Christmas an opportunity to lead with love

This Christmas season brings with it chaos and turbulence, mixed in with uncertainty and often, fear. Ours is a world filled with wars and politics seemingly out of control. The weather patterns we have always counted on are changing and nothing is quite the way we remember.

However, this sense of turmoil is not new for us or for our ancestors who witnessed this part of the world welcoming new people from afar, or for those whose ancestors were the ones who came here for a new life with expectations of a better future for their children.

Throughout the ages, generation after generation has lived through its own times of upheaval and confusion, and yet each generation has been able to settle in and make peace amid chaos. Families gathered and created new traditions and memories. Communities grew in new and original ways, growing with them opportunities for many and possibilities for all.

Time after time after time, we have been faced with the big questions like: “I wonder if,” and “how better could this work?”

Over two thousand years ago, the world changed again when God looked down on Creation and asked those very questions. “I wonder if they just need to meet me in person. How better might people get along if they understood this world is really all about love? And with those wonderings, God decided the time had come and Emmanuel – God With Us – was born into our reality.

The people who had been waiting for the revelations of prophecies from what Christians call the Old Testament, were not living in peaceful and boring times. They were waiting for the Messiah who would bring a long-awaited peace in a war-torn and oppressive world.

They wanted a warrior who would arrive with a sword drawn to vanquish their enemies and establish a new era: one that would make their world great again. They were tired and scared and couldn’t see beyond the end of their todays, let alone hope for the goodness of their tomorrows. When they called to the Lord for help, their cries were for an end to the problems they experienced and carried an expectation of vengeance for those they perceived to be their enemies.

They could not have imagined the way that God would answer those prayers offered over generations. Rather than a powerhouse of political glory, God sent a baby to be their Saviour! A baby of all things. How could a mere child bring an end to the rule of the Romans and the pain of living as they were?

What they could not understand was that God was inviting them into a new world, with new relationships: one new relationship specifically – with Jesus, Emmanuel, God With Us. And through the years, the generations, the centuries, we have learned that when we look upon one another as though we were looking upon a vulnerable child, we begin to feel a new thing.

The Season of Christmas is about that child who became a king. It is about a boy who grew and lived as we do, and who understood what it was to live with concerns and dreams and family and friends.

That boy named Emmanuel, or Jesus, taught all those around him the greatest truth that when we love others and allow ourselves to receive love from them, we are most able to live into the truth that the world God created has never been about who holds the most power or who has the most money. It is about who holds the most love and shares it freely.

We do indeed live in a world filled with chaos and genuine and real concerns about what might happen next but when we look at the person beside us and see not an enemy to be vanquished but another human being who needs to feel love, we can begin to dismantle the systems that create the chaos. If we simply lead with love, as Jesus did, consider how much peace and hope and gentleness our world might generate.

For those of us who are Christian, this Christmas season is our call to follow the boychild who grew in and through love, to love God’s world so much that he would give his own life so that others would live. He gave us the greatest gift – that of laying down his own life to save others.

We aren’t called to lay down our lives. We are only called to offer love. If and when we learn to love that selflessly, then we will see a world transformed in hope, simply through love.

For those who are not Christians, do we not hold love in common? In this beautiful, and chaotic season, we can all agree that we all need a little more of that love. Or maybe a lot more.

However we believe, whatever we profess, may we all come together in agreeing that this Christmas season really is an opportunity to give and receive love extravagantly. May you all know love. May you all be blessed in this Christmas season and forevermore.

» Rev. Rachel Parker is the Anglican Bishop of Brandon