Your invitation is to Put on love

Today is Holy Family Sunday and the assigned Gospel passage is Luke 2:22-40, which introduces us to Simeon and Anna who were at the Temple when the Holy Family arrived for the presentation of Jesus.

We meet ANNA who is a prophet and missionary. A Prophet is one who proclaims a divinely-inspired message, and through a prophet, God speaks to us. 

Anna is one of 7 female prophets named in the Bible, and may well be the oldest. Throughout the Bible, we read about women and men announcing the coming of the messiah.  Like John the Baptist did.  As a widow, Anna spent all of her time in the Temple, worshiping day and night,  fasting and praying.

A Missionary is one sent on a mission. Anna had been waiting for this mission all her life. After hearing Simeon’s declaration that he had seen salvation in Jesus, Anna was sent by the Spirit to share the good news about Jesus to all who  anticipated the deliverance of Jerusalem, to all who were waiting for the Messiah.  They were waiting for deliverance from the oppression of Rome.

Anna’s mission was universal – she spoke of Jesus to all who were awaiting the deliverance of Israel.  The text says she spoke to all, because salvation is intended for all.

To understand what this idea of salvation meant to those who heard Anna’s message, let’s listen to Simeon. The passage tells us that Simeon was a just and devout man who was prompted by the Holy Spirit to go to the Temple. On seeing Jesus, he took the baby in his arms and declared:  “my eyes have seen the salvation you have  prepared for all the people to see .…”

What does “salvation” mean to you?  

Is salvation your ticket into heaven? 

Or is it an invitation to create heaven here on earth?

According to Marcus Borg and John Crossan in The First Christmas, the term “salvation” as used in the Bible supports a broad meaning, one that captures the idea of deliverance, as Anna proclaimed. 

For many Christians today, salvation is closely connected with their post-death existence, with “going to heaven.”  But when the word is so narrowly understood, Jesus is nothing more than God’s means of “getting into heaven.” According to Borg and Crossan, the word salvation in the Bible has much more “this-worldly, here-and-now” meaning. When we hear this word “salvation,” we should hear “rescue, deliverance, liberation, protection, healing and being made whole.”   

Jesus as our salvation reveals and incarnates the passion of God. Jesus embodies the promise and hope for a very different kind of world than existed at the time of his birth, and sadly, different from the one that still exists today. 

To call Jesus our savior is to commit to act as Jesus did towards those in your midst: towards your family, and towards the family of all humanity. If we understand Jesus as our salvation in the “here and now” sense of the word, how are we invited to respond in the present moment, in our “here and now?”

The answer is simple but not always easy to do. Frankly, Sunday’s readings would have been more appropriately placed in a liturgy before we spent the last week feasting with our families.

Stick figure hanging on to heart.  Photo by Nick Fewings

The invitation is to put on love

What does that look like? The reading from Colossians 3:12-21 paints the picture: 

'“Because we are God’s chosen people  [because we call Jesus our savior,] We are to clothe ourselves with heartfelt  compassion, with kindness, humility,  gentleness, and patience. We are to bear with one another; forgive whatever grievances you have against one another — forgive in the  same way God has forgiven you.  Above all  else, put on love, which binds the rest together and makes them perfect.”  

A couple of years ago, I was riding on a school bus and overheard another of the chaperones telling a story about a conversation she had with her young son about the importance of loving God. The son asked her if she loved God more than Daddy. The mother laughed uncomfortably at this idea and tried to explain to her son some awkward hierarchy of love. 

But I offer that this is exactly how we love God! 

We love God by loving those God put in our midst. Although they may drive us crazy and be impossibly annoying, our families are our primary mission field. These are the first ones to whom we are called to treat with kindness and patience. These are the ones we are to bear with and forgive. 

In the words of Mother Teresa: “If you want to promote world peace, go home and love your family.”

You may need God’s help with that.  I know I do.  

Our response? Put on love.

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