Truth and Love — Love of Advent

  • December 9, 2022
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 3 John 5-8
5 Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers and sisters, even though they are strangers to you. 6 They have told the church about your love. Please send them on their way in a manner that honors God. 7 It was for the sake of the Name that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans. 8 We ought therefore to show hospitality to such people so that we may work together for the truth.

Reflection: Truth and Love — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

The love we receive and the truth we believe, are to be passed on.

John’s third epistle is to a leader and friend, named Gaius. Gaius is faithful to the truth and faithful in showing love. John testifies that joy comes from the people of God walking in love and truth in this way. Truth and love go together. We cannot let go of love to hold up truth or let the truth be hidden as we lift up love. Both are needed and they are not in conflict.

This weekend, as we move into the 3rd week of Advent, let us pray that, like Gaius, we would pass on the love we receive. It is from this passing of love, this sharing of love, this walking in love that joy comes.

Prayer for Truth and Love
Let us pass on what you have given to us.

Jesus, you came so we could become like you. 
You took our sins, so we could take your righteousness.
You entered our darkness so we could enter your light.
You became poor so we could become rich.

You came, in love, to show us the truth.
You testified, in truth, that God is love.
You gave us a simple command: follow me.

Let us follow you in sowing with tears so that we may join you in reaping with joy.
Let what you have given us be planted in us and take root.
May the stalk emerge and the fruit ripen.
May the seeds of hope, love, joy, and peace be spread with abandon to all around us.
May we share in the nourishment of your bread and water of life.

Make us instruments of your peace.
Make us prophets of your hope.
Make us singers of your love.
Make us founts of your joy.

In each season of the year, let us share in hospitality, the bounty you give us.
Let truth and love be served in equal portions and in plentiful amounts.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Know this: the Lord himself is God; he himself has made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. — Psalm 100.2

Today’s Readings
Ezra 1 (Listen 2:03)
3 John (Listen 1:51)

This Weekend’s Readings
Ezra 2 (Listen 5:25) Revelation 1 (Listen 3:43)
Ezra 3 (Listen 3:01) Revelation 2 (Listen 3:43)

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We are sure of God’s love for us in Christ…So, let us live in a way that assures others of God’s love.

Tension in God’s Presence

Beyond Pen and Ink — Love of Advent

  • December 8, 2022
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 2 John 12
12 I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

Reflection: Beyond Pen and Ink — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

John, the beloved disciple, is the most artistic and visionary writer of the New Testament. Unlike Luke’s chronological, journalistic approach, John chooses and arranges the signs Jesus performs like a playwright arranging the scenes of a play. Events are presented in the order of John’s artistic argument. When the curtain comes down, John’s artistic statement is complete. (John 20.30-31; 21.24-25)

For such a skilled and expressive writer, in his epistles, John lays more emphasis on seeing people in person. The technology of his age is dismissed in both this letter and the next. (2 John 12; 3 John 13) “Paper and ink” or “pen and ink” get dropped in preference to spending time face to face.

It’s popular to diss technological means of connection. Zoom, Facebook, and other social media are constantly targeted with critique. Much of it is deserved. Pretty much everyone, even the technology companies themselves, agree that we use screens and tech more than we should. Many also blame the degradation of our debates online on the dehumanization of interacting via text on a screen.

As much as I have devoted my life to writing, I have to acknowledge that reading words or writing words sometimes isn’t enough. Perhaps the ideas are too complex and the time (or word count) too short. Sometimes it is because I make mistakes. Sometimes it is because I am misunderstood. But often, it is just what John says; some things are better, face to face. 

This is one of the reasons for the incarnation. The Bible, even just the Torah without the New Testament, is a beautiful testimony of God’s love. But Jesus’s birth takes that testimony beyond pen and ink.

God could have continued to write to us, through prophets and priests, and scribes. But what he wanted to say couldn’t be said with pen and ink. He needed to touch lepers and write words in the dirt that spared an adulteress. He needed to walk through Samaria. He needed to mourn death. He needed to wash dirty feet. He needed to bleed.

What God has to say to you, through Advent, through the church, and through the scriptures, goes beyond pen and ink. In a miraculous way, when gathered face to face with believers, Jesus is there among us. Give that face-to-face love to one another this season and throughout the year.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Show us the light of your countenance, O God, and come to us. — Psalm 67.1

Today’s Readings
Esther 9-10 (Listen 6:25)
2 John (Listen 1:50)

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God’s love gave all the wealth of his house, becoming poor that we can become rich.

Love Stronger Than Death

By Water and Blood — Love of Advent

  • December 7, 2022
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 John 5.6
6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ.

John 3.5-6
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

Reflection: By Water and Blood — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

The coming of Jesus was long awaited. Afterward, it was long debated. Conflicts arose about the nature of Christ’s coming, especially among those who had prior beliefs about the world that they were unwilling to give up.

Gnostics believed flesh and matter were evil and only spirit was pure. God, a spirit, becoming flesh was unfathomable. They tried to find ways to explain the coming of Jesus without letting go of their preconceived beliefs. Perhaps Jesus was just an illusion? Perhaps a spirit that only appeared to have a body?

John pokes holes in these arguments just like Thomas poked his fingers into the holes in Jesus’ side and hands. Jesus came by water, a symbol for spirit, and by blood, a symbol of life and of death.

If Jesus only “appeared” on Earth, instead of living here, then Advent’s love is an illusion and a half-truth. But John assures us that this is not true. The Incarnation, John testifies, was not a Zoom call, or a holodeck adventure, or an experience in augmented reality. John touched, saw, heard, and believed in Jesus. The Jesus John loved (John 13.23), was not some phantasm. He was a physical, sweaty, sometimes napping, mud-making, foot-washing, blood-sweating Jesus. (Mark 4.38; John 9.11; 13.12; Luke 22.44) 

When placed in the hay as a baby, his tender skin itched. When he got a splinter in his father’s carpentry shop, his small fingers bled. When angry enough to swing a whip in the Temple, blood rushed to his face. When he stood at a friend’s grave, his guts roiled with emotion and tears rolled down his cheeks. When he knelt in the garden, his mind clouded with stress, anxiety, and fear as blood burst from his capillaries through his skin. When the soldiers punched him, their knuckles raised fleshy bruises. When they pulled out his beard, the blood and hair stuck to their hands and clothes.

Jesus was real. This means his love is real too. The love Jesus has for us is not some long-distance affection. He came close. His love for us is visceral and he lived that love out with passion in our physical world. He will come close to us if we draw close to him. You probably aren’t a Gnostic (although Gnostic-ish concepts are popular in our culture). However, you might have to let go of some cultural beliefs as you draw closer to Jesus.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. — Matthew 5.6

Today’s Readings
Esther 8 (Listen 3:41)
1 John 5 (Listen 3:00)

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Advent is a time in which we leave the front door unlocked for we know the time of Christ’s coming.

How Are You Waiting? :: Hope of Advent

Another Love Chapter — Love of Advent

  • December 6, 2022
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 John 4.7-16
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. 

1 Corinthians 13.13
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Reflection: Another Love Chapter — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

If asked about the Bible’s “Love Chapter”, most probably think of 1 Corinthians 13. Paul’s poem on love is well known for its beauty even outside of Christianity. I read it in literature classes. But there is another love chapter. 1 John 4 is the Apostle John’s.

What these chapters have in common is not sentimentality. They explore the serious implications of sound theology. Paul praises love as greater than any miraculous gift of the Spirit. John identifies love as the surest marker of one who belongs to God and knows God.

This entire chapter of John is about testing. After challenging his readers to “test the Spirits” by whether they testify to Christ’s full, bodily incarnation, John gives us a test for ourselves and for others: Are we loving? If we are not, John says, we do “not know God.”

Why is love the key John uses to open a door to God’s nature? Why does John choose love as the litmus test of identity for the people of God? Shouldn’t God’s nature be about power, glory, and honor? Shouldn’t Christian identity center on purity, holiness, or doctrinal alignment? 

It’s not that John is unconcerned about God’s glory or about doctrine. John’s gospel goes to greater lengths than others to emphasize the glorious divinity of Christ. John is also the loudest voice against gnosticim in scripture, defending the full and complete humanity of Jesus.

John’s concern is that our doctrines lead to actions that either testify to God’s glory or not. Right belief is best tested by right actions. Orthodoxy must lead to orthopraxy. If we don’t live in love, we don’t live in God. If we won’t love those we can see, our claim to love God whom we have not seen is in doubt.

John, who saw and touched Jesus (1 John 1.1), the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1.15), tells us that “in this world we are like Jesus.” One purpose of Christ’s advent was to show what God is like. The Holy Spirit’s advent in our hearts shares that purpose. If we don’t love, we are quenching the Spirit, misrepresenting God, and distorting his image.

Let us not just anticipate Jesus’ love for us this Advent, but proclaim it to others. Let Advent be an evangelistic imperative to invite others to see and experience the love of God.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
Keep me, Lord, as the apple of your eye and carry me under the shadow of your wings.

Today’s Readings
Esther 7 (Listen 2:08)
1 John 4 (Listen 2:58)

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Who Are You Waiting For? :: Hope of Advent

See What Great Love — Love of Advent

  • December 5, 2022
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 John 3.1-3
1 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 

Reflection: See What Great Love — Love of Advent
By John Tillman

Human family is often used as an analogy for spiritual family. However, human love consistently fails to show the full depth of God’s love. It is seeing through a darkened, warped glass. (1 Corinthians 13.12-13) All of us can probably think of strained relationships in our human families. There may be those we only tolerate because they are family or family members who only begrudgingly associate with us.

Cultural celebrations of love and family during the holidays can highlight this tension. Many of the stories we share or watch, especially holiday films, focus on perfect, or near-perfect, families. Even if at the beginning of a holiday film there is tension and division, we are sure that, before the credits roll, all will be well. In our own lives, however, finding that resolution is never a sure thing.

Even the best and healthiest of families fall short of being perfect examples of God’s family. Also, many people’s experience of family has been harmful or even abusive. In one way or another, human families fall short of divine family. 

Even the purest and most idealistic family we could imagine is insufficient to express the love of God for us. John glowingly tells us of our true hope in the love of God’s family. This love we anticipate at Advent is not begrudging affection. It is a full-throated cry of love from God’s heart for his children. It is lavish love. It is over-abundant, extravagant love.

We are brought in, not with apologies or cringing, but with joy and love. John tells us that we are loved now, as we are, but that what we will become through this love is not fully known. As Christ appears to us, we are to become more and more like him. His love transforms us to be like him and this transformation makes us more human, not less.

In the season of Advent and beyond, remember that beholding Jesus is the first step on a path to becoming more like him. 
Let us behold him, seeing how much he loves us.
Let us obey him, letting others see how he changes us.
Let us magnify him, becoming less in our own eyes so that he can become greater.
Let us emulate him, calling others to come and see what great love the Father lavishes on those who come to him.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Open my eyes, that I may see the wonders of your law. — Psalm 119.18

Today’s Readings
Esther 6 (Listen 2:40)
1 John 3 (Listen 3:21)

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Jesus invited the repentant thief…he invited me…and he invited you. Be ready for his coming. Respond.

He Invites Us — Love of Advent