George A. Mason Fourth Sunday of Advent Wilshire Baptist Church 20 December 2020 Hopes and Fears Dallas, Texas “Revolutionary Love” Luke 1:26-38, 46b-55

All you need is love … Love is all daughter, Jillian, a few weeks you need. ago. She was working on a paper for her theology class in It’s hard to believe we just seminary on the attributes of marked the fortieth anniversary God. If God is love, how do we of John Lennon’s untimely death. know what love is that defines His Beatles’ song, All You Need Is God so completely? We could Love , was released as a non- point to human love and then album single in 1967, but its project it onto God, since we are unique instrumentation and created in God’s own image. We syncopation give it an could then say God is the most unforgettable sound. More perfect expression of human important is the question of love. The problem is that we whether Lennon was right: Is it assume we know true love when true that all you need is love? we see it. And we often use the term love in ways that are more We’ve made it to the fourth harmful than helpful. Sunday of Advent, the Sunday we associate with the Angel who For instance, we can talk about announced the news to Mary love in romantic terms. And that that she would be with child, and wouldn’t be wrong entirely, he would be the Son of God and since God’s love includes God’s the Savior of the world. After desire for intimate union with hope, peace and joy, we the world. But our notion of celebrate today the virtue of love romantic love can be mushy and and its relationship to the fickle. Can that hold up for God Christmas story. when our romantic love so often cools over time and under The Christmas story is God’s love pressure? Or we might think of story with the world. But what love as a faithful commitment does that mean? How do we that must be kept under any and know what that love is that is all all circumstances, like a we need? marriage vow. But what happens when what we have called love I was talking about this with my becomes possessive, abusive or even violent? How do we apply God intends to give the world a that distorted notion of love to new birth of freedom through God when we should rightly say her birthing a child. The coming that getting out of a dangerous of God to the world is as gentle and demeaning relationship is and quiet and normal as the the more loving thing to do? process of love that conceives and bears a child. There has to be another way for us to learn about the love that is Think how extraordinary this is. all we need, the love that God is. The all-powerful God’s saving, The Christmas story reveals the revolutionary love comes not by gospel truth about the character the conquest of earth by a shock- of God’s love and our call to live and-awe campaign from heaven it. It starts by following the way but by a loving partnership of God approaches Mary to receive heaven and earth that we see in God’s love and bear the Christ the conception and birth of a child, and it continues with child. Yes, there will be pain in Mary’s response that includes the labor and delivery, but the her Magnificat of revolutionary whole picture here is of loving love. Instead of projecting love initiative and loving consent. up from the human to the divine, we trace love down from the God saves the world by coming divine to the human. Only God’s to it and living in it with us. love can bring a revolution to When the angel answers Mary’s humanity that will save and keep question about how this could us. be, the Holy Spirit is invoked as the agent of love that will bring it Luke’s Gospel tells the Christmas to pass. The word for spirit in story as the story of the Hebrew is the same word for remaking of all creation. It breath. As in the breath of life. As shows how God set to redeeming in the breath God breathed into and restoring the world through the lifeless form of Adam to revolutionary love. If we want to make him a living being. God put know the love that is all we need God’s own enlivening breath into then, we should start where Mary, as God did with Adam. Luke does—with Mary. We tend to make a lot of God’s God sends an angel to bring the saving act of love on the cross news to a young woman that where Jesus died. But that part

2 of the story only makes sense carnage was horrific. Six dead with this part, which is God’s and four wounded. The grief of simple presence among us. the Sikhs that followed was not just from the loss of life; it was I’ve been reading a stunning from the loss of feeling safe in book by a Sikh woman named their own country from those Valarie Kaur. It’s titled, See No who hated their otherness. Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. 1 When the time for the funerals Sikhism is the world’s fifth came, the community was largest religion, dating to the disappointed that President fifteenth century in India. It’s Obama would not be coming. He rooted in the ideas of God’s had attended other services for oneness and the equality of all the mass murders of Black people. Sikhs believe they must Americans and others, but this defend the weak and vulnerable time he planned to send at all costs. Men don’t cut their Attorney General Eric Holder in hair but tie it up under a turban his place. Obama had had to deal as a sign of their devotion to God with being falsely labeled a and as a signal that anyone can Muslim all his presidency, and count on them when they need identification with Sikhs might help. reinforce that sentiment. But after an appeal to the White You can imagine that after 9/11 House, Michele Obama went. Her Sikhs in America were easily visit made a difference to the confused for foreign terrorists. Sikhs. Her presence made them They were targeted by ignorant feel seen and validated their haters and told to go back to right to be here and receive their country, even though most justice. Thank you for showing us of them were born in the U.S. your love, Valarie told her. 2 The worst moment was in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, August 5, Love that is love is love that is 2012. A white nationalist named shown. And the way to show Wade Michael Page drove to a love is by showing up. Sikh place of worship and began to shoot anyone he came upon I have seen this as a pastor. For with his 9mm handgun. The reasons that elude me, when I

1 One World, 2020. 2 Ibid., p. 234.

3 show up in moments of crisis or into her song of praise. And grief, just my presence as the notice what it entails: she sees pastor—which people interpret God’s coming in Christ as the as a representative of God—has signal that the systems of a healing effect. So, when God oppression will be overthrown. actually shows up to the world in She doesn’t see God’s presence Jesus, that presence is a in the world as a blessing of the revolutionary love that can’t be status quo. stopped. Love isn’t benign or passive. But notice also Mary’s Love starts a revolution that participation. True love doesn’t confronts hate and inequalities overwhelm human agency; it and draws the world into a enables it. The Holy Spirit will common experience of God’s overshadow you , the angel tells mercy and goodness. But for that Mary. Mary gains her voice and to happen, love has to confront says, Here I am, the servant of the evil and injustice. As Valarie Lord; let it be with me according Kaur puts it: Civility is too often to your word. used to silence pain that requires people to change their lives. 3 Mary’s consent is a sign of God’s respect for her. God doesn’t It’s not just a change of heart mansplain to Mary or command God seeks; it’s a change of her. God honors her and waits everything that keeps everybody upon her. Love always increases from knowing the full experience a person’s agency rather than of God’s dream for the world. taking it away. Mary is given the power to choose. Turns out, God Jeremy Courtney exemplifies is pro-life by being pro-choice, revolutionary love. He and his don’t you know?! Mary becomes wife, Jess, and children were sent a free partner with God in this by their Texas church to be revolutionary love that redeems missionaries to Turkey where the world. they were to convert Muslims to Christianity and start churches. Soon after giving her consent, After about two years of abject Mary is with her cousin failure, it was Jeremy who was Elizabeth when she launches converted when he realized the

3 Ibid., p. 134.

4 problem was that he really didn’t love the people he went to witness to; he only saw them as objects for conversion.

Since then, they formed the Preemptive Love Coalition and have simply tried to live like Jesus in the presence of those who have experienced suffering and hardship due to the ravages of war in Iraq and Syria. They have been a loving presence in the midst of the worst of humanity. When it gets hard to love, especially enemies like ISIS, their motto is love anyway. 4

As the Christian human rights advocate Van Jones puts it, When it gets hard to love, love harder. This is what we see in Mary and in the child of Mary, Jesus—a fierce love that never gives up loving anyway. This is God’s revolutionary love. This is the love that is all we need. Amen.

4 Jeremy Courtney, Love Anyway (Zondervan, 2019).

5