Luke 1:46b-55
December 24, 2023 – 4th Sunday of Advent
No math is necessary this morning. We can just say it: when we wake up tomorrow morning, it will be Christmas. Ready or not.
I don’t even think another deep breath will help at this point. So let’s jump in!
As has been noted, today is the fourth Sunday of Advent. The Sunday whose theme is LOVE…
Maybe some of you are filled to overflowing with LOVE this morning… Maybe for some of you, the delight and magic and good cheer of this holiday season have caused your heart to swell with love… Maybe for some of you, the joy and hope and peace of this holy season have caused your spirit to bubble over with love…
If there are those of you here for whom those descriptions resonate, wonderful!
I am not among you.
I’ve actually had a hard time thinking about Love in preparation for this sermon… And that’s hard for me to say, because I love LOVE! It’s cheesy, but LOVE is one of my favorite words [my kids have been known to tell me that I say “I love you” to them TOO MUCH!]. I also love “LOVE” because it’s the root of another one of my favorite words: BELOVED.
We’ll come back to that in a few minutes…but first, I want to wonder out loud with you why it’s been hard for me to think about LOVE in these days… I wonder if it’s because there seems to be such a strong presence of what we can simply call “NOT-love” in the world–such a strong and powerful presence of fear…hatred…greed…judgment…cruelty…violence… And I could go on! There’s so much that is NOT love that seems to dominate our awareness…
I wonder if it might have to do with all of the cultural messages of this season, that permeate songs, movies, greetings cards, greetings, and more; messages that seem to lift up a special, extra-heartwarming, wait-all-year-for-it, Christmas LOVE, that have made it harder— ironically–for me to think about LOVE! I find myself responding to that messaging with some resentment, in fact–thinking, “Why just now?? Why not always??”
I wonder, also, if it has been hard to think about LOVE because it seems like we just don’t get it… In so many parts of the world, in so many parts of our own lives, love seems lacking. Or at least incomplete. Sometimes it’s so clearly conditional, dependent on behavior or simply someone’s whim. Sometimes it’s so obviously performative, meant just for show, without any real depth. Sometimes love gets twisted, and freedom gets replaced with control, trust, with fear, and respect, with subjugation… Sometimes, even with the highest aspirations, good intentions get convoluted, good-heartedness goes awry, and love gets messy. We humans just don’t seem to get what LOVE is really meant to be…
Wherever you find yourself on the continuum of how we feel about LOVE in these days–whether you are filled to overflowing with it or are finding it hard to think about without cynicism and resentment…or anywhere in-between…welcome! There is room for you here! 🙂
But before we continue to examine LOVE, we are going to go back to that other of my favorite words, the one so deeply related to LOVE. And that is, Beloved.
It’s such a lovely word [no pun intended!]. Beloved
Will you say that with me? Beloved.
As in, you are God’s Beloved. I am God’s Beloved.
Will you say that with me? That might be a little harder…Ready? I am God’s Beloved.
Once more: I am God’s Beloved.
And once more, a little more slowly, a little more thoughtfully: I…am…God’s…Beloved.
Now I invite you to close your eyes…and with your eyes closed, think of someone who is YOUR beloved…and maybe allow yourself to smile as you think of them, if you need permission! Nobody’s watching…and imagine yourself saying to them–or if that feels too vulnerable, imagine yourself just looking at them and thinking these thoughts: “You are my beloved…and even more than that, you are God’s Beloved.” …
That’s probably fairly easy to imagine… I trust there’s at least one person in each of our lives about whom it makes our hearts smile to think of them as not only our beloved but as God’s beloved…
Now I invite you to think of someone you don’t love. Or at least someone you don’t like. Maybe someone with whom you have unresolved hurt or anger… Maybe someone with whom you disagree vehemently… Maybe someone whom occasionally, in the secret dark corners of your heart, you wish–in the words of author Anne Lamott–would be nibbled to death by rats… Think of that person…If you’d like, it can even be more than one person… Whoever it is, as you hold them in your thoughts…can you also hold the truth that they, too, are God’s beloved? That God loves them as much as God loves you?… Can you acknowledge, just in your mind, that they, too, are God’s beloved?… Can you look at them, in your mind, and imagine saying to them, You are God’s beloved… ??
That’s way harder, isn’t it?… but it’s a valuable exercise, I think, as we talk about Love, and what it’s really meant to be…
I think all of the pieces of what we just did are important as we think about that–the simple saying of the words initially, love and beloved… the naming and claiming of ourselves as beloved, as God’s Beloved… the easy imagining of ones we love also being named as beloved… and the harder imagining of ones we don’t love being named as beloved, as God’s Beloved…
Because Love is what we are fundamentally called to as followers of Jesus.
Love is what we are fundamentally called to as followers of Jesus…regardless of how we feel.
Regardless of whether we are filled to overflowing with feelings of love or are overwhelmed with feelings of cynicism and resentment; and, regardless of how we feel about the recipients of that Love–including ourselves…we are called to be bearers of God’s Love, promoters of God’s Love, workers for God’s Love…
…which is to say, not just an easy love that feels good and might look good, and generally remains on the surface, but a hard, costly, deep, sometimes-uncomfortable, often life-changing kind of love.
And man oh man, do we need that kind of Love…
The problem is, that hard, costly, deep, sometimes-uncomfortable, often life-changing kind of love is exactly the kind of love that we don’t know how to do very well…
Lucky for us, it’s also exactly the kind of love that God shows us in Jesus!
The Love that God reveals to us in Jesus is hard, yes, costly, yes, deep, yes, sometimes uncomfortable, yes, and often life-changing. Because it’s a truth-telling love, and a justice- seeking love, and an injustice-naming love. It’s a reconciliation-oriented love, and a forgiveness- offering love, and a peace-producing love. It’s a love that heals wounded hearts and mends broken spirits, that comforts minds and bodies that are in distress. The Love that God reveals to us in Jesus is an unwavering love, an unending love, an unconditional love.
And that kind of Love–all of that!–is the Love to which we are called as his followers!
No wonder we don’t know how to do it very well!
Thankfully, God knows how to do it. That’s the only Love God knows. That’s the only Love God does. In fact, that’s who God is…
That’s the Love that we hear in Mary’s song in today’s Gospel, the Magnificat–this Love that not only filled Mary with the enfleshed embodiment of God’s very Self, but the Love about which she sings, the Love that scatters, dispels, the thoughts of the proud, the Love that brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly, the Love that provides for the needy and takes from those who have too much! All these things that God has promised to God’s people, that God will accomplish through God’s Love for God’s people and all of God’s creation…
That’s the only Love God knows. That’s the only Love God does. In fact, that’s who God is…
And that is the Love that is embodied in Jesus, the Christ Child, whose birth we are so close to celebrating!
And that is the Love that is born again any time it is lived out. Any time Truth is told. Any time justice is sought. Any time injustice is named.
The Love that is made manifest in the birth of Jesus is born again any time reconciliation is pursued, forgiveness is requested or received, peace is known…
God’s Love, whose arrival we celebrate in the squalling, naked baby in the manger, is born again and again and again, any time hearts are healed, spirits are mended, minds and bodies are comforted in their distress…
And it is to that kind of Love–and the living of it–that we are fundamentally called, as followers of Jesus…regardless of how we feel.
And I think there’s a beauty and a simplicity to that–because regardless of how we are feeling, whether we’re overflowing with warmth and good cheer or we’re overwhelmed with cynicism and resentment…regardless of how we feel about the recipients of that Love–including ourselves–whether they, or we, are worthy or not, our work, our task, our calling is to receive that Love, and then to be bearers of that Love, promoters of that Love, workers for that Love… God’s hard, costly, deep, sometimes uncomfortable, often life-changing, truth-telling, justice- seeking, injustice-naming, reconciliation-oriented, forgiveness-offering, peace-producing, heart-healing, spirit-mending, mind-and-body-comforting, unwavering, unending, unconditional love.
Man oh man, do we need that kind of Love!
Let’s get at it, shall we?
God, may it be so.
Amen.
Rev. Deborah Beloved Church (aka "Pastor Deb") 