The Love of God Incarnate

Today is the 4th Sunday of Advent and we are days away from the birth of Christ.

The last three weeks we have lit the candles of hope, peace, and joy on the advent wreath.

Today we light the candle of love.

The readings of the day are: Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

(I recommend at least reading Matthew.. they are linked to the text, just click on them)

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We are all mostly familiar with the story of Jesus' birth, so I want to think today a little deeper and differently about Jesus's mother Mary... So.. let's begin with a question: How would you respond if one of the young women, Middle School or High School age, from your congregation came up front one Sunday to announce she was pregnant? *GASP! We might respond pretty negatively, overwhelmed by our sense of right/wrong, self-righteous with our stereotypes! But what if she told you, ‘Don’t worry! I am still a virgin; this is God’s child who is coming to turn the world around! To bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly! To fill the bellies of those who hunger and send the rich away empty-handed! Remember all those prophets who said this would happen for years!? Now’s the time!’

Would you roll your eyes and wonder, ‘Yeah? What makes you so special?’ or ‘Really? What universe are you living in?’ or maybe you might even wonder if she's on drugs… You see, this doesn’t just sound odd to our modern ears, even in ancient Israel this was a SCANDAL! Jesus’s very own mother was an unwed, teenage girl, claiming to be the pregnant virgin spoken of by the ancient prophets. I’ll admit, it would have been hard for me to believe her.. and I’m not sure how many people DID believe her at the time.. how many people were actually taking her seriously before Jesus began ministry in his 30s, or even before Jesus’ death and resurrection??

Our love and admiration for Mary is an easy afterthought, but how long did she live under unfair judgment and scorn for this scandal? I imagine Mary really took one for the team here.. for at least 30 years we can imagine her and her family were ridiculed for this scandal. Then once Jesus finally does begin to minister and people start tagging along and getting on board with what Mary has been saying all along, her son is sentenced to the death penalty and she has to watch him die in the most painful way known to man at the time. I can’t imagine how it would feel to watch your child die.. nor can I imagine how heartbroken and confused she must have been with God. ‘God you told me this child was YOUR Son! You told me this child was going to SAVE the world, not be murdered by it! God, where are you!?’ Then after days of this agony, she takes the journey to Jesus’s grave to find it empty. Oh the rage she had to have felt! Someone had robbed her child’s grave!! I can almost hear her yelling, ‘Can’t you people just leave well enough alone, you already murdered him!’

Ah, but since we live on this side of history, we prefer the romanticized picture of Jesus’s family. We like to imagine Mary giddily knowing the secret ways of her God and never fearing, for she knew God’s plans all along.. but did she? She knew what the angel had told her. That she would bear a son, God’s Son, and name him Jesus, and he will be called Son of the Most High, and he will take over the throne of David (Luke 1). We simply don’t know much between then and Jesus’s later years (ministry in his 30s). I guarantee you though, as a human, Mary questioned. Doubted. Got angry. Literally put GOD in time outs. Grounded Jesus, all the while shaking her head like, ‘Really God? This kid is going to be king? THIS kid is going to change the world? He can’t even change his bed sheets when he’s told.. come on!’

We cannot forget the very REALNESS of the Christ-story. It was meant to jar the Israelites and it is meant to jar us still. In this very act of choosing Mary to mother Jesus, God was lifting up the lowly. Choosing the foolish to shame the wise. Mary was the lowest of society – first of all a female.. but also young and unwed. The only thing that could possibly make this more radical is if Mary was a prostitute and then raised Jesus as a single parent! (Which is perhaps how Jesus might be revealed to us today if he hadn’t come already..) It is one thing to imagine Mary as one of our youth, who would be hard to believe, but would still be taken care of, as she would already be someone in our community whom we love and respect. It is another thing, however, if I asked you to imagine an outsider.. let’s say an illegal immigrant who has just come to America fleeing violence in the Middle East, found herself in our hometown and appears to us, still wearing her everyday head coverings, with this message, ‘I am a virgin who will bear the Son of God!’ ..How fast would we kick her out the door? ..&How many times would she grumble under her breath ‘I’ll show you’ in the 30 years it takes for her prophecy to manifest?.. How many times would she shake her fist at God in the 30 years it takes for her prophecy to manifest wondering herself it was all just a dream?.. Such is the scandal of our Savior’s birth. Such is the jarring narrative of our Lord becoming human. Such is the love of God.

God loves all of God’s people SO much, that God KNEW something RADICAL had to be done to prove it. (Because we’re humans.. and we need proof..) So God emptied Godself. Sacrificed all the glory, power, and might and began to grow in Mary’s womb. To endure the pain of birth. To endure the terrible twos and learn to navigate all the big feelings and emotions that make up the human psyche. To endure the human situation – complete with joy, despair, laughter, and tears. To endure death. All to show the world how much its Creator is in love with it. How much your Creator is in love with YOU. To show the world a love that exceeds all power dynamics, stereotypes, prejudice, and violence. TO redefine what love is and who love is for.

Love is for YOU.. Love is also for young, pregnant, unwed women.. Love is for prostitutes, addicts, prisoners, the homeless, and kids in cages.. Love is for the people we hate. Love is for the people we send packing, deemed unworthy for our life or our community. God’s love is SO pure, that God does not care if you are the person nailing Christ to the cross or if you are the one being crucified alongside of him, God’s love is for you all the same. Is it fair? Absolutely not. But Christ did not come to make the world fair. Christ came to give us hope.. to bring the world peace.. to spread joy.. and to love without limits, rules, or boundaries. Christ came to point out to us the lowly we tend to overlook or underestimate. To open our eyes to a world beyond our own ego. To plant in our hearts a new prayer - that instead of our will, God’s will would be done on earth. Christ came for your forgiveness.. for your redemption.. to make you whole.

Our Creator loves us so much that the Creator chose to become the created.. to dwell with creation.. to live among us.. to experience what we experience.. Emmanuel, God is with us. God is with YOU.

May the scandalous, incomprehensible love of God overwhelm you this Christmas. May you drink it in like a warm cup of cocoa, letting it warm your soul and seep into all the places you feel cracked and broken. May it feel like restoration.. like light hitting the darkest spaces.. May you know God’s unconditional love.. May you know that it is, in fact, FOR. YOU.

Amen.