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"When Love Came to Town" Luke 2:1-20 |
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Location: Blogs Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 12/24/2007 11:23 AM | In the documentary “Rattle and Hum”, the popular Irish band U2, meets up with American blues legend B.B. King to practice a song that they will sing together in a U2 concert in Fort Worth, Texas. B.B. King is impressed with the strength of Bono’s songwriting and even shows a little hesitancy in playing such a song with them. But play they do, and the song became an instant classic. The name of that song? “When Love Comes to Town”.
In one way, this song is a typical love song. Each verse details a different situation where the singer has done something - or someone - wrong, but in each chorus he owns up to his mistake: “Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down, but I did what I did before love came to town.”
It’s a common theme in pop music, isn’t it? True love comes like a flash of lightning, a thunderbolt out of the sky, and then things change, in a big way. When love comes to town, we are changed people. Never again will we be the people we used to be. Our roving eye will focus on only our true love. Our wanderlust will be satisfied and we will settle down. All for love.
Of course, Bono and U2 don’t make simple love songs. The last verse speaks directly to the crucifixion of Jesus and the singers witness of that horrible event. But, as always, the verse ends on the upbeat thought, “but I have seen love conquer the great divide.”
There is a reason U2 is such a popular band. It is not simply because of the power of their music, but also because of the depth of their lyrics. I once heard Bono, the lead singer and songwriter speak of their Christian roots. Three of the four members of the band are devout Christians who once decided they should disband because they weren’t sure that rock and roll was a great way to honor God. I for one, and awfully glad they decided to use their faith to explore such topics as racism, war and love. As Bono was quoted as saying in that same interview, “When it comes right down to it, the only interesting music out there has God at the center: it’s either about running toward God as fast as you can, or running away from God as fast as you can.”
Most of us have had both experiences. But, if you are like me, you have found that running away from God does us no good. We cannot thrive without God’s presence. We cannot be truly happy by ignoring God. We cannot truly feel love without connecting to God.
But having experienced both the running away from and the running to God, this question of the change that takes place
‘when love came to town’ is a profoundly important one at this time of year. It is especially important on this fourth Sunday of Advent, the Sunday that some call Christmas Sunday, the Sunday designated as Love Sunday.
The scripture we heard read this morning is one that we have heard so many times before. Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus is heard in virtually every Christian church in existence during Advent or Christmastide. It is the story of God’s love come to dwell among us; of the love of a husband for a wife and a couple for their baby. It is the story of the amazement of a group of shepherds, heeding God’s message and giving thanks for God’s love being made manifest in their presence. For God so loved the world, we are told later in the book of John, that God sent his only begotten son, so that we may know life everlasting.
The gospel writers writers knew something important. So, in fact, do the writers of popular love songs. When love comes to town, things change.
And on that night in Bethlehem, love came to town. Toda we are faced with an important question: what changed?
When Jesus was born, who was most personally affected, whose life changed most radically?
Well, certainly Mary and Joseph’s lives changed forever. Besides having a newborn baby to take care of, they were both aware of the importance of this baby to the world. They had been visited by angels and understood that their world was about to change in a big way: their son would grow to be the Messiah, the one who would take away the sins of the world.
I would think that the shepherd’s lives certainly changed. If you are a simple field hand, minding your own business and an angel suddenly appeared in the midst of a bright light on a dark night, something would definitely change. And if you followed the lead of the angel and went to see for yourself, and you found it to be just as the angel had said, wouldn’t you be changed?
Much later, the magi, the wisemen came to visit the infant Jesus. Between the stories the wisemen would tell their compatriots and the stories the shepherds would spread to everyone they met, things really had a chance to change.
But how did the world change that day?
The Hebrew people of Jesus’ day had been waiting for a Messiah. The Hebrew prophets had pointed to a conquering hero, a messiah sent by God because of God’s love for God’s chosen people. After years of domination and persecution, the Hebrew people were ready for such a messiah to come and vanquish their enemies. They had felt the sting of the whip from so many places: Egypt, Babylon, Assyria. And nothing would be more welcomed than the changes that would be wrought by God’s avenging Messiah.
Indeed, Joseph and Mary found themselves in Bethlehem on that all important night because they had been forced to travel to that Galilean outpost by the representatives of the dominating Roman empire. Certainly, when Jesus was born, things would change.
But the gospel of Matthew tells us that things did not change on that night. The message did not get through, or perhaps the idea that the messiah could come as a baby born in the backwater town of Bethlehem was just too absurd for the devout to pay it any attention.
Matthew tells us that the Herod took it seriously, even if the Hebrew people did not. Matthew tells us that Herod ordered all children under the age of 2 murdered, because in so doing, this messiah child would also be dispatched.
An angel visited Joseph and told him to take his new and growing family to Egypt where they would be safe. And Joseph, whose world had been changed by the first visit of the angel, prepared for another change by heeding the angels message.
And then, what?
We gather each year in grateful anticipation of the celebration of the birth of the messiah. We celebrate the great change that has been heralded by the birth. But what changed?
We know very little about Jesus’ upbringing. We get a glimpse of him when he is about 12 and reading in the temple in Jerusalem. But the Biblical record gives us no information about how he lived his life, or how the world changed between the time of his birth and when the story really picks up again: sometime around his 30th birthday.
The Biblical record seems to show us that in those intervening 30 years, nothing much changed. When we pick up Jesus’ trail in his 30’s, we find the landscape surrounding his burgeoning ministry to be relatively unchanged from the time he was a baby. Rome still dominates. A new Herod sits in power. The faithful Hebrews still await the messiah.
As the gospel writers unfold the story of Jesus, we cannot be help but be struck by how much impact Jesus had on a few people. His disciples. People who heard him preach. People who were healed by him. People who believed he was the message of love. But for the mass of the people in Palestine, what had changed?
Even at Jesus’ crucifixion we read not of throngs that protested and mourned his death, but of the very few that stayed with him until the end. What had changed?
After the resurrection, we are told that even the disciples were afraid. Clearly the death and miraculous resurrection had not changed much. Did people not hear about it? Did people not believe it? When Pentecost came and the church was born, where were the multitudes that had followed him? Where was the overturn of the repressive regime? What changed because Jesus was born, lived, died and was resurrected from the dead? What are we to make of the fact that on that beautiful night, love came to town in the form of a baby, a poor baby in rough surroundings, and nothing much seemed to change?
How are we to understand the impact of this precious love when 30 years later, and beyond, followers of Christ faced resistance and violence in trying to fulfill the directive the resurrected Christ left with them to make disciples of the world?
What are we to make of the fact that the world is still in turmoil today? Nations are still at war; repressive regimes still violate the code of decency by abusing their citizens; children still go hungry. So, love came to town. What has changed?
We have.
Because Jesus was born those 2000 years ago, because a few people believed at first, and then more and more as time went on, we have been given an opportunity to have a relationship with God. We have been changed because love shone round on Christmas Eve. We have been welcomed into a fellowship of believers who seek to spread the good news in any way we can. We have become part of a movement that seeks to let people know of the love of God that is available to all, if only they will see it. We have been changed because we understand that running away from God does us no good. We have come to believe that if God loves us enough to come into our midst, then we need to change the way we live so that others might hear the good news, too.
On that dark night when there was no comfortable place for a pregnant woman to give birth, when there was the feel of oppression and hate in the air, when faithful folks waited patiently to be changed, love came to town. And some got it: the shepherds glorified God because of what they had seen. Later, the wise men would tell of their experience. Much later, those who were with Jesus throughout his ministry understood that in their relationship with Jesus, they had changed, and because of their relationship with Jesus, they had the capacity to change those around them. And as the number of believers has grown, as the numbers of changed lives has grown, we stand at the precipice of a changed world.
But only if we continue what was begun those many, many years ago in the little town of Bethlehem.
This kind of change requires time, and intentionality, and relationships. That is, just because God’s love took the form of a baby born to Mary and Joseph, it would take time for people to understand what that meant, especially those who expected something different. Once the understanding has come, it takes an intentional decision to do something about it. And once we decide to do something in response to God’s love, without relationships that allow us to share that love, change will not come.
The songwriter had it exactly right: love changes everything. If, and only if, we do our part.
We are the body of Christ. Jesus left it to us to carry on. For love to grow, for the message to be heard, for the world to truly change, we must decide that we are the gardeners tending loves growth, we are the heralds of the good news, we are the agents of change.
And if not us, then who?
Let us pray: Gracious God, we recognize that the first Christmas was only the beginning. We revel in the fact that you have claimed us as your own. Give us strength to continue what started with a baby in a rough hewn manger, so that one day, every knee will bend, every head will bow, and love will indeed conquer the world. It is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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