I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. ... I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. ...No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.... They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat. ... They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord- and their descendants as well.  

This is dangerous love that challenges the injustices of the evening news, where Jerusalem is divided, Beirut in ruins, and Baghdad a daily target of military violence and terror - where refugees stream across borders fleeing homes they built but cannot inhabit, vineyards they plant only to have another eat.This is a dangerous love that challenges the inhumanity of more children "living but a few days" because of inadequate care or going to bed hungry, right here in Washington, DC, than in many third-world countries in the global south.

This is a dangerous love that challenges the fate of a class of minimum-wage workers and immigrant families - legal or illegal - who know only too well what it means to "labor in vain" and live in ghetto conditions where they are doomed to "bear children for calamity" - or if lucky, to grow to be an "old person who does not live out a lifetime" for lack of adequate health care, or nutrition, or retirement income.

Later St. Paul would look back and see the revolutionary implications of Mary's declaration: "I have seen the Lord!" For Paul understood that Christ's resurrection from the dead was itself the death-knell for privilege and unbridled power and the capacity for the wealthy to determine who gets to live and who must be doomed to slowly die from the lack of a livable wage. Paul saw the implication: If this condemned man, Christ, has triumphed over death itself, "so will all be made alive in Christ." "Then comes the end" of all things, and of all time, in Paul's words "when Christ hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power" who would try to wrest away from God the very power of life and death. Paul concludes, "For Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet," and "the last enemy to be destroyed is death."

It is a dangerous love that can conquer even death, for such is the love that signals the in-breaking of the reign of God over all creation. It is a love that brings the triumph of life over all who wish to rule through the threat or fear of death-dealing violence and warfare. To destroy the power of death means to unleash life where God wants it, not where it is convenient or we decide it is proper. In Gay Pride parades, and Millennium Development Goal campaigns, and movements to stop global-warming and ward off environmental catastrophe, we see how dangerous love can be once it no longer fears even death itself, but chooses to unleash life to its fullest. As Paul told the Church in Corinth, if Jesus has triumphed over death, then this is only the first fruit of all those who are starting to be caught up in the in-breaking of God's reign. We celebrate glimmers of the Kingdom here at St. Thomas' Parish each time we extend Christ's welcome to this table, without qualification.