The Sign that God is With Us
What is the meaning, the mood, the hope of Christmas?
In Matthew’s Gospel we find this sentence:
“And he will be called Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us’.”
In Luke’s Gospel the angel tells the shepherds that God’s realm is coming.
The sign—the evidence—of that truth is
“a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
God is with us.
It is quite a claim to say that God is with us.
That God is one of us.
Yet at Christmas we do say it.
We sing it!
We celebrate it!
God is not out there, we claim, but closer.
God is not a concept, or a moral maxim,
but God is as real as a baby’s tears.
The good news is that we, if we allow ourselves,
can live with God in God’s kingdom.
Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God more than anything else.
Perhaps the word “kingdom” is dated.
Some call it the realm of God.
Maybe it should be translated the “Commonwealth of God” or “God’s Society.”
The scriptures have many metaphors for this society of God.
One metaphor is the holy mountain.
Isaiah spoke of the holy mountain when he wrote:
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
The leopard shall lie down with the kid,
The calf and lion and the fatling together,
And a little child shall lead them….
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
As the waters cover the sea.
The early followers of Jesus saw Jesus as a sign—as evidence—of this hope.
They saw in him, in his teaching, in his life, even in the way he died,
The hope of God’s holy mountain, the realm of God,
Where everyone is at peace.
Jesus dared to allow people to hope that
That in God’s Society…
doing the right thing,
Living peacefully,
Treating one another justly,
Making sure everyone has shelter, food, and dignity,
Is reality.
I can imagine sometime in the future when God’s Society becomes real;
When the Lord’s Prayer comes true:
Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven…
Someday, in God’s Society,
schoolchildren will have to look up in ancient history books to learn what that strange, inconceivable thing called war was.
They will marvel at the ignorance of their ancestors.
They will ask their teacher,
“How could our ancestors possibly have thought that war would solve anything?”
The teacher will try to explain what happens when fear, misunderstanding and greed take over a person or a nation.
The teacher will try to help the children not judge their ancestors so harshly.
But in days to come, the children won’t buy it. They will ask,
“Didn’t they know that money and possessions don’t make you happy?”
“Didn’t they know that making sure everyone has what they need is the most important thing for a society? It is so obvious!”
“Didn’t they know how to solve disagreements with compromise and conversation?”
“Didn’t they know that any other way would lead to their destruction?”
The teacher will say—in those days to come—that some people knew.
She will remind them that throughout history there were people with sensitivity, insight wisdom, and courage.
She will tell the stories of those whose voices were not heard in their own time,
But who made their voices known anyway.
She will remind the children that truth comes at a price.
She will tell them that the price is worth it.
She will tell them that they are here talking about these things today because enough people dared to tell the truth.
She will tell them about the people who refused to believe the ideology of consumerism.
She will tell them about the people who refused to believe in the inevitability of war.
She will tell them about people who refused to see others as enemies.
She will tell them about people who helped others overcome their fear of those who seemed different because of race, religion, culture, or language.
She will tell them about people who helped others realize that difference is not something to fear, but something to celebrate.
Perhaps she will tell them about us.
Perhaps we might be the ones who will dare to speak the truth.
Perhaps we will be the ones who will follow the example of one whose birth we celebrate this morning.
Perhaps we will tell the truth like he did.
He told the truth about what is important in life.
He taught us about love and hope and about being a neighbor.
He died as he lived with truth on his lips.
And his Spirit is alive among us.
Jesus lived as though God’s Society was real.
He lived as though God really was with us and one of us.
God is with us.
What is the sign, what is the evidence, of that today?
In our story from Luke, the shepherds see in Jesus a sign that God is with us.
There was nothing spectacular about the baby.
The baby didn’t do any tricks.
He didn’t do flips in the crib,
turn ropes into snakes,
calculate the value of pi to the 1000th digit.
He was just a regular baby.
The sign was in the spiritual awareness of the shepherds.
They saw in this ordinary human being, God’s presence.
Before Jesus grew up and did all of that truth-telling,
They saw an ordinary baby born in poverty.
The shepherds saw something in this baby.
Not only in this one baby, but in every baby…
…they saw that God is with us.
God became and becomes an ordinary, happy, grumpy,
silly, chubby, beautiful human being.
And in so doing, God makes the regular, ordinary human being sacred.
Christmas is the making sacred and holy of that which is ordinary and mundane.
God enters the world and says:
“You matter and you are important.
You are in me and I am in you.
The life of every creature is sacred, holy, and beautiful.”
Christmas means that God values human life.
God values your life.
God values the lives of those whom we love,
of those whom we hate,
of those whom we hurt,
Of those whom we kill.
The astonishing hard to believe news,
Is that God loves and values all of us right now…not when we get it all together…now.
That news is the gift we can receive at Christmas.
Christmas means that God has found home in us.
Not is some perfect form of us,
Not in some ideal of a morally good, beautiful, or popular person,
But in us, as we are, simultaneously frightened and courageous,
saint, and sinner at once.
This is the news that the shepherds heard and received and told with joy.
When they saw this ordinary baby, they got it.
They realized that at the darkest times,
God whispers,
“You are loved.
I am with you.
I am in you.
I am among you.”
When we finally get it,
When we finally get that God is in every human being,
Then there will be peace on God’s holy mountain.
Thanks be to God!