Leaning in to LOVE made flesh this Lent

So I give you a new command: Love each other deeply and fully. Remember the ways that I have loved you, and demonstrate your love for others in those same ways. Everyone will know you as My followers if you demonstrate your love to others.

—John 13:34-35

On Sunday, we explored a story found in the gospel of John (ch. 9) in which a man born blind suddenly had his sight restored by Jesus. His healing brings on a whole interrogation by some of his neighbors. They could not make sense of what was happening.  It did not fit their ideas of right and wrong. Instead of listening to him, they treat him with hostility, and by the end of the story, relegate him back to the margins. 

As keeps happening in John, biases are exposed, as is the human struggle to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. I guess we can take some delight in knowing we aren’t the first to wrestle with what love looks like beyond mere words.

As we continue our “words made flesh” Sunday gathering series and exploring John, our focus during Lent will be on the word “love”. We’ll welcome Lent with our Ash Wednesday dinner gathering on Overalls Farm One. It will be a time to remember our finiteness, acknowledge our limits, and name the challenges we encounter when trying to embody love. We’ll also make space to choose a practice we want to carry with us through the season.

Lent is not about becoming more worthy of love or impressing people with what we give up or take on. It’s about paying attention to the story of how Love was (and is) being made flesh here. It’s about being honest with ourselves about the aches, complexities and limits of love, and becoming more aware of how Love longs to move through us in real, embodied ways.

That, according to Jesus, is the point. It was and is, always, about love.