, for we light the candle of love.
Our Gospel lesson today is very familiar to us. There is an old saying, “familiarity breeds contempt.” We take for granted those people, places and things we encounter, or use, or see every day, and not until they are gone do we realize how much meaning they held in our lives. I know a person who lost her big toe. No big deal, you think? Try walking without your big toe. A person’s balance is thrown completely off with a big toe. She had to learn how to walk all over again, and for several weeks, walking was a very intentional process.
Such is the case with John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. The words go from the page through our ears and minds almost poetically, but the power can be too easily lost because the passage is so familiar. And, we think we’re familiar with the love of Jesus as we light this candle, but are we really?
There is a lot of love around the manger on that night so long ago. We can’t look at a manger scene without thinking of Mary’s love for her child. There is nothing like a mother’s love, even if you are the mother of God. I am reminded of the words of Mark Lowery’s incredible song Mary Did You Know? Lowery paints a vivid picture of the relationship between Mary and the baby Jesus:
Mary did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect Lamb?
This sleeping child you're holding is the great I am…
There is some biblical evidence to suggest, perhaps, Mary did, in fact, know. Even if she did, it couldn’t change the deep connection and affection she had for her newborn. That is a manner of love we see at the manger, and it is a good and fulfilling and meaningful love, but it is not the love represented by this candle.
We also can’t look at the manger without noting the love of Joseph. I can’t honestly say how Joseph felt about his little man lying in the manger, but I’m pretty certain I can know how he felt about Mary. Here she is having gotten pregnant, Lord only knows how, yet here is Joseph with her at the birth of this child. Yes, I know, there were angels who visited him to assure him of God’s direction and leadership, but still, ya’ gotta’ think, “What’s up with that?” But, Joseph loves Mary, and because he loves Mary, he is there. We see the love of a husband for his wife, and it is a great and honoring love, but it is not the love represented by this candle.
No, we have to go much deeper, and much further back into history to capture the love symbolized in this Advent wreath. Back in the earliest recorded history, we find that God has a story of love for us. In Genesis, we read a story about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God has spent his time doing nothing but preparing a place for man to dwell. He’s created the earth, the sun, the moon, the animals and a place to live. He’s done this all for the sake of one man and one woman—Adam and Eve. Picture this… a lush green landscape filled with every kind of fruit tree known. Ripe harvests of fresh fruits and vegetables are ready on the vine, in the trees and on the ground. Colorful flowers fill the area with roses, tulips and other assorted colors and smells. And, a beautiful river flowing right through the center of it all. In a word, paradise. Adam and Eve were greeted with the immediate presence of God in their midst. They talked directly with God every day (just like you and I have a conversation. They knew God in a way we can only imagine. With all these beautiful surroundings, they were given only one command to follow; do not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve broke the rule, and thereby set all humankind on a path of sin and with that, separation from God. God loved his creation and created a world for humankind to inhabit. He was unable to let man condemn himself because of His love for us.
God, in his infinite love of humanity, set a new path. Too often, the church has not done a great job communicating the Gospel. We’ve made God sound like one whose wrath needed to be pacified, who must be persuaded to forgive. We’ve, too often, painted a picture of God as angry and unforgiving, and that Jesus did something to change God’s mind toward us. Jesus takes this opportunity to remind Nicodemus that nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus says it was God who started it all. God sent His Son into the world. God gave us this wonderful gift at Christmas, and it was all because of His love.
Love. God’s love. It’s easy to confuse our idea of love with God’s. Love, the commitment, not the emotion is what is symbolized when we light this candle, and it is the supreme quality of God. Listen to this same Apostle in 1 John 4: 8 – 10:
8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.
God was not acting to satisfy some desire for power or obedience, but because He loves. Rather than being a totalitarian dictator whose harsh demands must be met to protect our lives, Jesus tells Nicodemus that God was moving in love to bring eternal life to a wayward, foolish, blundering, sin-sick world. That’s the pretty light of this candle, and as long as this candle burns, we know that God’s love is real, for we have seen it in Jesus. Yes, that’s the love in the manger. The commitment of love, lived out in the birth, life and death of Jesus Christ.
Jesus came to put skin on love, to show us the depth of God’s love. We can talk about it, but until we see it, our lives remain basically unchanged. The love symbolized by this candle is sacrificial, and it is sacramental. It was this Apostle John, too, who tells the of the time Jesus told his disciples:
This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15:12-13 (NLT)
Then, Jesus called us friend. What a living picture we have of God’s love in this sacrament we call Holy Communion. We get a regular reminder that the love embodied in Christ and acknowledged in this candle is a commitment, not an emotion. Ernest Gordon tells the story in his book Miracle on the River Kwai of the Scottish soldiers during World War II, forced by their Japanese captors to labor on a jungle railroad, had degenerated to barbarous behavior, but one afternoon something happened. A shovel was missing. The Japanese officer in charge became enraged, and demanded that the missing shovel be produced, or else. When nobody in the squadron budged, the officer got his gun and threatened to kill them all on the spot. It was obvious the officer meant what he had said. Then, finally, one man stepped forward. The officer put away his gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. When it was over, the survivors picked up the bloody corpse and carried it with them to the second tool check. This time, no shovel was missing. There had been a miscount at the first checkpoint.
The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others! The incident had a profound effect. The men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious Allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons, lined up in front of their captors, and instead of attacking their captors, they protected them and insisted: “no more hatred. No more killing. Now what we need is forgiveness.”
The sacrifice of this one man changed the hearts of those around him. He faced the punishment to save the others. God willing, we will never be faced with a situation as grim as this one. But we can still impact those around us by our actions. As long as this light glows, we can show we are Christ’s disciples by our love.
