B, Advent 4 - Luke 1:30-35 "The Advent of Love"

How does one love?  How does one love with the right love?  What is the “right” love?  As we light the candles of Advent we light the candle of love.  As we wait and watch for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ do we love waiting and watching for him?

If you are like me, waiting and watching, is a task that frustrates.  I want to wait and watch but without much notice I find myself waiting and watching for the things God will not find pleasing when Jesus Christ returns.  “How” I love comes down to “what” I love.  What do you love?  What you wait and watch for shows what you love?

When you love something or someone, love demands all other loves must die.  For humans, love usually expresses itself in desire, or what one wants.  When I want something all other things seem less important until I get the thing or person I want. When I get it desire then builds for the next thing I want to conquer.

As people of God you and I come up short in the love God wants us to have.  Why is it I find myself loving the stuff, I know and have been taught as a Christian, comes from the darkness within me? To my dismay I begin the day saying to myself I am going to follow you Heavenly Father, but somewhere each day I end up finding myself following my desire.  Love for God disappears, dead and gone, and in its place I find I love with a love that has me at the centre.

King David was no stranger to this frustration as the battle of love raged within.  David ruled with the promise that God’s steadfast love would not depart from him. But even being the anointed King he struggled.  David finds himself concerned that while he has a dwelling, a king’s residence, God does not.  And yet not long after his outwardly looking concern for God, from the roof of his very dwelling, he finds himself in the midst of lust and craving over Bathsheba, and then the death and cover up of her husband Uriah. 

I imagine after David was caught out in adultery and murder, he must have wondered, how he had got things so wrong!  Hear his plea for mercy and steadfast love...

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.  Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.” (Psalm 51:10–13 ESV)

When you and I get caught out we too wonder in our shame how we get things so wrong, how love is so corrupted within us.

How do you respond when you get it wrong?  Do you say, “It happens”, then forget about it and move on to the next disaster?

I suspect you do.  Why? Because we’re children of this generation!  We’re taught to watch and wait in all the wrong ways.  We watch our televisions and wait for the internet to load.  We bombard ourselves with information twenty-four hours a day, in front of the misfits and mischief of television, the internet, and social mediums.  Our lack of response and learning from love gone wrong is dictated by what we do most of the time.  And that is nothing because that’s what watching TV teaches us to do as we wait for the show to continue after each break.

The human spirit loves the technology of instant gratification.  The human spirit loves how it feels with little regard for the facts.  Television and the social media of our age care little for stopping and investigating what and why we fail, let alone do much about having it fixed.  Rather you and I have been taught to seek the quick fix of feelings as we watch funny failures and the feel good mountains of mindless media.

Do we feel the love? Can we feel the love?  Only for a fleeting second then no, nothing once again! When love is based on my feelings, this kind of love leaves me feeling dumb and numb.

So we return to the question, “How do we love?”  Its here we need to address the question.  The focus of the question is all wrong.   The focus needs to be taken away from us and our feelings.  We need a revelation from God on how we are loved to even begin to know what the right love is.

But you can learn from your failure.  You can stop and see how the techno-gods work destruction in you.  We need to learn they serve us by taking our focus from the things that serves us for eternal salvation.  Our craving for love, our ability to watch and wait with love, needs to be answered but not from within our human spirit being entertained to death but from the true source of constant, unwavering, unfailing, unfaltering, steadfast love.

This love came upon Mary most unexpectedly when Archangel Gabriel without warning appeared to her.

And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. (Luke 1:30–35 ESV)

When God’s steadfast love came to Mary, it came bring unknown knowledge and love to challenge the status quo of humanity’s misguided love. Imagine Gabriel as the power app of the day.  He was the facebook of God, the Studio Ten transmission, the Snapchat service, the good newsfeed sent to inform Mary.  Gabriel in the Hebrew literally means “the mighty one of God” and what a mighty message it was this angel brought from God.

This message of love through incarnation was like no other.  It would have been hard to hear and understand.  But Mary went on to allow the power of the Most High to overshadow her and we too can surrender to this Most High Love.

How do we love with the right love? We need to allow God to love us and we do this by yielding our human spirit to the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit leads us in God’s word.  The Holy Spirit also gives us the right perspective on God’s word so we might be found living under his word, hungering for love and righteousness because we realise just how much love and righteousness we truly need.

The Holy Spirit reveals what love is in the Word of God, the same Holy Spirit that conceived the Love of God incarnate in Mary’s womb.  The Holy Spirit reveals our need for this Steadfast Love too.  The fact is we cannot love God unless we have received the forgiveness of sins[1].   And we receive the forgiveness of sins as we believe and confess we are sinners. The Holy Spirit enables us to remain in Christ and confess him as our Saviour.  The Holy Spirit works in us throughout our lives teaching us more and more to abide in this Steadfast Love, as he works to kill off what we often love more than God.

Also a fact, without the forgiveness of sin there can only be terror in our knowledge of sin and death.  So let the Holy Spirit return you to the home of repentance and confession of sin before Jesus Christ.  Let him lead you from the haughty house of feelings where the words of love echo around it in emptiness that leads consciences into pride or despair.  Let this love die so the Holy Spirit can build you up with the steadfast love of God in Christ Jesus.

You and your human spirit cannot create this true love but you can receive it and let it flow through you to others.  Let it flow through you as forgiveness.  The Holy Spirit, through the word of God, has brought us to Jesus and our Heavenly Father, he is bringing us to Jesus and our Heavenly Father now, and he will continue to bring us to Jesus and our Heavenly Father.  So let us pray for the full incarnation of God within us and for all whom we forgive this advent of Christmas...

Holy Spirit – be, come, do, give, forgive, lead and deliver as we wait and watch for the only wise God who in glory reigns together in triune steadfast holy love, now and forever. Amen.

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[1] Apology IV:311 

B, Advent 2 - Psalm 85:1-7, 2 Peter 3:9-13, Mark 1:1 "20/20 Vision"

We have lived and are still living in the year 2020.  What’s your 20/20 vision like in the year 2020? Through what glass have you been viewing the year?  It’s been an interesting year to say the least!

If you haven’t noticed there’s been a lot of anger in the world in recent days. 

Anger in creation as temperatures soared and our country burned.

Anger in politics as China challenges over our supply of resources; and anger as they continue to build their military hornet’s nest in the South China Sea.

Anger in the United States as its president favours seizing and holding onto power through whatever it takes, rather than serving in an office under the authority of God!

Anger amongst people as Covid-19 blooms in the population!  Restricting our freedom, killing our kingdom building and its treasures! And destroying many families through death!  Some 1,526,281 people have died (to date — December 5 2020) since the Coronavirus first started killing on January 9, 2020!

How have these things been alerting you to have 20/20 vision?  How is your sight?  What picture are you seeing?

We Christians have a part to play in the year 2020.   We’re called to see and help others to see the deeper reality through the lens of God’s Word.  But being a part of this world our vision is often obstructed by the very same ideologies and idolatry with which the world struggles.

It’s no wonder we struggle to give the reason for our hope in a world that’s spiralling deeper and deeper into hopelessness.

Have you noticed how you are becoming angrier and angrier with others?  We see injustice in every institutional system, including the church. We see the corruption of God’s creation as a civil community and as the environmental ecology is being wrecked?

Where does God fit into this reality?  Or a better question is this: what is your god in this reality?  The reality of your anger and the reality of creation’s corruption! In what do you trust, in these days?  From where do you get your 20/20 sight in the year 2020?

Tell the world, “In the word of God we hear God is a God of love” and you will probably get a responding question, “If God is a God of love, then why is there so much suffering in the world?”  Then we can tell them we suffer because of our sin, and because God is a jealous God he wants us to give up all things we love more than him. God is returning and in his love and anger he will sort out those who trust in him from those who don’t. 

Our culture and its political correctness tempts us to doubt this, and so we as individuals and church sin in our lack of belief and our fear to point others to him.

Psalm 85, the psalm for the second Sunday in Advent, Year B, in the Revised Common Lectionary is used omitting verses 3 to 7.  This is what these verses say.

LORD, you were favourable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.  You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger.  Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us!  Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations?  Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?  Show us your steadfast love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation. (Psalm 85:1–7 ESV)

God gets angry.   So If God is a God who gets angry, why does he show us his love?  After all God has every right to be angry with us!  Especially us in the church when in fear we stop his message of hope going out into the hopelessness of the world!  What kind of faith are we proclaiming to the world and to God?

Psalm 145:8 says more succinctly what is said above, The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 145:8 ESV)

God’s love does not exist in a vacuum.  God’s love always fills the empty, the weak, or that which seems like nothing.  Think of a stronger solution always running into the weaker, concentrating the weaker with the stronger. 

And next to love stands anger.  Anger exists as a result of bad love.  Blocking the flow or reversing God’s love so that the weak dilutes the strong. What do you reckon will happen when God’s church dilutes his holiness and in the process makes God impure and impotent?  God doesn’t let it happen and he gets angry.  If he did allow it he fails to be God and cannot be the love he claims to be in his word. God’s anger and love stand together against our reversing flow of impurity.

In this light we see how we add to the diluting and destruction of our world, especially a world that needs healing and a weak community that needs the concentration of God’s love to reverse the climate change within us and around us.

In the days of John the Baptist, people were waiting for God to act.  He opposed the political incorrectness of the day and he wasn’t found to be “keeping up appearances”, pleasing the masses!

Yet we find the masses coming to John.  But for what?  To repent, to confess their sin and to be baptised in preparation for the coming of their Saviour!  John was being the conduit through which God’s call came.  And those who were prepared by John were allowing the strength of God to flow into them and through them to their weakness and the weakness of the world around them.

See the reality found only in the Son of God and his word.  We know Jesus came to the Jordan and was baptised to fulfil all righteousness.  We know Jesus Christ because we have been baptised into him and all righteousness has been fulfilled for us in his death and resurrection.  As God’s people, in 2020, we’re called to be a channel or an open tube of love through which Jesus can flow to the world. 

God has every right in showing us his anger when we fail to be the vessels through which he flows.  Surely God has withdrawn enough in these days for us to get a 20/20 view of our failure, to see like those who heard John the Baptist and responded with a confession of sin.

But Jesus Christ, God the Son, reversed the flow of sin without diluting the love or the anger of God the Father.  He reversed the flow so the flow of love can continue through us to those around us. 

As much as people want us to believe we can, we cannot fix the world.  Only God can.  Yet we can be a part of the healing by allowing God to flow though us as we forgive and proclaim how we have been forgiven and what God has forgiven in each of us.

So see the great love God has for this world and we who live in it. See the arrival of our Saviour, weak and lying in a manger. See him weak and destitute bearing the anger of God on the Cross.  See him reversing the flow of sin and suffering.  See his patience with you so you can be patient with others who cannot see the hope we have despite the dissolution and death of everything and everyone because of sin.

In the first words of Mark’s Gospel account it says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1 ESV)

Jesus’ death and resurrection was the just the beginning.  Today the gospel continues and in the future it will be fulfilled.  Put God’s word under the magnifying glass, in doing so you will not only see your sin but you will magnify God.  See the steadfast love of God in his anger being poured out on his Son in exchange for your sinful hopeless situation. 

Therefore, in Jesus Christ know this: you can do the greater works of believing; these are the mega works Jesus promised to his disciples living in the midst of strife with a 20/20 vision of him. Jesus says,

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. (John 14:12 ESV)

These mega works are works done as forgiven sinners.  We believe, therefore we speak of the joy of being set free from the reality of our sin, so others might be freed of fear and sin.  We can do this when we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us to Jesus, to feed us with Jesus. To daily reverse the flow and flush the pipes so God’s love of confession and forgiveness can flow from his power into our weakness. Let’s be found doing the greater works of God when Jesus once again arrives at the resurrection of the dead and the final restoration of this world.

Hear the promise of God which was fulfilled in your baptism and will bring you through all fiery trials and temptations. 

The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.  Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,  waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!  But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:9–13 ESV)

Be found by God doing the mega works of faith, confessing sin, believing and confessing God’s forgiveness. Let the Holy Spirit build in you a hunger for the righteousness that is found only in Jesus Christ.

Amen.