Love Always Finds a Way
Reflections on Luke 2.1-14
Christmas Eve
24 December 2018
Holy Trinity Cathedral
New Westminster
Luke 2.1-14
2.1In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3All went to their own towns to be registered. 4Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
8In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 14“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!”
Anyone who has had any responsibility for children has had the experience of taking the young ones to a movie that the adult might not have otherwise attended. I remember that the interest of our oldest child, David, in dinosaurs coincided with the release of the movie Jurassic Parkin 1993. After the movie we even bought David a South African love bird named Sunny since, as scientists now suggest, birds may be the closest descendants of dinosaurs on the planet today.
Early in the movie a team of scientists are invited by the entrepreneur who has developed the park to evaluate the park’s safety. They are shown into the laboratory where the animals are bred. One of them, a specialist in randomness and chaos theory, asks how the animals are prevented from breeding in the wild once they are released. The chief breeder tells him that all the animals are born female, so there’s no danger of them breeding. ‘Well,’ says the contrary-minded scientist, ‘life always finds a way.’ And, if you’re familiar with the movie and its sequels, life does always find a way along with a lot of screams, terror and excitement.
Tonight we are here to celebrate the deeper truth that ‘lovealways finds a way’. I’m not taking about passion or friendship or parental love. I’m not talking about the reaction we have to unwrapping Christmas gifts that appeal to our desires and to our need to fit in with the trend-makers and other celebrities. I’m talking about the self-giving love that brought the entire universe into being. I’m talking about ‘the love that will not let us go’ even when we turn our back on that love, even when we confuse other forms of love with the love that created us, redeems us and sustains us. That is the love that lies embodied in the child whose birth we celebrate this night.
When one of the great teachers of the Christian faith, Augustine of Hippo, bishop of city in north Africa, was asked to explain the mystery of God as Christians understand that mystery, he described the God who created the universe as ‘the Lover of our creation’. To be sure he was building upon something the writer of the First Letter of John wrote to a Christian community in conflict some three hundred years earlier.
3.7Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him . . . . 11Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world . . . . 16So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
The love that I am speaking about is more than an emotion; it is a reality that comes into being when two or more people make the choice to love as God loves. This kind of love does not demand privilege or adulation or slavishness. It is a love that makes room for the beloved to grow, a love that rejoices in the successes of the beloved, a love that dares to speak the truth even at the risk of being misunderstood.
The kind of love I am speaking about is a costly love. Because it demands much of those who would offer it to others, it is a love that the world quickly obscures by encouraging a frenzy of gift-buying and a limited, a very limited, season of ‘good cheer’ when everyone is supposed to be nice to one another and, if so moved, nice to those who cannot share in ‘the spirit of the season’.
The love of God embodied in the child whose birth we celebrate this night will be revealed in the months and years ahead when rulers will feel threatened by the kind of love found in this child. Disciples will come and go as they realize that this love is not just a momentary feeling but a life-long commitment. Those who celebrate the birth of the Christ-child as a cultural festival will feel let down next week when the tree needs to be taken down and shredded and next month when the credit card bills arrive.
But here in this place the love of God we celebrate this night will continue to shape a people who understand the cost and embrace it in the knowledge that love always find a way to break into the world. Love finds a way when the hungry are fed. Love finds a way when those who are lonely are embraced by a community. Love finds a way when those who have been made to feel powerless are renewed by God’s strength, embraced by Christ’s compassion and empowered by the Spirit to be signs of God’s healing and reconciliation in the world.
Love always finds a way because we have heard the song of the angels. Like the shepherds we have been brought to the stable to see the Beloved wrapped in clothes and lying not in pomp but in simplicity. Love always finds a way because we know that God’s love abides in us and we in God. We know its cost and we embrace its challenge. We know
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and the shepherds
have found their way home,
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