[Love All]

[Love All]

(Luke 1:46-55) 10:30 am, 4^th Sunday of Advent,

Dec 23, 2012; Windsor UBC; J G White

In the mid-1800s, Christian theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, penned this little parable. It is a familiar story, a story rewritten by many over the ages in many different forms.

A prince wanted to find a maiden suitable to be his queen. One day while running an errand in the local village for his father, he passed through a poorer section. As he glanced out the windows of the carriage, his eyes fell upon a beautiful peasant maiden. During the ensuing days he often passed by the young lady and soon fell in love.

But he had a problem. How would he seek her hand? He could order her to marry him. But even a prince wants his bride to marry him freely and voluntarily and not through coercion. He could put on his most splendid uniform and drive up to her front door in a carriage drawn by six horses. But if he did this he would never be certain that the maiden loved him or was simply overwhelmed with all of the splendor.

The prince came up with another solution. He would give up his kingly robe. He moved, into the village, entering not with a crown but in the garb of a peasant. He lived among the people, shared their interests and concerns, and talked their language. In time the maiden grew to love him, because of who he was and because he loved her first.

This is a story of Christmas – of the incarnation – of God loving so deeply He joins us, one of us, and bring us up to Him.

The season of Advent is almost over.  The time of waiting, of remembering Biblical promises, of feeling our hopes, of looking for signs of the Saviour.  Our scripture today from Luke goes back to the months before the now-famous birth.  Young Mary has been visited by an angel, and told of her child, the Saviour, the long-awaited Messiah.  She is such a model for us of receiving the love and blessing of Almighty God. 

If we are to be loving people, you and I, we must also receive the love God has for us: accept it, take it, enjoy it.

Catholic writer Richard Rohr points out for me so well that Mary does not say she’s “not worthy”. She only asks for clarification: “How can this happen? I am a virgin” (Luke 1:34). She never asks if, whether, or why!  It takes the whole Old Testament story to work up to this point, where this woman receives grace and love and favour from God so freely and purely.

What is the first thing Mary does after the angel’s message?    She responds to the news about her older cousin, Elizabeth, who is already pregnant.  Mary goes to her.  Already Mary is giving, caring, loving towards someone else.  She is so blessed, she becomes a blessing immediately.

While she is there with Elizabeth, she sings a song.  The Magnificat, it gets called, by it’s old Latin name.  This is what Natalie read a few minutes ago.  It’s one of the greatest hits from the Bible.  Said and prayed and sung billions of times in worship and devotion by millions of Christians through history. 

And you see what her lyric says?  God brings about three revolutions.  A moral revolution:  God was merciful to those who respected Him, and scattered the proud in their own thoughts.   A social revolution: God brought down the powerful, and lifted up the lowly.  An economic revolution: God filled the hungry, and sent the rich away empty.

Mary’s song celebrates what the Lord is about to do by rejoicing in what God has been up to all along.  What the Lord does sounds rather practical.  Very much attitude-adjustment.   Very peace and justice for all.  Very dollars and cents.

On December 17, part of my daily reading was Prov. 30:7-9.  I wrote it down on a bit of card and carried it with me for the day.

O God, I beg two favors from you;

    let me have them before I die.

First, help me never to tell a lie.

Second, give me neither poverty nor riches!

    Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.

For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?”   And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.

I don’t think I’ve asked God for two favours like these very often!  Have you?

Mary knows so well how the Lord operates.  She was poor and young, but she was part of The Plan.  Perhaps she can be a teacher of God’s love and how to take it.  She knows how to receive the blessing.  She knows she is wonderful because of God, not because she made herself great.  Again, as Richard Rohr puts it:  God does not love you because you are good; God loves you because God is good. God does not love you because you are good; you are good because God loves you.

And so, you and I are loving because God loves us.  This is stated explicitly in 1 John 4.  Verses 9 & 10: God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  And then, verse 19:  We love because he first loved us.

When Mary sang her praises to God at Elizabeth’s house that day, little did she know that the child would be born to die as Christ did.  As Mark Lowry’s song asks: Mary did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?  A sacrificial lamb.   

Mary saw the redemption of the world in the cross and the resurrection of her own son.  She stayed with her Son to the end, and beyond his life here, to the birth of the Church. 

Love came down at Christmas, yes.  But God’s love was only completed when Jesus was killed for one and all.  This is our preaching; this is our Gospel.  This must remain in our conversation, our awareness, our devotion that shines like little candle flames for others to see.  Jesus is the gift that is totally used up and spent for you and for me.  He is God, and He is the amazing demonstration of divine love.  Accept this love, accept Him, and your transformation blossoms.  The path of love and sacrifice opens up, a path that makes all the difference in the world.  We are made new, new men and women, by God’s grace.

The beautiful birth, the horrible death, the amazing resurrection:  we re-view the story of Jesus, and live, and love.  Have you ever heard a 1,700 year-old sermon?  Here is a quotation from a Christmas message of Gregory of Nazianzus, 380 AD.

This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating today, the Coming of God to Man, that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God—that putting off of the old man, we might put on the new; and that as we died in Adam, so we might live in Christ, being born with Christ and crucified with Him and buried with Him and rising with Him. For I must undergo the beautiful conversion, and as the painful succeeded the more blissful, so must the more blissful come out of the painful. 

Perhaps there are people near you who have not found the way to accept the love God has for them.  They don’t yet know the power of Jesus’ shed blood in their lives.  Your ministry may be to share this good news.  There often is much personal, inner pain to go though to join Christ, to have healing in the human soul.  We must be so loving and caring with others around us.  God is.

God loves us first – and loves them first.  We understand this.  I can.  My stepdaughter is expecting a child; I get to be “a grandfather” in May.  The child apparently will be a boy.  He has a name already – Dryden Doucette.  Lots of clothes and things have already been bought for him.  And, according to the father, he will grow up to be a great hockey player.

The child, still in the womb, is loved already.  It has nothing to do with what he will be.  He is simply loved by us first.  So it is for us as God’s children on this planet.  He first loved us.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.  That’s Mary’s song: thanks for God’s love. 

Music is so powerful at this time of year.  This past Friday evening, there must have been two hundred people in the pews of Christ Church for a concert of carols and Christmas anthems.  Among them was this old English carol. 

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;

I would my true love did so chance

To see the legend of my play,

To call my true love to my dance;

Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,

This have I done for my true love.

So, why is this a Christmas Carol?  Who is about to dance?  Who is the true love of the dancer?

We can find the answer in the holy imagery of Revelation.  After the lyric of the Hallelujah Chorus, pay attention:

"Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns.  Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. (19:6b, 7) 

Jesus is the one who dances.  His true love is us, His Church.

Then was I born of a virgin pure,

Of her I took fleshly substance

Thus was I knit to man's nature

To call my true love to my dance.

Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love,

This have I done for my true love.

That very old carol has many other stanzas.  They tell the story of Jesus, from birth to death and resurrection.   It is a love song.  It is a story of true love.

We are called to join the holy dance, the eternal dance, the dance of humanity and divinity.  It is a dance of love.  For God so loved the world … God’s incredible love for all.  All.  You are part of the all.  And you can join the dance.