Micah 5:2-5; Luke 1:46-55
Today we come to the end of our Avent journey for this year. We have been waiting. We wait for Christmas. We wait for God to enter into our world and transform it. And while we wait, we get ready. We shop and bake and decorate and travel and send greetings near and far. We have been challenged to expect peace, to watch with hope, to find joy, and today to do it all with love.
In the midst of all there is to do, sometimes love gets lost. We can forget that all this shopping and cooking and connecting is really about the people we care about. Sometimes we expect more of friends and family than they are able to deliver and we’re disappointed. Sometimes they expect more of us than we have to give and we’re frustrated. If we strip away all the expectations that this holiday carries with it, we’re left with the people who matter most in our lives. And with love.
What we feel for family is also true of our relationship with an incredibly complex and messy world. We have so many hopes for what this life will be. We long for peace, for justice, for equality. We want our neighbors to act with compassion and mercy. We expect people to be lifted up and given a chance to succeed and then to turn around and lift up those who follow. We want this world to be God-filled and holy. Usually, we’re disappointed or frustrated. We ask the world to be perfect and it never is. We feel like the world asks us as individuals and as a community to be more perfect than we’ve ever managed and we rarely pull it off. Maybe all the world really asks of us is that we love it the best we can.
In today’s readings we hear from the prophets Micah and Mary. (Mary usually just gets to be a mother, but today she’s a prophet too.) Although they lived centuries apart they shared a common vision of good things for their people. They ask us to carry that vision in our century. It’s a vision of peace and freedom. A vision of people living without hunger, without illness, without fear. Mary taught that vision to her son Jesus and he shared it with the people of his time. They came to listen and to hope. But it’s not a vision that drops out of heaven, sent from God. It’s a vision God helps us create by living in community and caring for one another. It’s about how the world changes when we dare to love and to be loving.
Last week we were reminded that this vision of the way things are meant to be isn’t a burden, it’s a joy. It’s a joy because it is born in love for one another and it rises up as we live that love day by day. It’s rooted in love because God is love and at the core to be alive is to love and to be loved. Any place where love has been set aside or pushed down, life is broken. We are called to clear away and heal the broken places until love can thrive again. That’s called new life. It’s what Jesus and Christmas are about.
I encourage you, no matter how much you have left to do, to leave space to just love. Love yourself. Love those around you. Love the world. Let the rest on your to-do list take second place.
Then in the year ahead let’s commit ourselves and our church to the love of God coming among us again and again through Jesus and his vision. His Father’s vision. His mother’s vision. God’s vision for peace, hope, joy and love for all.
There is so much to do. So much to fix. So much to make new. All of it begins simply with love. We care for one another and our whole world because we love. Scripture encourages us to “let all that you do be done in love.” There’s isn’t a better place to start.