When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them…
– Luke 2:15-18
Author, poet, and theologian Madeleine L’Engle writes:
This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honor & truth were trampled to scorn –
Yet here did the Savior make His home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn –
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
She writes elsewhere (of marriage): “When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.”
And from her book A Wrinkle in Time: “To love is to be vulnerable and it is only in vulnerability and risk —not safety and security—that we overcome darkness.”
Ms. L’Engle’s transparency about the risk of love is unsettling, inspiring and challenging. After all, isn’t love one of the greatest risks we take in a life time? Whether it’s getting married, bearing or adopting children, or—in Jesussian love—reaching out to a neighbor in need or a stranger who confounds us. Whether we are driven by love of family, love of God, love of country, or some compilation of them all: love is risk. Love means putting our selfness on the line, offering our ego, risking rejection, scorn or apathy. Love can mean putting our lives, our livelihoods, our futures at risk.
So why? Why risk love?
Can it be that we risk love because of the risk taken for our sake? God chose to enter the human story in human form in an occupied land crushed by taxation, religious persecution, want and violence. Imagine the frequency of infant and maternal death. What were the odds? Long, at best.
And yet “love took the risk of birth” in order to bring the best possible news to the biggest possible outsiders: shepherds, foreign astronomers, the boy who slopped out the stable, the young woman who delivered scraps from the inn kitchen.
Love took a risk. Again.
God has been risking for our sake from the beginning when the spirit moved across the waters and we were invited into co-creation with God, to tend and till the earth, to shepherd the animals and creepy crawling things, to steward the green and growing things, and to eat and drink and be fruitful and multiply.
God hasn’t manipulated the human condition. Nor did God push the “start” button and stand back to watch. God risked love and entered in. God wept at our losses, nourished and healed our bodies, gave us vision, drew us back in, and breathed a church into being. God risked.
And God is not done. Love is not done. No matter how strange our world feels right now, the story of love is not done being written. Nor is our role in the narrative.
May this be a season that we draw deep, cold breaths, gaze at the night sky in anticipation and wonder, sit beside one another in grief and hope, and risk love with everything we are. Together.
And may God’s powerful, eternal, and tender love enfold you and yours in this holy season.
Pastor Chris
