Good morning and blessings to all of you on this third day of the new year! I am Sylvia, the intern as Leslie said and I am nervously excited to share a brief message with you today. As we all know 2020 brought many disruptions, challenges, and sorrows, but it also made us keenly aware of our priorities, our interconnectedness, and our ability (or not) to adapt to creative ways of connecting and maintaining a sense of community even as we social distance and wear masks. I also believe that 2020 launched us into a need to reexamine our understanding of what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves and who our neighbor is.
Bishop Michael Curry in his book, Love Is the Way, writes that our neighbor is anyone in need of our love and not the sentimental romantic love, but agape love, the love for the other. Everyone is our neighbor, everyone.
In our reading today we hear about John testifying and pointing the way to the light, the light that is NOT overcome by the darkness, the light that we know to be Jesus, the Word-made-flesh, God-with-us, Emmanuel. Jesus, who lived out love of neighbor every moment of his life. It infused his ministry and it should infuse our lives and ministry as well. We are called to point to Jesus through our own agape actions towards others, actions that seek nothing in return, nothing for ourselves but are solely a response to someone in need because of our common humanity. So, what can love in action look like? I offer you the story of Eric and Henry as an example.
In November 2019, a young man named Eric spent a month or so in Ghana. While there he befriended Henry, a young moto-taxi driver who invited Eric to his home and introduced him to his sister, mother, and six-year-old son. A few weeks into his trip, Eric became seriously ill with a kidney infection and a UTI that landed him in the hospital for three days and eventually requiring an emergency evacuation back to the US. However, while he was in the hospital, Henry visited him every day bringing food and acting as a translator for Eric. When Eric had to evacuate, Henry journeyed with Eric to the airport (a 7 hour round trip) to simply make sure Eric made it ok. All without asking for anything in return. This is agape love in action and in my mind, Henry's actions point to the light, to Jesus.
So, I challenge you this year to be awake, be alert, and ask for the courage to boldly love your neighbor as yourself and point others to the light. May God be with you.