by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

Readings

Psalm 143:5-10

I remember the days of long ago;
    I meditate on all your works
    and consider what your hands have done.
I spread out my hands to you;
    I thirst for you like a parched land.

Answer me quickly, Lord;
    my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me
    or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
    for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
    for to you I entrust my life.
Rescue me from my enemies, Lord,
    for I hide myself in you.
Teach me to do your will,
    for you are my God;
may your good Spirit
    lead me on level ground.

Psalm 103:1-8

Praise the Lord, my soul;
    all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the Lord, my soul,
    and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins
    and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
    and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

The Lord works righteousness
    and justice for all the oppressed.

He made known his ways to Moses,
his deeds to the people of Israel:
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.

Read the written message below with music videos:

I find it interesting, or perhaps devastating, that so many groups within traditions that espouse a loving God turn toward an interpretation of it that damns or condemns all others. Whether it be large veins of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or others, we all have a tendency to identify with our judgmental, dismissive, and controlling mind and let that guide our religiosity (or atheism) and life at times. When we start to let this go the shared centre between many of our traditions, the importance of being oriented toward loving compassion, is easily revealed. This week’s Christian Advent theme is exactly this topic, and today we explore how love is intrinsic to our very consciousness and how God is love and the light of consciousness itself, repeatedly asking us to come into our similarly loving and non-divisive nature.

Our reading today says that God will crown us “with love and compassion.” Not all of us think about compassion as a gift or a type of reward, some of us have been taught that compassion is a weakness or, perhaps, we just have a hard time finding any and don’t really care about that lack. But many traditions’ scriptures, from the Hindu Vedas to the Christian Bible, tell us that love is a quality of awareness itself. However, when we come to over-identify with our mind’s ramblings and sense of limited self, we start to cover over our natural sense of present moment awareness and the compassion that comes with it.

The promise to crown us “with love and compassion,” then, is a promise to help us uncover our natural state as an “image and likeness” of God (known by many names). This is why we do ourselves a disservice when we ignore all the ways that the ancient traditions invite us back to compassionate awareness, as Jesus said, “Why say ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I’ve told you to do?” In this time of celebrating God’s Advent in history and in our lives, we are called to remember the heart of the Lord’s many teachings: centre on love for all (even our enemies) and let go of the things that distract our minds and habits away from that.

In the book of John, Christ encourages us to “remain” or “abide” in him, as he will in us, equating this to remaining in his love as he remains in the love of the Father. (John 15:1-12) He further equates this to keeping his commands. What were Christ’s commands? To love others as he has loved us, to love our neighbours as ourselves, to love God (to love Love and Wisdom itself) with our entire being, and to love even our enemies. And, as we just read, we are tasked with “remaining in” him, remaining in his love – all of which task us with something the Buddhists call Bodhicitta: compassionate awareness.

The Lord’s Advent in our lives is in our compassionate awareness, our love. As we start to uncover it, in a way we come to find that it was always there: that God was always at the root of our consciousness, that all our worries and hurtful habits were just debris to be let go of. Like a messy or hoarding home, we sometimes need to just start carrying things out to the curb, noting that “these things are not me.”   

Christmas time is a good time to reflect on love, as the best aspects of the season speak to love. Getting cozy with family at home and by the fire symbolizes and exhibits the warmth and the deep hug intrinsic to our compassionate awareness, to God. When we take some time to meditate or pray, focusing on the peace and the openness of compassion within, we start to notice how focusing on the light of consciousness is sort of like a hug after a year apart, or like a loving kiss under the mistletoe. It’s spontaneously there, although never really gone, and not worrying about past misdeeds but accepting whatever comes, asking for our attention so that bad habits can fall away. As we identify more with this loving and accepting consciousness than our habitual thoughts, we’re then more able to let these things go, even as they may still arise within. You could say that we start to turn around, releasing our grip on passing attachment and hugging the open light of love back.

And the giving of the season speaks to all our gifts from above, of course. There’s no coincidence that Santa soars above us and comes down the chimney with gifts (ever note that Jesus is wearing a blood-red robe at the end of the Bible). (Revelation 19:13) And Santa knows our every deed and freely gives to us more when we have been loving. This is because the act of being loving, within and without, is the truest gift – the promised crown. As many say during the holiday season; we feel best when we offer gifts to others, when we share an embodiment of our love for others. According to the mystic Swedenborg, this is exactly the purpose of the universe itself - so that God may share more and more of God’s love with and through all things.

The nativity scene itself is a profound picture of love, perhaps that’s why it is such a lasting image and metaphor. Love brings people together across nations and creeds, as we see in this scene where various cultures come together to celebrate love incarnate. It brings families together, helping them heal after trial as with Mary and Joseph. It connects us with ancient prophecy and tradition, since love itself is the saviour in our midst, the promised-child and the ancient of days. Love invites us to innocence, like a newborn child, while also empowering warmth and wisdom, like a mother or mother-figure.

Love also connects us with the future, as love is the promise of the arc of history and is foretold to eventually manifest supreme. It connects us to the sciences and the supernatural, as every aspect of physics seem to speak to the community-building power of love (disparate parts connecting to make something greater) and every real miracle seems to stem from love. We also find the most meaning from the love in our lives, the people, moments, places, and other things we love – particularly when this love is a truer, healthy, wholesome love: you could say, a love that remains within the love that Christ embodied.

Another command that Christ gave was to help the downtrodden, following in his example, as Psalm 103 read today, “The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.” For the Lord to more fully Advent into our hearts, we have to tap into the type of love at our core that can’t help but be active, that can’t help but shine through. Otherwise, we’re probably kidding ourselves. To be present to those in need in our world today, we must be present. We can’t be caught up in our worries about the future (something else he told us to drop!), but we have to be ready for his “return,” so to speak, engaged with the living, loving God exactly where he always is: in the now. This does indeed mean being present to our fears as they arise in the moment, but also to let them go as they come, to stop identifying with them so much, letting go of the false divisions of self they stem from (I am my body, mind, reputation, future, past, history, group, and on). As Christ asked of us, let us be one in Christ, in God, realizing that we always were, and uplift the oppressed aspects of all beings.

This Advent season, may we uncover that shining child within: love incarnate. As the scriptures say, he is the vine and we are the branches, and so let us become aware of that infinite compassion at our core. Swedenborg and others believed that this sharing and empowering of love was the reason for creation, and also that it was the reason for the season: that Christ came to more fully empower love in a seemingly broken world. May we let his light shine. May we come to know that God’s love and light transcend all false boundaries of religiosity or person and that it seeks to embody an infinity of loving expressions we can already start to see around us, allowing each of us to be (in a way) a part of his second coming – no matter our tradition.

Peace, love, and presence to you,

Rev. Cory

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