"Love" December 23, 2012 Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C Luke 1.39-56

            When Dancer and Prancer and company froze Rudolph out of their reindeer games, the North Pole got a little bit colder. Fortunately, the very freak feature that earned him the cold shoulder might also have warmed him back up. Science says so.

            Research recently published in the scientific journal “Acta Psychologica” reports that the skin temperature of lab subjects actually drops .378 degrees when they are excluded from a game of catch. Touching something warm – like a steaming cup of coffee or, say, a glowing red nose – reverses the effect.

            Mary lets loose with the Magnificat only after her kinswoman Elizabeth extends an embrace. Perhaps the Virgin required sufficient geographical and emotional distance from the gossiping tongues of Nazareth before her own tongue could call out in praise to God. Perhaps John’s gestational gymnastics warmed her to just that degree that praise became possible. She fled the cold of exclusion for the healing embrace of love.

            But what about those we would rather not embrace? There are times when justice seems to demand that we crush rather than hug. Some behavior deserves to be left out in the cold.

In his book “Exclusion and Embrace,” Miroslav Volf recounts how, in the winter of 1993, he delivered a lecture on forgiveness. As he concluded, the formidable Jurgen Moltmann rose to put the first question: “But can you embrace a cetnik?” At that moment the cetniki – Serbian terrorists – were marauding through Volf’s native Yugoslavia looting and raping Volf’s own people. “No, I cannot,” replied the theologian with integrity. “But as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”

The birth of Christ is all about an embrace that brings warmth to those excluded by the cold of sin. As we rejoice in this truth, however, we must also remember that if Christ’s arms are flung wide to receive us, it is because they are pinned in place to the wood of the cross. Sometimes it is only through the crucifixion of self that we open to others the warmth that gives them life.

Come On In!

Doug