Restore us, O God of hosts; * show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
Christmas comes every year—in peacetime and in war; in times of sorrow and of joy; in sickness and in health. No matter the state of our nation or our world, Christmas comes. And with it the clarion call of audacious hope: God is with us.
However you plan to celebrate Christmas, we can never forget that God comes to us where we are and as we are. The Christian story, writes Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, “reveals that God has entered our world as it actually exists, and not the world as we often wish it would be…We have lost the plot if we use religion as the place where we escape from difficult realities instead of the place where those difficult realities are given meaning.”[1] There is joy, peace, and hope in the celebration of Christmas, but there is not picture perfect living and idealized thinking. God enters into the fleshiness of life—the dirt and the pain and the joy and the wonder.
Matthew’s story of the birth narrative features Joseph, the betrothed of Mary. In one line, our story teller sets the tension. Mary is officially promised to Joseph, but before they have lived together as husband and wife, she is found to be pregnant. We are not told who “found” her to be pregnant, but Joseph here at the beginning of this promising relationship, no matter how arranged, faces a staggering dilemma.
His options are limited. Under the laws of the time, he has every right to publicly declare his injury, bringing great shame on Mary and her family. Or he could divorce her—the translation “dismiss” softens the reality. He can’t avoid this decision. Mary’s pregnancy has been found out. The text tells us he is a “righteous man.” He must preserve his name and yet he does not want to harm Mary. He faces what will be the ongoing tension of Jesus’ ministry—trying to build a response of love in a world of law. He decides to divorce her quietly rather than expose her to public disgrace.
But Joseph sleeps on it and in a dream he is given a new plan through divine mediation. Like his ancestor, Joseph must have trusted his dreams. But even more than his dreams, in order to embrace Mary’s unusual pregnancy, Joseph had to trust the voice of God in the prophets:
“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 fulfill 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.”
A poor man working as a carpenter, probably building for the Roman oppressors, drew hope from these texts, this promise, this dream of all dreams. And so Joseph takes Mary into his home. This man will be the appropriate legal father for this child who will grow up to say the law must be fulfilled and yet demand that righteousness must exceed the law of the scribes and the Pharisees. (Matthew 5:20) The paradox is established: to fulfill the law you have to go beyond it.
God comes to us in real people with real challenges. God did not pick a fairy princess to bear the savior, but a young poor woman who faced the scandal of being pregnant before she had been with her husband. God did not choose a wealthy landowner or powerful ruler to name and care for Jesus. God chose a simple laborer–a man who was confused and doubtful and needed the intervention of an angel to tell him to do the right thing. The birth of Jesus was not elegantly staged. But it is how we experience life—messy, surprising, unexpected, imperfect.
What a relief this is. We don’t have to be cleaned up and flawless. We don’t have to have all our doctrine and practices in order. God is with us when we remember to pick up a gift for the person who plows our driveway and God is with us when we lose our temper at the person who gets in the supermarket line for 15 items ahead of us with a cart brimming over with groceries. God is with us when we are in the pink of health and God is with us when are faced with constant and unmanageable pain. God is with us when we are surrounded by those we love and God is with us when we can’t bring ourselves to call our relatives who voted differently in the last election. God is with us when we have completed every task before us and God is with us when the lists of our responsibilities never end. God is really with us. God is with us where we are. And we are bold enough to call on God in all our situations and in all our moments.
And God is with us in this broken and suffering world. In our reading from Isaiah, we pick up where Ahaz the king is joisting with the prophet. Ahaz, facing an impending attack on Jerusalem from two neighboring armies, Ephraim or Israel and Aram or Syria, is about to make the disastrous mistake of appealing to a greater threat (Assyria) in response to a much lesser threat (Syria and Israel), a decision that reflects short-term panic and long-term foolishness. Isaiah tells the king not to fear these two rivals. Yet, in the great tradition of kings and rulers and presidents, Ahaz under discerns and over responds leading to catastrophic consequences for the world.
The prophet Isaiah, sent by God invites the king to have courage and trust in God’s promise. In a confrontation between faith and fear, God says, “Do you want me to prove it to you that I am with you?” While the king piously refuses, the prophet proceeds with a sign, “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” (7:14) This sign is a visible reassertion that God is with God’s people. Ahaz need not fear nor turn to Assyria for protection.
God with us reminds us that God is with us when our world is in turmoil. God is with us when fear and hatred threaten to tear apart the fabric of our fragile democracy. God is with us in parts of the world where the violence of humans seems to be beyond restraint. God is with us when the actions of humans threaten to destroy our beloved earth. God is always with us and so we can sing with the Psalmist: Restore us, O God of hosts; * show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
While driving to Springfield a couple of weeks ago, I did what I often do on these trips, I turned to a podcast called “On Being” and listened to an interview by Krista Tippett with the late Dr. Vincent Harding, a leader in the Civil Rights Movement and Professor of Religion and Transformation at Iliff School of Theology in Denver CO. [2]
In this interview, Dr. Harding shared an experience he had in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer of 1964 when civil rights workers had invited people from all over the country, particularly students, to help in the process of voter registration and Freedom School teaching. There were two weeks of orientation. The first week was when Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman from New York and James Chaney from Mississippi were there. And it was during that time that they left the campus, were arrested, then released, and then murdered.
The word came back to those at the orientation that the three had not been heard from. Bob Moses, the leader of the group, called together these hundreds of predominately white young people and told them that if any of them felt that at this point they needed to return home to their schools, that no one would think less of them at all, but would be grateful for all they had done.
He gave them a couple of hours to spend time thinking and talking on the phone with their parents or whoever to try and make this decision and make it now. As Dr. Harding walked around among these small groups that began to gather to help each other. In group after group, people were singing “Kum Bah Ya.” Come by here my Lord, Come by here. Come by here my Lord come by here. Come by here my Lord, come by here. Oh Lord come by here. Someone’s missing Lord, come by here. Someone’s missing Lord, come by here. Someone’s missing Lord, come by here. We all need you, come by here.
He said he then saw that almost no one went home. They were going to continue on the path that they had committed to. And a great part of the reason why they were able to do that was because of the strength and the power and the commitment that came through the experience of singing together—Come by hear, Lord. God be with us.
Christmas comes to us again. And with it an audacious promise. The birth of Christ was not a one-time event that happened long ago. The One who created the heavens and the earth has come in love to really be with us. On this day and for all time. Emmanuel “God is with us.”
[1] Nadia Bolz-Weber. Accidental saints: Finding God in all the wrong people. New York: Convergent Books, 2015, 74.
[2] On Being with Krista Tippett. “Is America Possible?” with Dr. Vincent Harding. November 7, 2016. http://www.onbeing.org/program/vincent-harding-is-america-possible/79.