Love Is Not Nice

Propers: The First Sunday of Christmas, A.D. 2017 B

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

When we say that God is love, we confuse people.

That’s because in our anodyne, watered-down society, we’ve confused love with being nice. And there’s nothing more boring than nice. Nice isn’t even kind. Nice is bland, tapioca, inoffensive, forgettable. Nice neither upsets nor excites. Nice just is. And all told, it’s pretty lame. It’s better than rude, I suppose, but at least rude gives you something to work with.

Love is sharper than that. Harsher, even. Love kills and remakes. Love breaks down and builds up. Love frustrates and enrages and enraptures and drives mad. Love hurts—that bone-deep, broken-toothed ache that we call passion. Nothing is harder than love, whether it’s the nosebleed tang of early infatuation or the lifelong grind of rock-ribbed monogamy or even the how-am-I-not-dead bewilderment of parenthood.

Love is a burning lance right through the heart of you. It purges and purifies. It rakes and refines. It is red-hot life pouring into you and out of you, destroying who you thought you were and making someone new. Through the agony and the ecstasy, it is love that makes us most human, makes us most alive.

So when someone says that God is love, this should terrify and thrill us. It should send us screaming for the hills, only to be dragged back as by a tether. Love is to have your heart torn out and see it walking around outside your body. It’s so awful. It’s so amazing. It’s so real. And when love gets you in its claws, you’re done. God only knows what it’ll turn you into in the end.

The one thing love is not is nice.

Our Gospel reading this morning jumps us ahead to the fortieth day after Jesus’ birth. Mary has completed the ritual cleansing of new mothers, so that she and Joseph may present her firstborn son at the Temple in Jerusalem. And here they have a remarkable encounter with Simeon, a prophet imbued with God’s Holy Spirit, in this time when prophets have been silent for so long. What makes Simeon unique is God’s promise that before he dies—and he is drawing nigh to the terminus of his life—Simeon will see God’s Messiah with his own two eyes.

Drawn by the Spirit to this humble Holy Family in the Temple, Simeon takes the Christchild in his arms—much to His Mother’s bewilderment, one imagines—and calls out to God in his famous song:

Lord, now You let Your servant go in peace. Your Word has been fulfilled. Mine own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people: a Light to reveal You to the nations; and the glory of Your people, Israel.

We call this in the West the Song of Simeon, or Nunc Dimittis, and it is traditionally sung at Compline, our Prayer at the End of the Day. And it sounds very nice, doesn’t it? How nice that Jesus is recognized by the prophets, and proclaimed not only as the Messiah of God’s people but also as the Savior of all nations! It would be perfectly pleasant to end the story here.

Yet rarely do we realize that Simeon is singing his death song. The promise of God has been fulfilled; now, at last, the prophet can die at peace, having seen with his own eyes the Christ who has come into the world. But he’s not quite done yet. Simeon now turns to Mary and proclaims to her a Word that no new mother wants to hear: that her Child shall cause the falling and rising of many; that He shall be opposed for unearthing the truth of their hearts; and that a sword of sorrow shall piece her own soul too. Congratulations, Mary. Your boy is going to die.

Love indeed is a burning lance that pierces us straight through the heart, and twists. But this is not the pain of a sadist, of a torturer. Rather it is the pain of a surgeon cutting out a cancer. Love hurts because it is inextricably intertwined with truth. And yes, the truth will set you free. But first it’s gonna kick like a mule.

See, there is no truth without love, and no love without truth. Simeon could’ve just been nice. He could’ve proclaimed the glory without all the gory. But he was filled with the Spirit of love. And love isn’t nice. Rather, love is true. We must have the diagnosis if we’re ever to hope for the cure.

The other day someone asked me: What would Christianity do if there were no hell? Now admittedly this is a topic that deserves more discussion than can be afforded in a single Sunday sermon, but two thoughts come to mind. First up, if avoiding hell is the only reason we can come up with for preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ, then we’re in trouble. We have to ask ourselves whether Jesus saves us or we’re trying to save people from Jesus.

But my second thought is a bit more to the point: What if Heaven and hell are the same address? This isn’t as crazy as it sounds. The mystics of our faith speak with surprising accord in regards to the Final Judgment at the End of the Age. When all is said and done, death and hades will be no more. All shall be laid at the feet of the Risen Christ. Every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, and God at last will be all in all. Then there shall be no more shadows, no more death—nowhere at all left to hide from the light and life of God.

And all shall be judged. But this is not an arbitrary Judgment, a great Caesar giving each of us a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Rather, the Judgment of God is nothing other than truth—perfect, unfettered, unmitigated truth, which is at once both perfect mercy and perfect justice together. In that final light there will be no evasion, no spin, no propaganda, no polite euphemisms, but only searing truth. Yet right at the heart of that truth will be the Lamb of God, who died as much for the tyrants of this world as for their victims.

And the truth will burn out of us all of our sin and our wickedness, our brokenness and our cruelties, and we will be refined as silver in the furnace. All of our darkness will be purged away—but not before we see how very ugly it all was. If we define ourselves by our sins, by our impurities, then we will experience God’s truth as immolation, destroying the illusions of who we think we are. But if we know ourselves to be God’s own beloved children, then we will experience the fires of truth not as punishment but as purgation, purifying and perfecting us, forging us at last into who we were always meant to be!

For those who love God and love their neighbor, everywhere we look will be Heaven! But for those who hate God and loathe their neighbor, everywhere we look will be hell. It’s the same light, the same truth, the same love of God—even the same pain of being broken down and remade!—yet different experiences. And in theory, the wicked could hold out forever; for whatever else love may be, it cannot be forced. Yet in the end, it remains God’s will that all be brought to salvation in Christ. And we pray every day that God’s will be done.

In some ways this is very comforting. It opens the possibility of salvation for every single sin-stained soul; we might very well all make it home together in the end. But in other ways this can be quite terrifying, for we know that we will have to answer for our deeds, and that our every sin will be laid bare in the light of God’s own truth, for only in this manner can it be truly purged away: perfect justice and perfect mercy poured out on every soul, by Christ, the perfect Judge.

God, my brothers and sisters, is not nice. He is not bland or inoffensive or forgettable. God is not tame. But He is good, because He is love. And love will hurt. Love disrupts and demands. Love breaks down and builds up. Love kills us and makes us alive again! Love gives us what we need instead of what we want and love never, ever leaves us the same as we were when love found us. It is love that makes us human, love that makes us whole.

It is love that will save the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.