SERMON: WHAT IF THERE WERE NO LOVE? – December 20, 2009

Listen to Sermon:  Sermon 12-20-09

Scripture Reading: Luke 1:39-55

Never having been “with child,” I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert on pregnancy.  Everything I know is second-hand.  Some of it I don’t want to know.  However, do know some things. I am aware of the excitement when a mother feels her unborn baby kick for the first time – I have heard from some that it is indescribable.  I do know firsthand the excitement of feeling and even seeing the kicks and punches of my unborn children and grandchildren. I have overheard the unique conversations between pregnant women and I have overheard the scary conversations between women who have recently delivered babies.

The experience of pregnancy and birth is nothing short of a miracle and the conversations and descriptions concerning those experiences only serve to emphasize the miraculous.

Think about that for a moment – remember for a moment – and then consider the meeting between Elizabeth and Mary in our scripture reading today.  There never was and there never will be an exchange between two pregnant women that will even come close to that moment when these two mothers first met face to face.  No punching or kicking of an unborn child, as incredible as it is, carries the significance of Elizabeth’s baby leaping in her womb.  Two women carrying miracle babies – one baby coming to a couple far too old to be having children and one baby coming to a teenage girl carrying a child conceived by the Holy Spirit.

These moments are all about love – the love of two mothers for the babies they carried in their wombs, the love filling these two women for what was to happen and as they share their concern for one another.  Mary travelled at least three days to see her very elderly cousin.  For three months Mary stayed with Zechariah and Elizabeth – Mary helping Elizabeth through what I am sure was a difficult time and Elizabeth encouraging this young cousin as she prepared for an amazing future such as giving her advice how to tell her fiancé, Joseph, that she is going to have a baby – along with the incredible, unbelievable story surrounding that.  We have the love of Zechariah for his wife of many years and the love of Joseph who had chosen Mary to be his wife and whose love would soon be tested.  Most important these moments were about the love of God.  It was God’s love that was behind it all – love shown to Mary and Elizabeth and love shown to the whole world.

What if there were no love?  For sure that moment would have never taken place.   Can we even bear to think what this world would be like if there were no love?

I know you are not going to believe this but I don’t think until this year I had ever seen It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart except some short snippets.   You see, even though I grew up on black and white television I have an aversion to it. I know better but some deep unconscious voice steers me clear. Maybe down deep I am still haunted by the embarrassment that we still had black and white when everyone else had color.

I watched It’s a Wonderful Life from start to finish the other night.  It was a good movie.  For those of you who have never seen it, one of the major scenes begins with a down and out George Bailey played by Jimmy Stewart.  It’s Christmas Eve and, for George, nothing has been going right. Through no fault of his own his Bailey Building and Loan has come up a several thousand dollars short just as a bank examiner is about to check the books. It looks like someone is going to jail.  That, along with some dismal self-reflection bring him to the conclusion that he has wasted his life. That conclusion turns him sour enough to lash out at his friends, his wife and his children.  To top it all off George gets punched in the mouth by the husband of one of his kid’s teachers when he visits a bar to drown his sorrows.

George figures he is worth more dead than alive so he goes to a bridge to jump into the cold frigid waters and end it all. A man named Clarence, who turns out to be his guardian angel sent to earth to intervene, hauls George out of the river.

During an ensuing conversation between the two, George exclaims “I wish I was never born” and Clarence grants him his wish.  He takes George on a journey through a very different landscape. His town’s name has changed.  His town is dark and sinister with strip clubs and bars along the main street. George runs into people he knows but who don’t recognize him because to them he was never born. He goes to see his mother but she thinks he’s crazy. He tracks down his wife, never married, who thinks he’s a pervert and calls for the police.

In the end George realizes that he has had “A Wonderful Life” and that he has value. He returns home to find his house full of friends and relatives who have gathered around to help him out.  With the singing of a Christmas carol they all live happily ever after.

The character Jimmy Stewart played was confronted and transformed by the question, “what if there were no George?”  This morning we are challenged with the question, “what if there were no love?”

Can you even imagine a world without love?  Can you think of anything scarier or darker?  Would we even have a world anymore?

You realize of course that we aren’t talking about the love that is defined by personal preference and taste or the love that drives our sex-saturated society.  We are talking about a love wrapped up in that moment between Mary and Elizabeth.  It is a love defined with statements such as “the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting …”  (Psalm 103:17 NRSV) “God so loved the world that He gave his only Son” (John 3:16 NRSV) or “we love because [God[ first loved us” (1 John 4:19) or “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13 NRSV).”

What if there were no love? Paul answers that question at a more human, personal level.  It is so overused we sometimes overlook its wisdom and strength.  “¹If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  ³If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NRSV)

George Bailey was far more aware of his value to society when he realized what his town would have been like without his presence.  Even though he had been a positive contributor to society before his night with Clarence, I would guess after that night he even more intentional in making a positive contribution to his world.  That was the point of it all. Not only did George realize he had a wonderful life but he realized he could make a difference in making it a wonderful life.

Probably a more important exercise than imagining a world without love, would be to imagine our world with love.  If we are honest about all of that and responsive to what we learn from the scriptures, we will know that the only reason the world suffers from lovelessness is because God’s people are not recognizing God’s love, are not allowing to live a life defined by that love, and are not sharing God’s love with others.

To imagine a world with love does not mean that a world with love is imaginary.  To imagine a world with love is to recognize God’s love whenever and wherever in our world – kind of like the God Sighting challenge we will participate in during 2010.  It is to allow God’s love to permeate us and transform us as we come to know how incredibly valuable we are to God and how much God truly loves us.  It is to allow God’s love to be the defining principal behind how we live out each day – our priorities and how we treat one another.  Paul says, “⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NRSV)

George Bailey is only a fictional character in a fictional story but the lesson is there.  Mary and Elizabeth were real and there was a whole lot more going on between them and with them than a teaching moment. Those days marked the beginning of a whole new world.  What a day that was, not only for them, but for us as well.

What if there were no love?  Praise God there is. Love came down at Christmas.  That love is yours and that love is mine.  Love came down at Christmas.  We will be blessed and our world will be transformed as we are touched by that love divine.