I remember the first time that I heard, really heard these words in church and believed them in every cell of my body:  “You are loved  Nothing can separate you from the love of God.”  That is a kind of incarnated knowledge that changes everything for a person. That day, that knowledge set my feet in a new direction, one that I haltingly follow to this very day.

I say haltingly because I, like any other human creature who catches a glimpse of this understanding, simply can’t hold on to it every single moment.  I am at least lucky enough to know its possibilities.  And it is the power of this knowledge that Howard Thurman speaks to in today’s passage:

Jesus remains the symbol of the dignity and worthfulness of the common humankind. . . . If the theme of the angels’ song is to find fulfillment in the world, it will be through the common person’s becoming aware of her or his own worthfulness and asserting her or his generic prerogatives as a child of God (50).

It is a theme that comes through today’s lectionary passage as well (Luke 2:41-52).  One of the great scriptural and theological debates is the question, when did Jesus know?  When did he know who he was, what he was on this earth to do?  And this story is often a focal point of that discussion.

Everyone in our story, the story of this great nativity and the growth of the child with his parents, was one of Thurman’s common persons — Mary, Joseph, Elisabeth, Zachariah.  When did they know who they were, and what they were on this earth to do?  And did they remember?  I would guess not, because they were, like we are, fully human and therefore fully fallible.

But knowing that we are loved, knowing that our purpose is to be that love during our time here, means nothing if we keep it all to ourselves.  As Bruce Epperly writes in his commentary on Thurman, The Work of Christmas, once we know in our bones that we are loved, we have responsibility in that love:

Worthy of love, we love others. Worthy of gifts, we encourage the gifts of others. Forgiven of our imperfection and sin, we forgive others. Accepted, we accept others, especially the forgotten, scorned, and hated. We are God’s companions in healing the world, one act at a time. In the stories of Christmas and the Christ Child, we see what we can be as companions in God’s realm (52).

True, it is nearly impossible to remember each day that I am part of such a great love, let alone to use it well.  I think, though, that there could be no greater resolution for the coming days than to practice this call. Maybe I can, just once each day, first remember those words I heard so long ago, “You are loved.  Nothing can separate you from the love of God.”  And maybe, in that remembering, I can offer just a piece of that knowledge to my little world.  I am, at least, going to try.

Amen.