Love Eternal
December 18, 2011 | Anita Retzlaff | 2 Samuel 7: 1-11, 16 / Luke 1: 26-38 / Romans 16: 25-27 / Luke 1: 46-55

Grace and peace to you from God the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ. Today we give thanks for those who love us and for those whom we love. You just might be sitting right beside one – someone who loves you, that is. Give them a squeeze. As a matter of fact you are sitting beside someone who loves you, for within the bonds of Christian community we care for and respect each other with special regard. Give them a squeeze too.

As advent slips into Christmas, the guiding centre of what we feel and do is love. The nature of our worship together is compelled by love. We try to express what we know of love by gathering people close - and sometimes we manage to produce that ‘Christmasy’ feeling that we hope to create and other times it just doesn’t come off so well. Be assured that the success or lack thereof of planning intimate encounters does not limit the love that is actually ours in this season. The story of Mary and the angel gives us much to ponder. From that encounter is born a fierce and persistent love that knows no bounds. Another text for this morning’s worship that was not printed in the bulletin is a story from 2 Samuel in which the Angel of the Lord posts a message to King David promising him a future that is also based on persistent and never-ending love. I wish to tell that story in just a moment.

The love that we celebrate at Christmas time is much, much bigger than the feelings we have and the nostalgia that we create and re-create from year to year. The truth that the mother of Jesus faces in her encounter with God’s angel is a lovely, wonderful truth. She is going to have a baby. This is also a very hard truth. This baby will be God come to earth. The angel’s announcement makes for great joy yet unleashes an escalating series of encounters that will require love borne out of strength and passion. What I mean to say is that our understanding of love can be very sentimental – and there is nothing wrong with that - but love is also the source and foundation of great courage and endurance as well. Mary shows us.

Mary describes herself as the servant of the Lord and is willing to be a participant in God’s creativity. The angel assures her that the Lord is with her. I imagine that this is what keeps her steady even though she is not at all sure about what is going on. As the Spirit comes upon her and the Most High overshadows her she is told that she shouldn’t be afraid. Overtaken by divine love she remains open to this bizarre exchange and trusts that what is happening to her is part of a bigger event.

There is another servant, King David, who is also called by God to participate in a bigger event. The word that David receives from God is filled with promises just as is the Word that Mary receives. The divine response of God comes after King David decides that he will build a temple in which God can dwell after years of Israel’s wandering and looking for home. I am going to read the story from 2 Samuel and invite you to listen for some of the parallel experiences to Mary’s visitation:

“…the word of the LORD came to Nathan [the prophet]: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house…. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever. (2 Samuel 7: 4 -11, 16)

In both stories, Mary’s and David’s, it is acknowledged that first and foremost they are servants of God, that God is with them, that through them God will continue to bless the people and that this blessing and presence will last forever. It is amazing that Mary is the source of the same kind of power and promise as is David the King. And much more… The promise that is given at Christmas is a “forever” promise. It is a promise of a fierce love that will continue to give the world confidence and courage to live a life of love for others.

And this is where I get sentimental, nostalgic. I have colours and lights, sounds and smells in my mind every year as I hear the Christmas story. Mary is surrounded by soft blue light, the baby and Joseph and all in attendance are encased in a bejeweled light. I know that this is pure fantasy and yet I indulge myself because the mystery of what happened on the night of Jesus’ birth is a fantastic event. There is the smell of earth and hay and animals. Actually the smell was probably not very sweet and it was likely noisy and cramped in that birthing hovel. However, in my imagination, I take a moment in time, freeze it in a frame of absolute beauty and confess that the “forever” promise comes to earth here, in a particular moment in time. Eternity arrives in the form of the Christ child.

And that is stupendous! Eternity, the love of God that lasts forever, is present at this very moment yet always was and always will be; this is the miracle of Christmas. It is so simple on one hand – as with King David and Mary – God is with us. That’s it. The love of God never, ever abandons us. The little baby Jesus meek and mild, that sentimental part of my experience of God-come-to-earth is a legitimate moment but it will not remain so for that little baby becomes the bearer of the strongest love possible, the love that sacrifices itself so that others will live, so that others are given all the possibilities to see the light. Throughout all of time that love has hovered over all creation. In death this love accompanies us into the rest of eternity – whatever that is really like. We don’t have to know the details; we just need to know that the love that was given to the world in the form of the baby Jesus is constitutive of love eternal and that kind of love never abandons us. So let’s be sentimental about the birth of a baby. It was a profound moment in time. The world was changed by it.

Yet there is much more beyond the sentimental. And that is the rest of the story. For throughout God’s journey with Israel and so with us today, we, the people keep forgetting that God is with us. We turn away and do our own thing often rootless and in a most self-centred manner. God keeps bringing us back. For me, that is what the promise is all about. God’s promise to David named a kingdom and a lineage that would live on forever. In other words God would never abandon David the king even though he and his many descendants will turn away periodically, do some really bad stuff and even forget about God completely.

The promise to Mary is that Jesus, the baby whom she will care for and nurture, will continue, in a new way, the promise of everlasting presence with us when we turn away and do really bad stuff and even forget about God completely. Continuity – the promises God continues to make to his servants who will listen – that continuity, is eternity at work, the presence of divine love that is, that was and that always will be.

The bible tells us of God’s passion for launching new initiatives in our world. Do we, can we understand all that God has in mind? Not a chance! If Mary would have demanded “the correct” interpretation of what she was experiencing when the glory of God “overshadowed” her she would not have been open or hospitable to the work that God wanted to do through her. She trusted in the holy, that through her ordinariness, the extraordinary would take place and that she need not have an answer to her perplexity. An amazing story really!

That leaves us to await this holy night and the transformation that we herald every year. It may have a blue hue and sparkles and stars. Maybe you are more pragmatic than I am and imagine the likely environment in which Jesus was born. Maybe you are overcome by the mystery of it all and there is little else than grateful thanks. However you conceive of the birth of love that Christmas time we have the “forever” promise to treasure.

Whether it is joy or sorrow that you face this day in your personal life, in your family or friendship circles, in your heart of hearts, this season reminds us that love eternal accompanies us through it all. The Lord is with you for you are one of God’s servants in this world. There is much expected of you - the hardest thing actually: Love your people, love your enemies, love when you don’t feel like loving. The power of the Most High continues to work through you as it did through David, through Mary, through the ministry and healing of Jesus.

Prayer: As the eve of Christmas approaches our hearts are glad and our imaginations excited with thoughts and images of the love and safety that we experience in your care Lord Jesus. We are your servants encouraged by your coming and committed to loving light into the world’s dark places. To you O God we give our thanks, our trust, our hearts. You are love eternal. Come Lord Jesus. AMEN