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.
[1] Apology IV:311
