THE LOVE WE CRAVE

- an edited transcript of Bishop David's sermon for Christmas Midnight Mass, 2007

Those who are fortunate enough to have grown up in families that are not too dysfunctional sometimes underestimate how hard it is for many others to know what real love is.

This is because of the impact of our earliest childhood experiences. Counsellors often tell us that the way we relate to others throughout our lives is pretty well determined by the time we start school. I think they're right. Some psychologists say even younger than that . . . by the age of three. Now that's truly frightening! 

It's frightening because in our culture - and in many other cultures besides - lots of people learn from childhood that they are loved when they are good, or when they are up to scratch, and they are not loved quite so much when they are bad, or not up to scratch. Parents don't think that's what they are programming into their children; in fact parents are often devastated when they realize later on that's what they've done to their kids.

But you know as well as I do that much of our need for inner healing as adults stems from the impression we gained in childhood that we are loved only when we are good. And that's because it doesn't just remain an impression: it develops into a psychological and spiritual sickness. It spreads like a cancer into every nook and cranny of our lives and behaviour. It destroys our self-image. It leaves us to cope with a deep seated and chronic self-loathing.

We grow up wounded. On the one hand we long for unconditional love, and we desperately try to gain the approval of others. On the other hand we behave towards everyone else - our friends and associates, and even our spouses and children - according to the only relationship behavior modeled for us in our childhood: goodness is rewarded with love; not being "up to scratch" is punished with the cruel withdrawal of love and affection.

What a disaster!

RELATING TO GOD
Did you know that this impacts on our ability to relate to God? We find it almost impossible to believe the Good News that God loves us unconditionally. We are puzzled by the idea that we can never earn His love by being "good," and - furthermore - that nothing will ever stop Him loving us.  (That's one reason why people are often far happier with a "works" based religion than the fair dinkum "amazing grace" based one!)

I have always loved teaching children the Bible and the great truths of the Faith. Do you know, when I was just starting out I thought it would be hard to teach children about the Trinity, or the Divinity of Christ. But I was wrong. Most children don't have problems with those things. 

What I'm going to say will shock some of you. I have found that the hardest thing in the Bible, the hardest aspect of the Christian Faith, to teach today's children is THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL SON. It is infinitely more difficult for children than the Trinity.

Jesus told that story to help us understand that there is nothing - absolutely nothing - we can ever do to stop God loving us. Nothing! His love is eternal, and it is totally unconditional. It accepts, it forgives, it heals, it enables us to come back home, even when we have disgraced ourselves and our families. It is a 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love.

Why is it so hard for many of today's children to relate to the unconditional love of the father in the parable of the prodigal son? I'll tell you why. It's because of their parents, who without realizing it have established what we sometimes call "transactional relationships" with each other and the children. And so everyone hungers for love withour realising it.

The persistence of that hunger gives the lie to the cynicism and brashness with which we like to protect ourselves. I don't have to tell you that the people who act toughest on the outside are actually the most wounded on the inside; wounded by that hunger gnawing away at their souls. 

But here we are on Christmas Eve. I am SO glad that you have come to be with us tonight. I really am! For this is the one night of the year when the hardest of hard hearts is so easily smitten just by gazing on the crib. Maybe that's because of the power of the Christmas story itself; maybe it's because the most cherished memories of our childhood Christmases come rushing back.

Whatever the reason, I want to tell you not to be surprised if tonight you are beginning to feel touched, even overwhelmed, by the reality of love, real love, unconditional love, the love that we crave in the very depths of our being, the love that is incarnate in the flesh of a little baby, born in poverty and cradled in the arms of a teenage mum. In the words of the nineteenth century poet, Christina Rossetti:

Love came down at Christmas
Love all lovely, Love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, Love divine;
Worship we our Jesus,
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token;
Love be yours and love be mine;
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

A TRUE STORY
I want to tell you a story about love, real love, love in a family. Back in the fifteenth century in a village near Nuremburg, Germany, lived a husband and wife with their eighteen children.  This family - the Dürers - were poor, and the husband worked hard day and night to provide for them. He was a goldsmith by trade.  

Two of these children, Albrecht and Albert, were very gifted artists. In fact, both of them wanted to study art properly and make a career of it. But they couldn't possibly afford art school; nor couldthey ask their parents to pay for them.

Do you know what they did? They tossed a coin. They had worked out that the loser would get a job as a labourer in the mines so as to support the winner at art school in the city. Four years later, upon graduation, the winner would then pay his brother's art school expenses either with the profit from sales of his artwork or, if need be, by working in the mines. They tossed the coin one Sunday morning after Mass. Albrecht Dürer won and went to art school in Nuremberg.

Albert cheerfully worked in the mines in conditions that would never be acceptable today. For four years he slaved away supporting his brother, whose etchings, oils and woodcuts were acclaimed as being far better than those of his teachers!  By the time he graduated, his work was already selling well.

When Albrecht finished his course, the Dürers held an outdoor family feast to celebrate his homecoming. There was music and laughter. When the speeches came round, Albrecht made a teary heart-felt toast to his brother for the years of sacrifice and back-breaking work that had enabled him to fulfill his ambition. He then said, "Now, Albert, my brother, it is your turn. Now you can go to Nuremberg to study art, and I will support you."

Albert sat at the other end of the table, tears streaming down his face. Everyone looked at him. He shook his head, sobbing, and said over and over, "No . . . no . . . no . . . no." Eventually, he stood up. Wiping the tears away, looking around the table at the family he loved, and holding his hands close to his right cheek, he said gently, "No, brother. I cannot go to Nuremberg. It is too late for me. Look . . . look what four years in the mines have done to my hands. The bones in every finger have been smashed at least once, and lately I have been suffering from arthritis so badly in my right hand that I cannot even hold a glass to return your toast, much less make delicate lines on parchment or canvas with a pen or a brush. No, brother . . . for me it is too late."

That was over 450 years ago. Today the great museums and galleries of the world display hundreds of Albrecht Dürer's portraits, pen and silver-point sketches, watercolors, charcoals, woodcuts, and copper engravings.

For all of that, I wouldn't mind betting that most people here are familiar with only one of his works. In fact, I'm pretty confident that some of you have a reproduction of it at home somewhere. Let me tell you about it.

One day, to pay homage to Albert for all that he had sacrificed, Albrecht painstakingly drew his brother's abused hands with palms together and thin fingers stretched skyward. He called this drawing simply "Hands," but almost at once this tribute of love became known as "The Praying Hands." These were the hands of unconditional suffering love.

THOSE OTHER HANDS
At this Midnight Mass I beckon your gaze to another pair of hands. Will you look at the hands of baby Jesus in the crib, stretched out towards you and me - little hands, tiny hands.  Will you now look over here at those same hands, nailed to the cross, bleeding hands, wounded hands, healing hands, but still reaching out to the world - to you here tonight - in unconditional suffering love. He died for you - that's how much He loves you - He died to take away your burden of guilt and sin, and He reaches out to you with those wounded hands while from the cross we still hear him say, "Father forgive them they know not what they do." And, though he's now gloriously risen from the dead, do you know the Bible says that his hands contain for all eternity those wounds which are now glorious - because they are the signs of his love.

There was once a school Mass where children were jam packed into the church. The extravert priest finished his talk by saying "And God loves you and you and you," stabbing the air with great enthusiasm as he spoke, pointing in three different directions. He then paused for dramatic effect, so that this could sink in.

During the silence, a small child who was uncomfortably squeezed in at the edge of the crowd and just out of sight behind the font called out in a tiny little voice, "What about me, Father?" Everyone laughed!

Well, I'm glad you think it's funny. Because this child represents a lot of people . . . this child stands for those who feel left out, the poor, the oppressed, the unnoticed, those who think they are beyond redemption, who wonder if they are too small or too bad or too insignificant to be included, to be loved by God. Maybe YOU have always felt left out. I want you to know tonight that he loves YOU.

I've already mentioned the story of the prodigal son. I once heard of a pastor reading the Bible passage of the prodigal Son to his people exactly as it is in the King James Version, right down to the place where the son who went astray and squandered his inheritance on wine, women and song, comes back home and the father goes out to meet him.

At this stage the pastor continued to speak solemnly, as if he was still reading from the Bible: "And the father said to his son, 'How dare you show up here after all the shame you've brought on this family! You've made your bed. Now lie in it. Don't come back here again until you've got a haircut and a decent job.'"

The preacher stopped and looked up at his congregation. Another silence. In this case, a very awkward one! Eventually a voice growled from out of the congregation: "Well, that's what he should have said."

We all know people like that, don't we!

The whole reason Jesus told the story of the prodigal son is to help us understand - GOD ISN'T LIKE THAT! He is the Father waiting for us to come home. He's the one at the gate, watching, waiting, hoping, longing. He's the one whose love goes out to us, pursues us, reaches us, and welcomes us back.

(And that's the love that is supposed to be channelled from one to another in Christian family life, as well as in the life of our church community. How are we going as channels of his love?)

HIS LOVE REACHES YOU
But, back to YOU . . . especially visitors!

The Apostle Paul wrote these words to the early Christians. They are in the Bible, and they are my prayer for you, tonight:

"that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that you, being rooted and grounded in love,
may have power to comprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled with all the fulness of God."
(Ephesians 3:17-19)

Will you allow yourself to respond to God's amazing unconditional love tonight? Will you?

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star
And reaches to the lowest hell!

That little poem is actually a hymn about God's love, written in 1917. In a moment I'm going to read the last verse, which  had been found penciled on the wall of a cell in an American mental asylum by a man who had lived there for many years.

Who knows the cruel torment of mind he suffered, as much from the treatment as from his illness! What we can say, however, - and this is so wonderful - is that although locked up and written off as insane according to the wisdom of the age, this man at least some of the time anchored deeply into a reality, an experience of God, that broke through the darkness, that flooded his soul and his prison cell, and that was far more real to him than all the darkness, all his torments and all his anguish put together.

This is what he wrote on the wall of his cell. These are the words they discovered when he died:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.

LET HIM LOVE YOU
My friends, come with me to Bethlehem. Whatever the state of your soul, whatever your struggles, your doubts, your fears, whatever prison you are boxed into through your own fault or the actions of others, join me at the manger and allow yourself to be loved the way you have always wanted to be loved.  Stop running from Him. Would you open your hearts tonight? Would you? Would you?

For . . .

The circle of a girl's arms
have changed the world
the round and sorrowful world
to a cradle of God.

She has laid love in His cradle.
in every cot,
Mary has laid her child,

Into our hands
Mary has given her child,
heir to the world's tears,
heir to the world's toil,
heir to the world's scars,
heir to the chill dawn
over the ruin of wars

She has laid love in His cradle,
answering for us all.
"Be it done unto me."

The child in the wooden bed,
the light in the dark house,
the life in the fainting soul,
the Host in the priest's hands,
the seed in the hard earth,
the man who is child again,
quiet in the burial bands
waiting his birth.

Mary, Mother of God,
we are the poor soil
and the dry dust,
we are hard with a cold frost.

Be warmth to the world,
be the thaw,
warm on the cold frost,
be the thaw that melts.
That the tender shoot of Christ,
piercing the hard heart,
flower to a spring in us.

Be the hands
that are rocking the world
to a kind rhythm of love;
that the incoherence of war
and the chaos of our unrest
be soothed to a lullaby,
and the round
and sorrowful world
in your hands,
the cradle of God.

(Caryll Houselander)