1 John 4:7-11, 16
4th Sunday of Advent
December 21, 2003
Title: Loving It…Or Loving It
It is 1822, outside the city of New York, and young boy named Robert is
riding his beloved pony, Lightening, bought for him by his father, who
simply adored him—those of who have had the gift of children know that
kind of adoration, I am sure. On this day, Lightening stumbles in the
woods, throwing his passenger Robert, and in doing so, the horse
breaks two of his own legs. Well, we all know the fate of horses that
cannot walk, and sadly, the pony has to be shot in those very same
woods, to the horror and dismay of Robert. And in the days, he can’t
stomach what has happened, cannot stand the loss of something he
loved so much—certainly, we can understand that, those of us who have
lost animals that we loved—and so Robert does not recover quickly or
very well from his own wounds, and Robert calls out for a horse that is no
longer there.
His father, who is a professor of Greek and Ancient Languages at an
Episcopal Seminary in New York, does not know what to do or how to get
his son out of this deep childhood depression and despair. Clement
Clarke Moore, Robert’s father, knew his stuff, knew the ancient
languages of the Bible, knew how to give answers to ancient spiritual
questions in an even more ancient languages, and in fact, he was
working on a language dictionary at the time of son’s accident. But he
didn’t know how to help his son move out of grief, though he had spent a
lifetime using language and words to reach adults, and still, he didn’t
know how meet the grief of his broken-hearted son. But he went back to
what he knew, language, words, and he wrote a poem, and he finished it
on Christmas Eve, and that very night he climbed the stairways to his son’
s room, and sat down with his son, and began reading these familiar
words
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
Well, you know the rest of the poem. Mr. Moore read the son slowly to
his son, and as each set of lines was shared, Robert paid more and
more attention, and finally a tiny smile, maybe an even reluctant smile,
crept onto his lips, and after his father finished with it, he said, “Read it
again.” And when he finished the poem for second time, Robert asked if
the Christmas tree was up, and when his father said that it was, he asked
to see it…
So this is how one of the great memories of Christmas was created, this
poem, Twas The Night Before Christmas. Professor Moore was not
particularly proud of this poem, in terms of its literary qualities, he was,
after all, a man of language, but somehow the poem got out of the family
and he eventually admitted to writing it in 1837, and then a decade later,
it was published in New York City newspaper, and, well, the rest, as they
say, is history.
What strikes me about this poem, more than the joy I know I’ve taken
from hearing it over the years, is the story around it, the story of this
young grieving son, and his desperate father, trying to find someway out
of the gloom of a painful moment. This act of creating a poem, of giving
the only gift he really knew how to give, the gift of language and words, it
is an incredible act of love. You know, we are loved by many people in
our lives—mothers, father, sisters, brothers, friends, partners and
lovers—but I suspect that most of us remember the particular acts,
particular moments of care that each of these people gave to us, more
than we the generalities of knowing that we have been loved by them. It
is the particular acts, a touch of the hand, a hug, an anonymous present
at your door, a word, a note, a phone call—it is the moments in our lives
when we were cared for, when people reminded us that we were loved,
that we remember more anything.
When I was in college, back in the late eighties, and I lived in the
Presbyterian House near the campus of the University of Alabama, which
was a boarding house run by a local church for students, many of which
ended up being alot of non-Presbyterians, including a few Jewish
students, actually. In the fall of my sophomore year, during finals week,
someone left a bag at the door of my room, full of cookies, crackers, a
few cheeses, some No-Doze, and a beautiful bottle of White Zinfandel.
Attached to the bottle was a note from a couple from the local
Presbyterian church I was attending, that read—“Do Not Drink This Until
After Finals!” I must admit that it was just one of those particular
moments I have never, never forgotten—I just cracked up—and I am not
sure it was because I was so moved by this beautiful act, or that I was
falling apart because of the stress of finals week! For whatever
complicated reasons, I have never forgotten it, it was a particular act of
care by people that barely knew me, that has stayed with me, more so
than the dozens and dozens of sermons I heard in the pews of that
beautiful, welcoming congregation.
I think we could all share moments with each where people reached out
to us, and loved us without words, through a touch, or by an act, or by
simply standing by us in the midst of whatever storm we found ourselves
in—in the end, love is best shown by what we do, the gentleness and
care we offer to others, more than the words we say. In those moments
when we do not know how to care for others, or we don’t know how to
love them, or when the words just fail us, we must “do,” we give away
what we can, like this father who wrote this poem for his broken-hearted
son—he gave the only gift he knew how to give, and that was the gift of
language, in this particular poem which he, ironically, had no confidence
in. That is what his son remembered, this particular act of love by his
father, a man who was desperate to reach his son in the midst of his
despair.
It is in those particular ways that we are loved that we really remember,
don’t we? You know that, I suspect; you could share those moments with
others, as well. But it shouldn’t surprise us, because as Christians we
are asked to go beyond generalities in our love for others, beyond
clichés, beyond words—we are asked to love each other in particular
ways, in acts of care, in moments of presence, and we are asked to love
particular people, not masses of humanity. The first letter of John, a
piece of which we just heard in the Advent liturgy, reminds us that love
for Christians is not optional for us, it is the centerpiece of faith, it is our
primary task in this world, and to reflect the love we have received from
God towards those right next to us. “Love one another because love is
of God,” the writer of First John, says—love others because you have
first been loved by God, he says later in this passage. In fact, love is
who God is—and those who love, it is they who are in God, who move in
God, and who rest in God, it is they who abide in love, so says the writer
of this letter. You know, its interesting, but you could argue that almost
all of the letters of the New Testament are dealing with communities in
profound conflict—every writer from Paul and the others letter writing
saints wrote particular notes to these churches in the Near East—all of
them are written to Christian communities of faith in incredible turmoil—
and the solution, over and over again, the demand of each of these
ancient writers towards these ancient churches, was love. Love one
another, give away what you have first been given you, says the New
Testament, first through the words of Christ in the first four Gospels and
then through a dozen different letters. Love is always the answer to the
question being asked, the turmoil being experienced, the moment being
survived—all we need, they say to us, in their ancient voices, is love
(Insert clip here).
But, you know, let’s face it: its not as if we haven’t been told to love over
and over again, from this pulpit, from every pulpit we’ve been under and
every preacher we’ve either adored or survived—we know this stuff and
we know this truth. I think the problem is that we think of love the way the
Ewan McGregor character thinks of it in Moulin Rouge: as bunch of
clichés, or as a mess of emotions, love as marketed to us by the Disney
corporation, in some Cinderella cartoon. But anyone who’s ever loved
anyone, whether its partner, or your mom and dad, or your best friend,
or even an enemy, they knows that love isn’t really like that. God does
not ask us to feel love, to feel the warm fuzzies when we are next to
them, or to feel a sweet tightening in our throats when someone we love
walks in the room—no, the New Testament is incredibly practical on this
level: the writers of our sacred texts do not care about our feelings, they
have no investment what we are feeling towards our fellow church
member, or the woman at the office who is sabotaging us, or even our
partner—what the New Testament writers seem to care about, in fact,
what they are obsessed with, is how we treat each other, and how we act
with each other, and how we are with each other. God asks us to do
love, not necessarily feel it. In First Corinthians, in that famous 13th
chapter of this letter, Paul tells what love is, for that community in turmoil,
and what he describes are not emotions, but action, particular ways that
we ought to love each other:
4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all
things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
This passage is almost surprising in its lack of emotion—don’t just feel,
but do these things, says St. Paul. Our passage from First John is the
same—it doesn’t ask you to feel the way God feels about you—it only
asks you to do what God has done for you, which is to love someone by
doing right by them, by treating them in a manner that is not arrogant, or
resentful or irritable, but in ways that are patient and kind and gentle.
Do the right thing, and give yourself a break on the emotions thing—that
is not what we are asked to do. We are asked to love each other, the
people next to us in the pews, at the office, at the 7-Eleven, not by
getting mushy over them, but by acting the way that God has lovingly
acted with us.
And the reality is this: God didn’t get all mushy over us thousands of
years ago, in a manger outside of Bethlehem, in some foreign land
running over with Romans and intrigue and politics. No, the answer we
got from God about the situation we were in, the situation all of
humankind was in, was not an emotion, was not a feeling about
humankind, but an act, a moment, a touch, a something that was as real
as this very moment, as real as this very second. God didn’t get mushy
on us—and I do love the mush, don’t get me wrong, I love a good
romantic or heart-warming moment—but that wasn’t what God’s
response to our need was. I think it’s because God doesn’t mistake
make the same kind of mistake about feelings that we humans make,
one way or another: this idea that good feelings are what love is, or the
mistake that a lack a feeling is somehow a lack of love. God’s answer to
us in Bethlehem was an act, was a something, a moment where God
answered the pleas of God’s people with an action—God did something
to love us, and what God did was this Jesus, it was to meet us in this
particular person, in this particular way, through this particular means.
Again, it shouldn’t surprise us—that is what love is, beyond the emotions,
beyond everything—it is the moment where do what must be done for
the sake of another and for the sake of our own soul, because God did
what had to be done to rescue us from our own selves, our own sins.
And there was no reason to do this thing, to give us this Jesus—it isn’t as
if the people of Israel and all of humankind had done much of anything to
deserve this grace, this mercy, this love. There was no rational reason
for God to chose to act with love—its almost crazy, this decision by God
to love us just as we were at the moment the child Jesus was born
But you know, love does that to you, right? It makes you irrational about
the one you love, even with all their faults and brokenness, you can’t be
help to still love them, to love them even recklessly. It is the same with
God—God is simply irrational about us, we who have never really been
all that deserving of the love we’ve been given, because all the
brutalities we have committed against each other, the Holocaust’s we
have inflicted upon our fellow human beings. But the act of loving
another is never about what is deserved or is not deserved—it is
something we do with each other and for each other, because it is
something that God has done for us. The good news, I think, is that you
and I are not asked to do the impossible, which is to feel something we
cannot feel for another human being—no, we are asked not to feel, but
to do love, and that is quite another thing. There is not another option
for us, really. We cannot love it or leave it, if we are to be followers of
this Jesus of Nazareth. The only option is to love or…to love, to keep
doing what we must do for another human being, our lovers, our family,
our friends, even those we disagree with, and are disappointed in. In
that manger, thousands of years ago, it is the option God went with, and
so what we have before us is love given skin and bones, love given
human flesh, a love that was made vulnerable, fragile and weak, nestled
in a chest of a mother, this Mary. Love looks like that, you know—it is
found in a particular person, in a particular act, a moment in time, when
God loved a people and a world through a child—and it was and is the
way that God loves you and me. Amen.
