Love Has Come

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. No, not just for some, but for everyone.”

Say what you will about the shameless commercialization of Christmas, but this year, it was an advertisement of all things that planted the seed that eventually blossomed into tonight’s sermon.

Normally, I prefer to avoid ads altogether. But as I was especially invested in a live college football game some Saturdays ago, I became a sitting duck for advertisers. It didn’t hurt that Jackie DeShannon’s classic song is an earworm. They know – they know! – I’m familiar with it, so it makes for a memorable soundtrack to the story they want to tell.

And it is admittedly a compelling story. The staff at a downtown theater discover that their colleague, the custodian, is a gifted vocalist. There’s an old photo hanging in his locker that harkens to his previous life as a lounge singer– a much younger version of him is dressed to the nines and crooning into a microphone. Mopping the stage one night, the custodian gently presses a key on the piano to get his note and sings to himself the tune that others have noticed him humming around the building at all hours. Then the staff get a bright idea. They order their friend a tuxedo jacket– much like the one in the photograph– fire up the lights and sound, and encourage him to perform for them. And when they take their seats in the audience, they’re treated to a showstopper: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. No, not just for some, but for everyone.”

Besides the holiday decor in the theater, what do you suppose this advertisement has to do with Christmas? “Love has come,” we sing on Christmas Eve, “a light in the darkness! Love shines forth in the Bethlehem skies. See, all heaven has come to proclaim it; hear how their song of joy arises: Love! Love! Born unto you, a Savior! Love! Love! Glory to God on high.”[1] Anyone vaguely familiar with Christianity is aware that God is supposed to be about love. “God is love,” the author First John declares, “and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”[2] Like other important words, however, love can mean many things – so many, in fact, that it can come to mean very little in particular.

But Christianity also confesses that love takes a very specific shape: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent [God’s] only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”[3] That’s a remarkable claim. One person, born at a precise moment in history, somehow embodies the fullness of God’s compassion and commitment to the world in every time and place.

But for as eager as many are to generalize, to make formulaic claims about the way God relates to the world, the story of Jesus resists being reduced to a one-size-fits-all model. In her brilliant book about the Bible, Rachel Held Evans explains it this way: [Excerpts from Inspired, pp.149-51].

That is to say, love has come, but the love of God is not generic. If what the world needs now is love, it’s the kind we find in the story of Jesus, the kind that takes into account each person’s, each family’s, each community’s actual circumstances. What the world needs now is love that acknowledges the particular needs and longings of the beloved and acts accordingly, the kind of love, for instance, that goes out of its way to give an old singer the chance to perform again.

That, friends, is the significance of Christmas, the significance of the incarnation. As the old story goes, the love of God is personal: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” – not just to anyone, but to you. “What good would it do me,” Martin Luther reflected, “if [Christ] were born a thousand times and if this were sung to me every day with the loveliest airs, if I should not hear that there was something in it for me and that it should be my own?”[4]

Love has come indeed. And not love in the abstract, but love that is immediate, that is for you. “Love is Jesus within and among us. Love is the peace our hearts are seeking. Love! Love! Love is the gift of Christmas. Love! Love! Praise to you, God on high!”[5]

[1] Ken Bible, “Love Has Come,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Pew Edition, #292.

[2] 4:16.

[3] 4:9.

[4] As cited by Charles M. Wood, in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 1, 116.

[5] Bible.