2017 Advent Love It is the third Sunday of Advent and we are about Love! Everybody can get enthusiastic about love! Right? Or not so right? At the holidays, everyone is in love with humanity! Everyone gives of themselves; is forgiving and considerate in traffic and check-out lines; and makes time to serve in the community. I know it sounds like I am talking about an altered universe. The holidays are known for stress, wildly unrealistic expectations and for many, loneliness. This is not a modern phenomenon. A Christmas Carol, written by Charles Dickens was published in 1843 and introduced us to the lonely miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. The Gift of the Magi is a short story about the stress of gifting with no money. It was written by O Henry and published in 1905. It s A Wonderful Life premiered in 1946 and features Henry Fonda contemplating suicide and wishing he had not been born. In 1947, the Miracle on 34 th Street has Santa trying to prove he is sane or face life in a mental institution. In 1957, Dr Suess introduced us to a Grinch willing to steal Christmas from the whole town of Whoville. And these are our favorite Christmas stories! These are the ones we like! There are funnier, wilder ones like Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story and the famous Red Ryder bb gun which could put someone s eye out or the animated Nightmare Before Christmas. Honestly, it is a little tricky finding a story with a really positive spin on Christmas. Well, they tend to end well, but the journey is certainly not smooth. Which is sort of like life, I guess. Except not everyone feels the episodes of their life end well. People really are sad, grieving and stressed. People continue to die during the holidays. People lose jobs, struggle with finances and illness, and can be homeless. The holidays do not suspend the animation of life nor sugar coat reality. So what is this miracle we speak of in respect to Christmas and does it have anything to do with love? Eric Butterworth and Charles Fillmore were not fans of the word miracle. In the Revealing Word, Fillmore begins with a tradition definition from Webster s Dictionary and then adds his interpretation: An event or effect in the physical world deviating from the known laws of nature or transcending our knowledge of these laws. Webster. In reality miracles are events that take place as a result of the operation of a higher, unknown law. 1
Webster actually leaves the door open for Fillmore s interpretation by saying or transcending our knowledge of these laws. Webster leaves room for a law beyond our current knowing, although I suspect Webster was relying more on intellectual knowing of a law rather than the faith based, intuitive knowing of spiritual understanding. Spiritually, we can know a law is in operation without a formula or evidence of how the law operates. Spiritually, we can know beyond our ability to explain or put language to it. So what kinds of miracles are we talking about? The traditional Nicene Creed miracle involves a virgin, a baby conceived by God and the only incarnation of the deity come into the world. Certainly all of that transcends our knowledge of the laws of nature on earth. Beyond the literal and beyond the Nicene Creed, could there be something amazing taking place in this story that still challenges our understanding and stuns us with its magnificence? A kind of miracle? For me, maybe this miracle is the cause of all that is. John 3:16 begins, For God so loved the world. The Baptist in me finishes the verse: that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Although I remember a more King James version with begotten son who so ever believeth. But listen to the words: For God so loved the world. How amazing is that? We exist in this field of love. Without a single goal or act to earn it or prove ourselves worthy, we are loved. Miracle number One. Followed right up with We are love. Miracle number Two. With every child born we witness divine love taking form in this world. Miracle number Three. How can that not be a miracle? With a new Star Wars movie premiering, I would be willing to go out on a limb and say creation everywhere, in every shape and form, is an expression of the field of Love that is creativity itself. Surely Ewoks, Wookies and Porgs are expressions of love as surely as humans, penguins and giraffes. The miracle of birth experienced in Christmas is the idea that with each birth, divine love finds expression in the material world. With each birth means that the miracle unfolds in our birth just as surely as it did in the birth of a man named Jesus. The miracle is not limited to once, at least not in my interpretation. It was Charles Dickens, author of A Christmas Carol, who referred to babies as they, who are so fresh from God. Love, clothed in flesh, is the miracle that keeps repeating out of the miracle that we are loved by the Divine. Created in love to be love, here we are. 2
And yet, the world is not so much filled with love as with, bah, humbug. And so annually, in December, we seek another miracle. This is the miracle I found when I examined some of our favorite Christmas stories. And it found me contemplating an old Psalm verse not something from the New Testament or something from the story of the nativity. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. The Christmas miracle we seek each December is to find a way to wipe away all that is unlike our true nature and return to the love we were created to be. With a clean heart we seek that new and right spirit to be born again in our consciousness, where it has been buried under all the worldly thoughts we allow to collect and clutter our minds. Isn t the clutter in our minds just bah, humbug kinds of things? Let s look at lessons in some of our stories for clues to how the Christmas miracle of love might unfold in our lives. Ebenezer Scrooge allowed his thoughts to be consumed with the idea that success was accumulating money. Although old Scrooge let it go to extremes, perhaps some of this has gone on in our thoughts. Our priorities shift as we focus on worldly measures of a good life: a house; a newer, nicer car; a career or academic achievement, even if it begins to consume most of the hours in our day; or just a certain number in our bank and investment accounts. With our focus on these worldly things, we fail to notice we are neglecting relationships; we are withholding good that we have to share in the world. Scrooge is gifted with visions of the past, that reveal him as the recipient of kindness; visions of the present, that reveal the struggles of the Cratchit family and yet their love for one another; and finally visions of a future bleak without love. As he sleeps, Scrooge is given a clean heart. He sees the clutter of his greed is getting in the way of giving and receiving love and kindness. He awakens to the Christmas miracle of returning to the love he was created to be and takes that new and right spirit of consciousness out into the world. But what about the Grinch? Is it greed that motivates the Grinch to steal all the presents, the trees, the feast, the tinsel and bows in Whoville? We used the story of the Grinch for our Advent series last year and I got to spend some time meditating on the Grinch. Here is what I sort of think: the Grinch felt unloved. That song about the Grinch is horrible! 3
We don t know enough about the Grinch s past to understand how he got to this conclusion about being unloved, but clearly he began to isolate himself some time before Christmas. He is not very kind to his little dog Max. Somehow, he ended up with a very small heart. As a sort of revenge for not being loved, he tries to rob the Whos down in Whoville of their Christmas celebration. And here is the vicious cycle of our humanity. We believe we are not loved and we act in some very unloving and unkind ways. Does that make it easier to love us? Does acting unkind make us feel better? From experience I think we all know the answer is NO! Yet in our woe, we just spiral downward in our behavior and in our feelings and thoughts. Til we hit the bottom. Or for the Grinch, at the top of the hill holding all the bags of Christmas stuff, looking down at Whoville. With his worldly focus, the Grinch believed Christmas was the stuff and there, without their stuff, the Whos were singing Welcome Christmas. They were holding hands. They were together. And the Grinch received the clarity of a clean heart the vision of love made manifest in the world through each one of us. With this clarity he could see what he had to give and racing down the hill, he gave the stuff back out of his own love. Invited into the celebration that Christmas morning, we wonder if he always might have been welcome if he had only made himself available and open to the love surrounding him. Finally, we consider the story of the Miracle on 34 th Street. How do others sometimes respond when we are true to our nature of love? Is it so wrong to believe we are the embodiment of the giving, loving spirit of Christmas? The story is not just living a name identity but living the truth of our being; it is the name identity that carries such confusion in the world. Like the drunken Santa Kris Kringle replaces at Macy s, it is easy to call ourselves generous and loving. We can dress the part and even pretend to ourselves that we are love in the world. We might even expect something in return for our act, as the drunken Santa expected a wage. What happens when we are challenged to provide evidence of our true nature from how we live our lives? The Christmas question is not Are you Christian, are you Muslim, Jewish or Hindu? The Christmas question is Are you love? Is there evidence from your daily words and actions that speak the truth of your essence of love? Being love in the world is the miracle Christmas seeks to remind us of. The earthly reality is that like every other day, the holidays may hold experiences of grieving losses, disappointments and a sense of lack. I don t want to paint over that as if our human experiences don t matter. We have feelings and acknowledging them is healthy and healing. 4
Christmas is a time to remember that we are more than our human feelings of loss, lack and pain. The nativity story is not one of a wealthy child, born into a palace of abundance. It is the story of love come into the world in a humble way, facing many challenges. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. This Christmas, whatever is going on in your life, I pray that you find a moment of love; a moment when all the clutter of the ego mind is swept away and with the clarity of the Star of Bethlehem, you see your true nature is love. May you find all the love in your heart and may you free it by giving of yourself to others. You cannot exhaust the infinite love you were created out of and the love you are in the world. Go be love this Christmas and every day! 5