Advent- Love

Hi, friends, and welcome to the weekly Doolin podcast, a brief weekly reflection from Doolin United Methodist Church in Falls Church. Here, we take time to think together about faith, community, and what it means to live as disciples of Jesus in today's world.

Hello, Dylan Church. It's me, James, your pastor. And this is week four of Advent. Week four, as we've been going through all of the themes of Advent, beginning with hope, moving from hope to peace, peace to joy. And then this past week, this past Sunday, we moved on to the final theme, which is love.

Now, we can think of love in lots of different kinds of ways. We can think about wanting to know what love is, as we talked about on Sunday. But certainly, one way of understanding love in the Advent season is the promise that we anticipate. The promise that we also already experience. The promise of Emmanuel which in Hebrew means God with us.

The anticipation of God with us. So it's about presence. Love is about being present, being where we are. And from our Wesleyan roots, and again, John Wesley is the founder of of what we would call United Methodism today. All the Methodist family, the Pan Methodist family across the world, found their roots in this kind of system that John Wesley and his brother Charles and some other friends put together, a system of taking our faith in a very practical direction.

That we didn't just belong by believing, but that we belong by participating and actually working part of what faith is all about is working to make a difference. We are all loved by God. We're all participants, if we will, in what God is doing one way or another, I suppose. But what John Wesley wanted us to do is to be intentional in our practice of love. And so if love is presence and if John Wesley said that love is the whole of Christian faith, how can we make love real?

How can we practice presence if that's part of what love is? How can we do so in a way that is real, not only for ourselves but for the world? So, as I have been over the last three previous weeks, I would like to suggest to you three possible practices. This is not exhaustive. None of the weeks have been exhaustive, but sometimes if you have a place to start, that's a good place to be.

And then you can branch out from there. So, a practice of being present right where you are right now. One of the practices, let's call this a presence breath prayer or Emmanuel breath prayer, God with us. Using those three words, God with us. You may or may not be familiar with what a breath prayer is, but it's a prayer that you set in tune to your breathing.

So a portion of the prayer you do as you inhale and a portion of it you do while you exhale. So oftentimes you won't do that out loud. It's hard to our vocal cords and the way they work, it's difficult to say something as we're inhaling. It's the system is actually designed for when we're exhaling, you know, the breath pushed across the vocal cords to produce sound. So we do this internally, but we tune it to our breath as we breathe in.

We say, God, as we breathe out, with us. God, with us. And we just continue to practice that. And by doing that, maybe taking thirty seconds in your day or a minute in your day or perhaps even longer depending upon how much time you can fit in. You know, in those moments when you want to bring your presence back to the moment when you're feeling a little overwhelmed because actually paying attention to your breath in that way and that breath prayer, one of the side effects will be a calming of your mind, a calming of your spirit.

It's worth trying, particularly when you start to feel reactive, when you start to feel overwhelmed, when you start to feel tension rising. Breathe in God. Breathe out with us. You can do it with your eyes closed. Not if you're driving, but if you're sitting in a safe spot, you can do that practice and find the presence of God being manifest to you in that way.

A second way I would suggest that might be a way you could practice this is choose someone this week to just be with. We've talked a little bit about this in some other of the practices, but choose someone that you would like to be with or that you feel like you might benefit from your presence. And be there without judging, without suggesting fixes, without your own agenda. Be with the person. It can be a member of your family, a member of the dueling community that you identify in your own mind or heart that might appreciate the presence of someone else, any one of those folks would be appropriate for you to choose.

And then just practice being present with them Because that presence is something that, you know, as you've practiced it for yourself, being with another person, really being there, not with an agenda, not with your eye toward the clock because you've got somewhere else to be, but simply being with a person for as long as you can be with that person. And that kind of presence is a way of communicating love. Experiencing the love in the first one is about being present with yourself and experiencing not only your presence but God's presence within. The second one is allowing someone else to feel the presence by you being there with them. You letting them experience a presence by you just listening, by you just reflecting back to them what they're saying.

Because if they're feeling a deep sense of alienation or loneliness, that kind of love is very healing. That kind of presence that you bring can bring a kind of healing into that place. And that's another practice, a way to practice love. Now, the last one I suggest is doing random acts of anonymous kindness for others, as anonymous as you can be. Simply letting them know through some act.

Now, of them are not quite as anonymous as others. But you know, I don't know if you've ever been in line at Starbucks or a coffee place and then you just present to the cashier some extra money or whatever to pay for the person who's behind you. And just a way of you might see someone who's clearly struggling, you help them carry their groceries to the car. Or you help them pay for the groceries if you're able to do that kind of thing. Anonymously, without telling who you are, without being all about you, do something in quiet, in the presence of God that allows people to experience the reality of this love.

And it's about God's love being experienced in the world. It's about practicing God's love, which is for all people, regardless of who they are, where they come from, or where their economic, socioeconomic situation places them, all those pieces. It's an opportunity for you to help them experience it, life in a different way. Maybe you donate, you know, gift cards to your local food bank or food, or you do something along those lines, whatever it may be, do something practical, do it anonymously, and see what kind of difference you can make in the world around you. In the end, love truly is manifest in the presence of God and the presence of God is with each one of us.

Certainly in this season as we anticipate what this season brings. It is a reminder that part of what was yearned for before the birth of Jesus, and now that Jesus has been born and is alive in the world and Christ is with us, what does it feel like to really practice that presence? Let that presence be a calming, peaceful place for us. Let it be a calming, peaceful place, a true presence with others, and providing for the needs of those who might not be able to provide for themselves. All of those manifestations of the love of God.

They're real and they can be real because of you, because of your engagement in the world. So those are some ways you can practice love this week. I know this is sort of a truncated week of Advent because quite frankly, you're watching this on a Tuesday or whenever you're watching it, heck, you might not catch it until after Christmas. But Christmas is a whole different season of anticipation, a different sort of manifestation of the love of God in our incarnation, but that will be something we'll talk about in future episodes of the Dualin Weekly Moment. I want to thank you for joining me for these opportunities to share my thoughts and perhaps offer you some practical ways to be about the work of Christ in the world, to take seriously our mission at Doolin, which we have borrowed from or taken from the mission of the entire United Methodist Church, which is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Very practical. How do we be disciples? How do we transform the world? How will we make it real? Wish you all the best.

Merry Christmas to you. Thanks for joining me for these moments. And hopefully, if you were listening to this before the Christmas Eve service, hope you'll join us then and see you there. But if not, I wish you all the best and a wonderful season of celebration with the true meaning of making hope real, of making peace real, of making joy real, of making love real because that is discipleship. Until the next time, I wish you all the best and indeed Merry Christmas to you.