“Unclutter the Heart: Love” Matthew 1: 18-21, 24-25

There is a tendency to try to speed through most of Advent, but I think that is especially true of the last week of Advent. But perhaps that is exactly why we need it the most.

I mentioned last week that there is a bit of discussion about what order the candles of joy and love should go in. Last week we celebrated joy and this week, the final week, we are going to reflect on love.

Love is something that I struggle with in our modern culture. Somewhere along the way, we have made love into a feeling. If I feel like I love you, then I must love you. But that isn’t the type of love that we are talking about this morning, friends. That isn’t the type of love that Jesus brings. Jesus doesn’t bring a feeling of love, something that can flee with time. No, Jesus didn’t bring the noun of love, Jesus brought the embodiment of the verb to love, an action. Something that keeps giving. 

In other words, while we often may think of love as something that we feel, Jesus came to show us to love, how to go about the task of loving.

Now, you may bulk at the idea of love being a task. It sounds like just another thing to add to our to-do list the hecticness of the season. But if we pause and truly consider what that means, I think we can see task as something that we choose to do. An action that we choose to share with the world.

A few years ago in this parish we did a bit of an experiment during Advent. I asked you to write down ways that you shared the love of Jesus during this season of preparation. Then you brought them in, we put them in a sparkly box with a big red bow, and then we opened them. We read them as a gift that we offered to Jesus. A gift of pure love. A gift of love in action. 

If anyone knew what it meant to show love through action, it was Joseph. Jospeh was engaged to be married to Mary. But somewhere between the engagement and the wedding ceremony you find out that Mary is expecting a child. You know that it isn’t yours. There’s no way. So the only rational conclusion is that Mary must have cheated on you, broke your covent of betrothal. 

Joseph had to be feeling heartbroken. 

Now you are faced with a choice. Do you call her out publicly? Or do you try to let it go quietly? The scriptures say that Mary should be stoned to death for having a child by another man while engaged to you. But you don’t want her to die. If you tell your family, tell your friends, word will get around Bethlehem – its not that big of a town with only 500 -1,000 people living in it – and she will be executed. But you can’t marry her either. Not when she broke your trust, broke the promise you made to each other through your engagement. 

Scripture doesn’t tell us how long Joseph wrestled with the decision of what to do about his engagement to Mary – only that the angel of the Lord came to him in a dream after he resolved to dismiss her and their engagement quietly. The only logical explanation to Mary’s predicament was that she had been unfaithful to him – but as much as that angered and saddened him, as much as that cut him to his very core, he could not justify killing her. Joseph knew that if he ended the engagement quietly, and then people found out that she was pregnant, that they would assume that he had been the one to impregnate her while she was visiting Elizabeth. The shame of the pregnancy would then be his – for sleeping with someone, whom he was engaged to, then dismissing her, and not being a father to his own child – instead of Mary’s. The consequences were not as life threatening for him, but in an honor-share society, it would bring much disgrace upon him and his family. He would still owe Mary’s family the additional dowry to be paid before their wedding. He would be required by law to provide for the needs of her child, and if Mary really insisted then the law would require him to take her as his wife. Though he doubted that she would do that. 

But in the midst of all of Joseph’s feeling about love and not feeling loved and wrestling with questions about actions that could have deadly consequences, God intervened . God came to Jospeh in a dream and told him not to be afraid (sound familiar?) Because the child was actually the Holy Spirits. She was carrying the Messiah. 

Now Jospeh could have ignored that message from God. But instead he decided to follow God’s leading, be obedient, and show love in action. To do the unthinkable. The thing that no one else would understand if they knew the entire situation. He took Mary to be his wife. He would go on to raise Jesus as his child. He showed love. 

If we are honest, most of us are not going to find ourselves in situations like this. And let me be very clear here - there are certain situations where this is absolutely not how you show love if you are feeling threatened or abused. That is not what the scripture is asking of us. It is not telling us to stay in dangerous situations. But what the story of Joseph does ask of us is to examine our hearts and figure out exactly how we are called to show love, not just during this season, but year round. 

Because this gift that is going to come to us in the person of Jesus Christ later this week, this gift that comes wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger - that is the gift of Divine Love. And Divine Love, my friends, changes everything.

Divine Love comes to remind us that God is with us - not just when we can feel it, but all the time. Divine Love comes to show us the way of Love, that often can lead us to sharing love in ways that we may have never considered before. Divine Love comes and asks us some hard questions like what blocks us from loving our neighbors in the world? How has mistrust came to take root in our hearts to the point where it is choking out love?

What could sharing that Divine Love look like - maybe its just saying thank you to a cashier and meaning it this holiday season? Or sharing a smile or a word of encouragement when someone seems down? Maybe its doing something special for someone for whom the holidays are hard. Maybe its telling someone the story of Divine Love itself.

Friends, moving from a place where we think that love is just a fleeting feeling to seeing love in action is hard. It requires us root around in our heats and examining both what love is and how the love of Jesus changed things for us. Because I am not exagruaing when I say that that love of Jesus changes everything. 

I don’t know where you are with Jesus this day friends. But if you are yearning for a time and place to know this love of Jesus for yourself, maybe today is your day. If you have already accepted Christ, but you have let the bitterness of the world seep into your heart, maybe today is your day to reclaim that love. Let us take time this day to be in prayer, asking that the love of Jesus change us from the inside out. Amen.