One of the most profound and lasting lessons I learned in seminary was in my Systematic Theology class, as we were “unpacking” the meaning and significance of the Holy Spirit. I can remember so vividly my professor saying, “There are many ‘spirits’ in this world. There’s American spirit, and school spirit, and the pioneer spirit, and Spirit airlines…But,” he said, “There is only one divine Spirit. There is only one Holy Spirit.” And I think the same could be said of love. There are many kinds of “loves” in this world. There’s familial love, and passionate love, and love of sweets and treats.
I think you all know what I mean. I love chocolate. I love chocolate so much I could eat it three times a day or more. And I love my parents, too, but the love I have for them is different than my love of chocolates. And I love my husband in yet another way. I also happen to love reading and music. I have recently discovered that I’m a decent sketch artist, so I’ve started to love spending time doing that, too. I’m sure you all have a variety of “loves” as well, everything from sports, to gardening, to travel, to pets, and beyond. We fill our time with all the things we “love.”
Yet there is a greater love, a love which should shape all other “loves” in our lives. There’s only one divine love, only one holy love, and that love was shown to us for the first time at the very first Christmas some 2,000 years ago. “Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love divine!” the hymn says. And that’s what that baby was and is. We call him Jesus; we identify him as the Savior, the Messiah. But at his very core, he is the embodiment of the greatest love that ever was or ever will be; a divine and holy love, because it is God’s love for each of us and all of God’s creation!
That’s why the passage we heard this morning from Luke’s gospel is so significant. It is the story of the angel’s announcement to the shepherds about Christ’s birth. We talked a couple of weeks ago about how shepherds were “nobodies” in that day and age. Yet, they receive the first announcement of the birth of their Savior, a Messiah who has come for them. This is a sign of God’s great love for ALL people, not just the privileged or accomplished! The love that is revealed in Jesus reaches out unconditionally to the least, the last, and the lost, with a promise of forgiveness and salvation. The gift of God’s love was first offered to the shepherds, and it is a gift that has been offered to people like you and me ever since.
God created us to give love and receive love. Our very faith grows out of the belief that in Jesus the Messiah the one true God has revealed himself to be love incarnate. This is a love that should change us; and once we receive the gift of God’s love offered to us in Jesus Christ, we are to offer that same gift to others. Love incarnate must be the badge that the Christian community wears, the sign not only of who we are, but also who our God is. The shepherds experienced God’s love incarnate as they entered Bethlehem and saw the divine child swaddled and lying in a manger under the watchful care of his earthly mother and father. But Christ no longer lives on this earth, so if the people of our day are going to experience God’s love in the flesh, it has to happen in and through each of us who have already been transformed by that love! Just as Jesus unveiled God before a surprised and unready world, so must we. Love is that important!
As you think about what it means to receive Christ’s love and be transformed by it, I want to share with you a story about some little boys who loved baseball, but who let God’s love guide their own “loves.”
Chush is a school that caters to learning-disabled children in Brooklyn, New York. At a Chush fundraising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered an unforgettable speech. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he said, "Where is the perfection in my son Shaya? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is God's perfection?" The audience was shocked by the question. "I believe," the father answered, "that when God brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child." He then told this story:
One afternoon he and Shaya walked past a park where some boys Shaya knew were playing baseball. Shaya asked, "Do you think they will let me play?" Shaya's father knew most boys would not want him on their team, but he understood that if his son were chosen to play it would give him a comfortable sense of belonging.
Shaya's father approached one of the boys in the field and asked if Shaya could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he said, "We are losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team, and we'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning."
Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play center field. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya's team scored again. With two outs and the bases loaded, Shaya was scheduled to be up. Surprisingly, Shaya was given the bat.
Everyone knew it was all but impossible, because Shaya didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, let alone hit with it. However, as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly.
The first pitch came in, and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of Shaya's teammates came up to Shaya, and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shaya. As the pitch came in, Shaya and his teammate swung the bat, and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and easily could have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Instead, the pitcher threw the ball on a high arc to right field, far beyond reach of the first baseman.
Everyone started yelling, "Shaya, run to first. Run to first!" Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the baseline wide-eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman. Instead, he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head.
Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!" Shaya ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him circled the bases towards home. As Shaya reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third!"
As Shaya rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, "Shaya, run home!" Shaya ran home, and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit a "grand slam" and won the game for his team.
"That day," said the father softly with tears rolling down his face, "those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."
The reason those boys “reached their level of God’s perfection?” Because they gave the gift of love they had already received in Christ. It’s the best gift anyone could ever give or receive. Shaya understood that on the ball field that day, and you and I know the blessing of love as well. We have experienced the doting love of our grandparents, or the tough but unconditional love of our parents. We have felt that immense capacity of love in our dealings with our own children, or in the pain of loss. And when you think of this earthly love, just imagine how much greater God’s love is! God loves us so much that he sent his very own Son to die on a cross so that we broken, sinful, people could be forgiven of our sins and live in loving relationship with God! It’s this amazing, amazing gift, the best there ever was. But it’s not just that we should receive this love. God intends fully that we would give it, too, in the same way Christ did, in the same way those little boys did. Because that’s what truly makes love special.
A few years ago, there was an extensive research project done in Germany. The supervising doctor, Doctor Wermke, compared the cries of babies in Germany, with those of babies in France. By digitally graphing the pitch and cadence of those cries, Dr. Wermke, made an amazing discovery; babies actually cry with an accent! In France, babies consistently inflect from a low to a high pitch, much like the “French ac-cent” we know. Likewise, in Germany, consistent with the German accent, the cry of the babies started with a high pitch and moved to a lower pitch, exactly opposite of the French babies. What Dr. Wermke concluded is that even in the womb, the baby is hearing the pattern of speech that surrounds them, and they mimic it when they are born.
For nine months a baby eavesdrops on its mother, putting its ear to the rail of her bones and listening, listening, listening. The child then emerges from its mother’s insides with her voice ringing in its ears, her music echoing in its own bones. And the result, essentially, is that one of the baby’s first instincts is to sing the song of her mother, her parents. It all kind of makes you wonder; as children of God, what is the song we overhear from heaven and sing on earth? We may sing it poorly, squalling and squawking, but we sing it from our instincts, the very depths of our soul. So what is the music of heaven? What’s the voice of the Father that every human has heard, at least in muffled form, and every human can copy, at least in mangled form?
It’s love.
Love is the music of heaven. It’s the song that’s been sung from the beginning of time and that came to earth in the form of that lovely Christ-child so long ago, bringing that perfect music with him. And when we love, no matter how stumblingly or awkwardly, we echo the Father’s very own perfect song.
Jesus is God’s gift of love to each of us. And loved lived out is God’s very own perfection. What a gift!
