Not Alone
September 29, 2024
John 13:34-35, 1 John 4:7-17
“I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other.”
John 13:34-35
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A story is told of a pastor who trudged through the snow to a rustic log cabin where a parishioner lived. It had been several months since this hermit of a man had stepped foot in the church, though church members often saw him around town. The man welcomed the pastor in, offered him a hot cup of coffee and they sat down together in the warm glow of a crackling fire.
Following their brief but cordial greeting, silence settled over the space. Not an awkward silence, mind you, rather a holy silence, filled with the whispers of the Holy Spirit to both pastor and parishioner alike. After a while the pastor reached out and, with a set of wrought iron tongs, he pulled a burning ember out of the fire and placed it carefully on the stone hearth. The light from the tiny wood chip faded and smoke began to rise. In no time, this little isolated fire had gone out.
The pastor then carefully placed the smoldering ember back into the fire and in an instant, it glowed brighter than before.
As he stood up to leave, the parishioner finally broke the silence. “Thanks for the sermon, preacher. I’ll see you on Sunday.”
Just like the man hidden away in the warmth of his secluded cabin, there comes a point when our isolated embers will burn out. We are indeed the church scattered as we live out our faith in our everyday, individual lives, and we must be the church gathered, remaining in the Holy Fire of God’s love expressed through the love of one another in community.
If God is love, then relationships are the necessary channel through which that love is expressed and known. As those who seek to follow Christ’s example, we cannot pick and choose who we will love based on preference, affection, similar interests, or agreement of opinions. We must love as Christ loved us. We must be vulnerable, serve one another, and open our hearts to the stranger.
John O’Donohue invites us to bless the space that exists between us so that the walls of division may have no place to stand, and that love will bind all of creation together in the heart of God.
As a popular benediction from the United Methodist Hymnal declares,
Go now in peace to serve God and your neighbor in all that you do. Bear witness to the love of God in this world, so that those to whom love is a stranger will find in you generous friends.
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Consider a time when you felt the most lonely or isolated, when you felt like a stranger. How did you experience God in that season of your life?
What does “community” mean to you? Where do you most experience authentic community in your life? Where do you truly belong?