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God's True Love Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis December 15, 2002, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Luke 2:1-7 If you would like to hear the sermon, please e-mail us"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." What of God’s love was revealed to us in that night so long ago: one emperor’s decree, one little town, one man, one maiden, one manger, one child wrapped in swaddling clothes? In this way God’s love was revealed, says John’s first letter: that God sent his only Son into the world. The details of that sending are spare and thus significant, for in them this One--who would chance us to see the legend of his play--calls us to the dance for which we were made. In these details of our human existence, we are summoned to live through him. One emperor’s decree, we read: one slight mention of the power that appeared to rule the world, that appeared to move human beings from here to there, that appeared to determine the course of human existence. We know such power still. For we are those who presume to hold such power, to secure the world with such power, threatening to wield such power as though, by our might, we could rightly determine the course of human history. God’s love revealed among our political arrangements calls us to dance as God’s true love in the face of human power. One little town: the place of our human origin, our ordinary birth, our unwarranted adoption, our familial roots, our social ties to which we return for the purpose of registering our worth, our liabilities, our longing, our fears. We know such towns and inhabit them, for the most part now, as owners of the inns, upright citizens willing to serve the first come, while sending the last and least of these empty away. God’s love revealed among our social arrangements calls us to dance as God’s true love in the face of both kith and kin. One man and one maiden: one way of our human love arranged, caught in webs we did not weave and would not choose again, changed when circumstances turn away from our advantage, coupled for appearances and, of course, for the child’s sake. We know such love and linger long enough to live a history not lightly left behind, hold one another close enough to believe we are not alone, tend each other in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health as long as we can or desire. God’s love revealed among our heart’s arrangements calls us to dance as God’s true love in the face of every human desire. One manger: the sign of segregation, of poverty, of oppression, of need, the place for those left over, cast out, bowed down, the darkness wherein some are hidden and told to keep their distance from privilege, from possibility, from hope. We have been reminded in this week how complicit we are still in maintaining the manger places, though we know such places mostly as objects of our charity, as subjects of our well-positioned scorn, as reason for our relative gratitude. God’s love revealed among our economic arrangements calls us to dance as God’s true love in the face of human privilege and prejudice. One child wrapped in swaddling clothes: a baby born into absolute dependence, vulnerable to every danger without and within, afraid of the darkness and willful in the light of day, with a mouth to feed, flesh to clothe, tears to catch, work to do, a death to die. We know such a child. We have held such a child, loved and lost and been found of such a child, are such a child still. God’s love was revealed in this way: God’s only Son, God’s beloved, God’s true love sent into our political, social, familial and economic arrangements, born that we might live through him, in all these places, as those beloved by God. The medieval mystics believed those who lived in and through Christ’s love were those who, among the plodding details of human history, danced. Freed from the seductions of power, the expectations of society, the limitations of blood, the paralysis of desire, the temptations of wealth because, in Christ’s love, they were loved by the love they had sought in all the wrong places: they leapt, like the yet to be born babe in Elizabeth’s womb, at his nearness. In this season when the headlines would have us believe there is little cause for dancing, this one who has taken our fleshly substance and been knit to our nature calls us, in our present darkness, to dance. And if we chance to see the legend of his play—one emperor’s decree, one little town, one man, one maiden, one manger, one child wrapped in swaddling clothes; if we lean into the dark, silent night long enough to listen, we may be those who also hear his call to lose our selves that we may find ourselves, literally find ourselves, moving with his every move, trusting ourselves into his hold, following his lead alone, dancing as though we were Christ’s true love: for we are! Now of the invitations he proffered while he danced upon this earth, we know he called to the ones least likely to dance within the world’s present arrangements: the lame, the blind, the leper, the widow, the outcast, the tax collectors and sinners. Those who had no stake in the political, social, familial or economic arrangements of Jesus’ day were those who, by his grace, leapt as he came near. Surely this should give us, who have invested our lives in these places of privilege, great pause. Though with God, Jesus said, all things are possible: even Presbyterians may be found dancing in these latter days! “It is the curse of theology,” write the Dutch Reformed theologian Gerardus van der Leeuw, “always to forget that God is love, that is, movement. The dance reminds it. The dance is the discovery of movement external to [human existence], but which first gives [us our] true, actual movement…. Whoever does not dance,” he says, “runs, races, waddles, limps—that is, dances badly. We all must learn, once more, to dance….” When will it come to pass, my friends, that we dare the dance for which we were made, that we practice the scales of rejoicing and sing? “Tomorrow,” this choir of angels now proclaims, the occasion not being in our hands but in God’s, “Tomorrow shall be my dancing day/I would my true love so to chance to see the legend of my play/To call my true love to my dance.” Sing, O my love, my love, my love. This has Christ done for you! Thanks be to God! |