Love Is Risk

God risks everything – being wounded, even killed – to be able to bring healing and life to you and the whole creation.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord
Text: Luke 2:1-20

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

When you have been wounded, you can bring healing.

I’ve been in a spiritual direction group with three other pastors for 26 years now. We meet monthly with our spiritual director, have shared our lives with each other, helped each other heal.

Once I was sharing something painful that I was going through. I worried that maybe it was too much, even in that group. But I looked at my friend – one I admire and respect so much – and I saw tears in his eyes. And I knew without words that he absolutely had known the same pain, and I was going to be OK.

When you have been wounded, you can bring healing. This is the heart of love. And it’s the heart of God’s coming as one of us.

The beautiful writer and theologian Madeline L’Engle wrote a poem ^[1] wondering about risking bringing a child into this world.

“This is no time for a child to be born,” she writes, “With the earth betrayed by war & hate.” So many young people today ask that, if they should even consider children. And God faced the same question 2,000 years ago, L’Engle says in the second stanza: “That was no time for a child to be born, / In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; / Honor & truth were trampled by scorn.”

But her final stanza asks the true question: “When is the time for a child to be born?” There’s always hatred and oppression and violence and threat. But then there’s her final line: “Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.”

That’s God’s answer to the question. It’s never a good time. But God’s Love will risk birth anyway.

And that’s what brings us together tonight.

God risked being born as a helpless child in the midst of a violent, hateful world. God’s Love decided to risk birth, not in spite of the dangers and threats. But because of them. Because when you’ve been wounded, you can bring healing. God can’t stay distant if God is hoping to bring healing to you and me and all people, to this frightened and broken creation. God has to come here and risk.

God needs to experience human pain and suffering, know it intimately, be scarred by it, bleed of it. Even die for it. Because then we can look into God’s eyes in our pain and suffering and see tears that know what we’re facing. Tears that have already been shed before. Only by entering our pain can the God who made all and loves all, becoming vulnerable, able to be wounded, open a path to healing and hope.

And it’s how you and I will bring healing to others.

Once we’ve gone through pain and found God with us, now we can be healing hope to others. If we risk that. If we are willing to be vulnerable with each other and with those we meet. It’s a huge risk. But love risks, because it’s the only way to healing.

You have shed tears, you’ve bled, had a broken heart, you’ve known fear and grief and dread. When you fully embody that truth, your heart, your woundedness, your sadness, your fear, and risk sharing that with others, you are God’s healing.

You see, love risks on both sides. Even if you’re the Triune God.

God’s Love risked coming to us here. But God also trusted that our love would take risks for this child. Love goes both ways.

It’s time to let go of the legend of Mary and Joseph turned away at the door and wandering to find house room in a stable. It’s one we love, especially when remembering the many who are driven away from doors in our world, but it didn’t happen. Luke says there was no room for them in the “guest room.” “Inn” has never been a good translation. Luke knows the difference because in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, he takes the wounded man to an inn. It’s a different word.

And that matters, because God’s risk of love was greeted by a welcome of open arms, by people who were suffering themselves under oppression and poverty. No one would refuse hospitality then, let alone to a couple ready to bring a child into the world. Certainly relatives wouldn’t, which Joseph certainly would have come to.

No, Aunt Betty and her brood were already in the guest room, so Mary and Joseph were welcomed into the main room of the house where everyone slept, where the family’s few animals were brought in for the night. Jesus was in a manger off the floor so he wouldn’t be rolled on.

And Mary was surrounded by women who knew what to do, who made sure this child arrived safely and was washed and warm and welcome. They even had swaddling cloths ready, Luke says.

This is how God always hopes it will work – love risks in both directions, is wounded in both directions, and can heal in both directions.

So let’s risk love.

Let’s risk it all. Open up and trust that through our shared pain and joy and fear and hope we will find healing and life together.

When you’ve been wounded, you are able to bring healing. Even if you’re the Triune God. That’s God’s gift to you and the creation, and God’s invitation to all, so that in our shared risk, our shared love, our shared vulnerability, hope and healing might finally come to this world and bring life.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen