Holy & Beloved Ones!

[Texts]

Luke 2:41-52

Psalm 148

Colossians 3:12-17

[Message]

Christmas blessings to each one of you.

We are halfway through the Christmas Season. Let’s have a simple check in with our emotions. How are you these days? We all agree that the Christmas Season symbolizes hope, joy, peace, and love, but have you felt anxious out of the blue these days? Or what are the things that have amazed you, which convince you that it is indeed a blessed season of the year?

Collectively speaking, we might have very mixed feelings this Christmas Season. If nothing is happening to us in our personal life, there are always dramatic events or tragedies occurring in our society or around the world.

This morning, I want to invite you to place something important in your heart that you all know well: each of you is a holy and beloved child of God. Thanks be to God for Jesus.

St. Paul used these affirming words to address his siblings in Christ in Colossians 3:12: holy and beloved ones. These words carry such great power to affirm the identity of all believers and express their extraordinary connection with God and each other.

Because of this extraordinary identity, holy and beloved, as St. Paul describes, we are invited to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. As a result, mimicking Jesus on how to bear with one another and forgive each other becomes a way of living. In Colossians 3:14, St. Paul paints a delightful picture for us to see what it looks like if we all clothe ourselves with love. He says that everything is going to be bound together in perfect harmony.

In reality, we hope and pray that we get to see more of such a delightful view each day, everything bound together by love in perfect harmony.

A couple of weeks back, I was dusting our bookshelves and saw the butterfly specimen which I had moved from place to place in our living room for years. I just didn’t know what to do with it. So, I moved it to our kitchen counter temporarily. After a few days, I saw one side of its wings had fallen off. Then, I told myself, “Oh! Well! Now, I guess it’s okay to toss it away!” Even though I felt a little bit sorry for the butterfly, I did it.

As people of faith, holy and beloved ones, I mean you and me, what words or images come to you when you see a living butterfly? [magnificent, Easter, resurrection, new life, transformation…]

When I read St. Paul’s words, everything is bound together by love in perfect harmony, I thought of the butterfly that I tossed away missing one side of its wings. In order to live out as a living butterfly, it needs both sides of its wings to fly, fly freely.

Our connection with God and with each other is like these wings on both sides. God is the center of everything. By connecting with God, we partner with each other to depart, to fly, to land well each day. Everything is bound by love in perfect harmony just as the wings on both sides work together in harmony.

With the help of the Holy Spirit, Mary and Joseph partnered with each other to explore this extraordinary connection with God through the child, baby Jesus, in Nazareth. With the help of the Holy Spirit, a choir of angels and shepherds partnered with each other to share the good news about Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. With the help of the Holy Spirit, Simeon and Anna partnered with each other to testify who Jesus was and why Jesus came when Jesus was 8 days old, presented in the temple of Jerusalem.

After all the God-led events, both Mary and Joseph were amazed at what was being said about Jesus, including the time when they lost Jesus in Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. That’s today's story. He was 12 years old. It was said that Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with divine and people.

We can be amazed at everything about Jesus by following God’s lead. Nonetheless, we can also experience anxiety when we can’t find Jesus in our lives on our way back to God just as how Mary and Joseph felt on their way back home.

After that incident, Mary treasures all the things in her heart, her extraordinary connection with God through the boy Jesus. That’s her faith story. Her faith story makes her depart with love and compassion, fly with kindness and humility, and land with meekness and patience each day. What is your faith story, a story of your extraordinary connection with God, which makes you depart with love and compassion, fly with kindness and humility, and land well with meekness and patience each day?

Dear holy and beloved siblings in Christ, with the help of the Holy Spirit, who might partner with you in 2025, departing, flying, and landing well with you each day? Not everyone is called to fly high and far. But by grace through faith, everyone has been restored through the cross to fly with someone who is holy and beloved as you are.

Our extraordinary connection with God as a holy and beloved ones comes with the purpose of our extraordinary existence in this place at this time. As we prepare our hearts, minds, and bodies individually and communally for 2025, may God’s blessings be upon you, your partners and the ministries that God has entrusted you to be part of. Whenever we see everything bound together by love in perfect harmony, may we remember to praise the Lord as the Psalmist did in Psalm 148.

Amen.