“God is With Us: Promise and Possibility”
December 18, 2022
Matthew 1:18–25
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.***
The plan was daring.
For centuries God had tried to get the attention of people. Through prophets, poets, and priests, God had tried to get the attention of the people. God had whispered, shouted, gone silent, but nothing seemed to work. God appeared in dreams and burning bushes, spoke through pillars of fire and manna from heaven, provided water in the wilderness and lands flowing with milk and honey. Yet still people would not listen.
So, God spoke louder and bolder.
Fiery prophets, judges and kings spoke with God’s voice. They tried their best to call the people back to the love buried deep inside, but the words were ignored. Human beings thought they were “self-made” and so they ignored the messengers and the message. They created idols of wealth and greed and worshiped on the mountains of commerce an idol called Fear. Fear preached a gospel of scarcity, me first, and self-centeredness. The people were divided one from another and surrounded themselves with others who looked, thought, and talked alike and God’s heart broke. “They were made for love,” God said.
So, God hatched a daring plan. Instead of poets and prophets, instead of manna and messengers, instead of fires and floods, God would become flesh and blood. The creator of the universe, the One who called the cosmos into being with a word, the great I Am, would take human flesh. But how?
A baby. Babies inspire hope for the future. But God as a baby had to be special. Not the baby of a powerful queen or a savvy politician, but a helpless baby, born in an overlooked town. God was going to become a nobody. “I will be Immanuel — ‘God with us’ — to show them the face of love.” But what if things go wrong? What if something happened to God as a helpless little child? That was the chance that God was going to have to take.
God was ready, but it took a while and a bit of searching before the angel finally found a girl named Mary that said yes. But the messenger had forgotten about Joseph. Maybe Mary could convince him. After all, who does not like a baby?
In the first century world an engagement was not a romantic declaration of intent. Rather, it was a legal contract, binding in every respect. To be engaged or betrothed (as older versions put it) was essentially to be married yet without having consummated that marriage or as yet living together. Which means when Joseph learns that Mary is pregnant, he can only conclude that she has been unfaithful to him. Imagine the anguish and sense of betrayal.
In Joseph’s day, this predicament had only two realistic possibilities. He could either publicly declare his injury, in which case Mary would have been stoned, or he could divorce — the translation “dismiss” softens the reality as “engaged” did earlier — her quietly, and he chooses the latter course.
As Joseph is fraught with thought and emotion, surely Mary is not unscathed. Matthew tells his account of the birth of Jesus from the point of view of Joseph, so we get little insight into Mary. But we can guess that she knew Joseph was pained by her pregnancy. She also knew what would befall her if Joseph divorced her. It takes a visit from an angel to calm all this down and orient Joseph to God’s intentions. Angels get involved in the biblical story when heavy lifting is involved. In the midst of Joseph’s anxiety, emotion and fraught choices, an angel enters while Joseph slept.
“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
“‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”
God is with us.
The time had come for the baby to be born. After all those centuries God gets a listen. In Jesus, we are reminded that throughout the lives of our ancestors, throughout our lives God is with us. God was with Joseph when the weight of the world seemed heavy on his shoulders.
Emmanuel. God is with us.
Imagine what this means for us. God is with us through the struggle and the storm. God is with us in our stumbling and shortcomings, in triumphs and our thanksgiving, in the midst of the messiness of our lives and the days we barely hold it together. God is with us as we live into the unknown. God will be with us in the silence and in the shouts, in our liberation and our longing. In Jesus, God was, God is, and God will be with us. Always.
The thing is, we are prone to forget that all our lives, our loves, and our longings are caught up in a God who became flesh and blood and bone and body to be with us. This is not a deity aloof or far away, removed from humanity. Rather, this is the God whose hands dug into the rich fertile ground and was able to say, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground…” Ours is a God who knew hunger and longing and challenging work. “God is with us” is both pledge and promise that no matter where we find ourselves in this life, even in death and beyond death, that we are never, ever alone!
Our world longs to see God with us. Behind the fear, the divisions and divides we long to connect with the divine, to look for the holy in the midst of the confusion. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be grounded in the truth that God’s love is more than enough to cast out our fear. We know that God comes to us repeatedly seeking, searching, and sowing love. To truly know and to rest in that knowing, is to recognize that in Jesus Christ, God is in charge, and no matter how much we try to cling to the past, no matter how much we long for what has been, God is always pointing to the future. When we get out of our own way, when we stop being self-absorbed, the real work of walking with God in the world begins. The sacred and challenging work of clothing the poor, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, caring for the foreigner, honoring the immigrant, and blessing the other is why we follow Jesus. We should start loving (and living) like we believe it.
“God with us” is the good news that as much as we might want to individualize God or take a break from God, Emmanuel tells a different story. God simply will not leave us alone, neither to our own devices nor to avoid accountability to the other. In other words, “God with us” is both promise and possibility, both presence and potential.
So, in the days ahead we sing, we light candles, we share meals, we give gifts, and we celebrate — all of which help us see the sign so easily overlooked when we are alone. The sign that is both our certain hope and the hope to which we witness: “The Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). God is with us.
Images:
thejesusquestion.files.wordpress.com
“God is With Us: Promise and Possibility”
December 18, 2022
Matthew 1:18–25
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.***
The plan was daring.
For centuries God had tried to get the attention of people. Through prophets, poets, and priests, God had tried to get the attention of the people. God had whispered, shouted, gone silent, but nothing seemed to work. God appeared in dreams and burning bushes, spoke through pillars of fire and manna from heaven, provided water in the wilderness and lands flowing with milk and honey. Yet still people would not listen.
So, God spoke louder and bolder.
Fiery prophets, judges and kings spoke with God’s voice. They tried their best to call the people back to the love buried deep inside, but the words were ignored. Human beings thought they were “self-made” and so they ignored the messengers and the message. They created idols of wealth and greed and worshiped on the mountains of commerce an idol called Fear. Fear preached a gospel of scarcity, me first, and self-centeredness. The people were divided one from another and surrounded themselves with others who looked, thought, and talked alike and God’s heart broke. “They were made for love,” God said.
So, God hatched a daring plan. Instead of poets and prophets, instead of manna and messengers, instead of fires and floods, God would become flesh and blood. The creator of the universe, the One who called the cosmos into being with a word, the great I Am, would take human flesh. But how?
A baby. Babies inspire hope for the future. But God as a baby had to be special. Not the baby of a powerful queen or a savvy politician, but a helpless baby, born in an overlooked town. God was going to become a nobody. “I will be Immanuel — ‘God with us’ — to show them the face of love.” But what if things go wrong? What if something happened to God as a helpless little child? That was the chance that God was going to have to take.
God was ready, but it took a while and a bit of searching before the angel finally found a girl named Mary that said yes. But the messenger had forgotten about Joseph. Maybe Mary could convince him. After all, who does not like a baby?
In the first century world an engagement was not a romantic declaration of intent. Rather, it was a legal contract, binding in every respect. To be engaged or betrothed (as older versions put it) was essentially to be married yet without having consummated that marriage or as yet living together. Which means when Joseph learns that Mary is pregnant, he can only conclude that she has been unfaithful to him. Imagine the anguish and sense of betrayal.
In Joseph’s day, this predicament had only two realistic possibilities. He could either publicly declare his injury, in which case Mary would have been stoned, or he could divorce — the translation “dismiss” softens the reality as “engaged” did earlier — her quietly, and he chooses the latter course.
As Joseph is fraught with thought and emotion, surely Mary is not unscathed. Matthew tells his account of the birth of Jesus from the point of view of Joseph, so we get little insight into Mary. But we can guess that she knew Joseph was pained by her pregnancy. She also knew what would befall her if Joseph divorced her. It takes a visit from an angel to calm all this down and orient Joseph to God’s intentions. Angels get involved in the biblical story when heavy lifting is involved. In the midst of Joseph’s anxiety, emotion and fraught choices, an angel enters while Joseph slept.
“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
“‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”
God is with us.
The time had come for the baby to be born. After all those centuries God gets a listen. In Jesus, we are reminded that throughout the lives of our ancestors, throughout our lives God is with us. God was with Joseph when the weight of the world seemed heavy on his shoulders.
Emmanuel. God is with us.
Imagine what this means for us. God is with us through the struggle and the storm. God is with us in our stumbling and shortcomings, in triumphs and our thanksgiving, in the midst of the messiness of our lives and the days we barely hold it together. God is with us as we live into the unknown. God will be with us in the silence and in the shouts, in our liberation and our longing. In Jesus, God was, God is, and God will be with us. Always.
The thing is, we are prone to forget that all our lives, our loves, and our longings are caught up in a God who became flesh and blood and bone and body to be with us. This is not a deity aloof or far away, removed from humanity. Rather, this is the God whose hands dug into the rich fertile ground and was able to say, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground…” Ours is a God who knew hunger and longing and challenging work. “God is with us” is both pledge and promise that no matter where we find ourselves in this life, even in death and beyond death, that we are never, ever alone!
Our world longs to see God with us. Behind the fear, the divisions and divides we long to connect with the divine, to look for the holy in the midst of the confusion. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be grounded in the truth that God’s love is more than enough to cast out our fear. We know that God comes to us repeatedly seeking, searching, and sowing love. To truly know and to rest in that knowing, is to recognize that in Jesus Christ, God is in charge, and no matter how much we try to cling to the past, no matter how much we long for what has been, God is always pointing to the future. When we get out of our own way, when we stop being self-absorbed, the real work of walking with God in the world begins. The sacred and challenging work of clothing the poor, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, caring for the foreigner, honoring the immigrant, and blessing the other is why we follow Jesus. We should start loving (and living) like we believe it.
“God with us” is the good news that as much as we might want to individualize God or take a break from God, Emmanuel tells a different story. God simply will not leave us alone, neither to our own devices nor to avoid accountability to the other. In other words, “God with us” is both promise and possibility, both presence and potential.
So, in the days ahead we sing, we light candles, we share meals, we give gifts, and we celebrate — all of which help us see the sign so easily overlooked when we are alone. The sign that is both our certain hope and the hope to which we witness: “The Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). God is with us.
Image:
1620s painting by Daniele Cresp
