(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
(704) 599-9810 | Worship Sundays @ 10:55 a.m.
🕊️ “Love Is All I Have to Give You” — Love made visible, embodied, and brave enough to change the world.
Love Is All I Have to Give You – December 21, 2025 | Fourth Sunday of Advent: LOVE
Scripture: Luke 1:46b–55 (CEB) | Modern Lesson: bell hooks
This Sunday at Holy Covenant United Church of Christ, we gathered on the
Fourth Sunday of Advent to dwell in the theme of LOVE — not as sentiment or softness, but as courage, commitment, and holy risk. In a world marked by injustice, fear, and exhaustion, worship invited us to remember that love is the force that dares to enter the impossible and bring new life where none seems possible.
Worship opened with a tender yet prophetic Call to the Heart, naming Mary as a model of love embodied — a young woman who carried love in her body before she ever held it in her arms. Together we confessed that God’s love is not distant or abstract, but takes on flesh, moves among us, and calls each of us by name.
The Candle of Love was lit by Markus and Kristen Fuchs, accompanied by words that named love as both gentle and fierce — a power that forgives, liberates, embraces the forgotten, and risks itself for the sake of others. As the flame burned, we proclaimed that God’s love endures and calls us to love one another with the same brave generosity.
Our Modern Lesson drew from the wisdom of bell hooks, who reminded us that love is not passive feeling, but active practice — a combination of care, commitment, responsibility, respect, and trust. Her words echoed through the sanctuary alongside Mary’s song in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46b–55), where love overturns injustice, lifts the lowly, fills the hungry, and imagines a world where everyone belongs.
Pastor Christopher Czarnecki preached a sermon titled “Love Is All I Have to Give You,” inviting us to see Mary not as distant icon, but as courageous witness — someone who offered what she had, trusting that love would be enough to change the world. Love, he reminded us, is our vocation and our work: the presence we carry into every space, every heart, every moment.
Music carried the theology of love with depth and beauty throughout the service — from the piano duet prelude “Journey to the Manger,” to the handbell choir’s tender offerings, the choir’s moving anthem “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and the congregation’s powerful proclamation of “Canticle of the Turning.” Each note echoed Mary’s song: a world on the brink of turning, shaped by love that refuses to let injustice have the final word.
As we moved toward the table and the offering of our gifts, we were reminded that love is made visible through generosity — through shared resources, shared lives, and shared hope. Like Mary, we are invited to offer what we have, trusting that when love is shared, God continues to bring new life into the world.
✨ “Love is not simply what we feel — it is what we dare to live.”
“Love is all Mary had to offer — and it was enough to change the world.” — Rev. Christopher Czarnecki
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