The Great Turnaround

Advent: 24 December 2018

2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16. Psalm 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29. Luke 1:67-79.

“The Lord also reveals to you that He will establish a house for you. And when your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your heir after you. Your house and your Kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever.”

In the first reading we see that King David wants to build Yahweh a house to prove to Yahweh that he's a good boy. Through Nathan, Yahweh tells David, "I don't want you to build me a house. I will build you a house. I will give you rest from all your enemies. I will make you great. Yahweh will build you a house and when your days are ended and you are laid to rest with your ancestors, I will preserve your offspring until eternity."

This passage portrays the conversion or the "great turnaround" or the "necessary turnaround" of David. We all start by thinking we are going to do something for God, and by the end of our lives we know God has done it all for us. We start with a willingness to enter into this bilateral covenant with God, and eventually we know that it is mostly unilateral, and grace has filled in all the gaps!

At that turnaround point, we have David offering a beautiful prayer back to Yahweh: "Who am I, O Lord, and what is my house that you have led me as far as this?" It is similar to the prayer of Mary at the annunciation, "I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let your will be done." It is all about allowing God to have His way.

To allow yourself to be God's beloved is to be God's beloved. To allow yourself to be chosen is to be chosen. To allow yourself to be blessed is to be blessed. It is so hard to accept being accepted, especially from God. It takes a certain kind of humility to surrender to it, and even more to persist in believing it. Any used persons know this to be true: God chooses and then uses whom God chooses, and their usability comes from their willingness to allow themselves to be chosen in the first place. What a paradox!

God's love is constant and irrevocable; our part is to be open to it and let it transform us. There is absolutely nothing we can do to make God love us more than God already loves; and there is absolutely nothing we can do to make God love us less. We are stuck with it! The only difference is between those who allow that and those who don't, but they are both equally and objectively the beloved. One just enjoys it and draws ever-new life from that realization.

Isn't this the good news at Christmas? That God's love is so crazy, His grace is gratuitous, free, and always available. It is too good to believe, beyond our wildest hopes, and looks like wishful thinking. We don't want to fully believe it: are there really no terms and conditions for this love? There is nothing that I can do for meriting this love? Does God really love me so much that I don't have to do anything at all?

It may take a lifetime and even more to comprehend a bit of His love. And that's what God is and His love. Beyond all understanding and reason. Beyond all human calculation and expectation. Christmas for many of us might mean to allow God to be God, and not limit His saving love by our thinking and understanding. It would mean to allow God to love us as we are, and accept us as we are. Practically, it would mean to love ourselves as we are, and accept ourselves unconditionally as God Himself accepts us.

Can this Christmas be the Great Turnaround that we always imagined to have?