God With Us

(Scriptures: Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25)

Joseph had a problem. It came at a time which should have been the among the happiest of his life – he had just gotten engaged, to Mary. Wedding plans were in motion, and Joseph and Mary were ready to begin a life together. And then Mary turned up pregnant. And Joseph knew perfectly well that whoever’s child it was, it wasn’t his, as he and Mary had not been intimate. Uh oh.

What to do? Well, what does the Bible say? And at that time, the “Bible”, of course, would be the Old Testament, as the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. Deuteronomy 22:23 reads as follows: “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”

Ugh…kind of a harsh way to break off an engagement! Joseph loved Mary. He didn’t want to embarrass Mary, embarrass Mary’s family, risk Mary’s being dragged to the town gate and stoned to death. On the other hand, he certainly didn’t want to take responsibility to raise a child that wasn’t his. What a mess. How could Mary have let this happen to herself? Joseph’s dream of spending the rest of his life with Mary was turning into a nightmare.

Joseph turned embarrassing situation over and over in his mind, and had come to the conclusion that the best thing for both parties was to send Mary away quietly, to give both of them a chance to move on with their lives. Of course, that would still leave Mary raising a child alone, or maybe moving back in with her parents, but it would avoid public humiliation, and maybe even the risk of a public execution, for Mary. And Joseph could take some time to catch his breath, to get over his embarrassment and anger and sense of betrayal, and maybe begin a life with another girl. There need be no blood on the ground over this. Send Mary away quietly….yes, that’s how to make the best of a bad situation. Joseph had settled on his course of action……..

…….when he was visited in a dream by an angel, a messenger of God, who turned all his careful plans upside down. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for this child is from the Holy Spirit.” Mary hadn’t been unfaithful to Joseph. Rather, the baby was a gift from God. You are to name him Jesus – it’s the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, meaning, “The Lord saves” – because he will save people from their sins. And then the angel reminds him of a text that had been one of Judah’s stories, about a baby named Immanuel, meaning “God with us,” whose birth had been the sign that Isaiah had given to frightened King Ahaz, that he might trust in God’s protection. And unlike King Ahaz, whose faith in God was wobbly at best, Joseph trusted in the angel’s message and took Mary as his wife.

Our reading from Matthew began with these words: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” The Greek word translated as “birth” is Genesis – the same word that is the name of the first book of the Old Testament. The book of Genesis gave us creation; the birth or genesis of Jesus Christ gives us new creation. In the birth of Jesus, as at the story of creation, all things are made new, never to be the same again.

God with us. Despite all of humanity’s resisting God and turning away from God, God insisted on being with us, intimately with us, with us as a little baby, with us needing to be fed and diapered, with us depending at every step on Mary’s love and Joseph’s protection from those who would soon be seeking to take the child’s life.

We all have those moments when our faith in God is shaken, when we feel that God is a distant, a million miles away, way out there in the heavens. We all have those moments of great tragedy, or daily moments of frustration, when we feel that God has forgotten us, like God has too much on God’s mind to be bothered with our problems. We ask, “where was God when my loved one got sick, or was in an accident, or was cut down unexpectedly in some other way. Where was God when these things happened to me?” The voice of doubt in our mind, like the voice of Job’s wife during Job’s afflictions, cries out in despair, “Curse God and die.”

Jesus is the sign of the promise that God is with us, intimately with us, with us in every experience of human life. Jesus knew what it was to be helpless, to be hungry and thirsty, to need to have his diapers changed. Jesus knew what it was to be a child, having to ask his parents for answers to every question, to be a teenager, finding his way, to grow into adulthood. Jesus experienced every bit of what it means to be human, and yet, Scripture tells us, without sin. Because of this, Jesus is truly God-with-us, God with us in our joys and our sorrows, our moments of helplessness, in all our daily trials and tragedies. In our moments of rejoicing, because of Jesus, God is with us, rejoicing. In our moments of sorrow, because of Jesus, God is with us, weeping on our behalf.

We might be thinking, “I don’t want God to stand next to me and weep. I know plenty well how to weep all by myself. I want God to fix things!” But for reasons best known to God, God doesn’t promise to insulate the faithful from life’s trials, but rather to be present with us, never to leave us nor forsake us. Despite God’s presence in their midst, Mary and Joseph faced life for a time as refugees from Herod’s wrath. In their trials God was with them, present to warn them of approaching danger, present to provide strength for the journey. As Paul said in I Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise; God chose what was weak in this world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in this world, the things that are not, to reduce to nothing the things that are.” At every turn, at every step, the ways of God turn the ways of human beings upside down – or more likely, our ways are upside down and God is turning them right-side-up. The power of human beings is like boots tramping down the ground, or like a sledgehammer coming down from above. The power of God is like seeds sprouting up secretly. When Herod wants to make his presence felt, he sends an army. When God wants to make God’s presence felt, God sends a baby.

For us who gather here today at Emanuel Church, this is good news indeed! God who has been with this congregation at every step of the way through the past 150 years, is still with us every step of the way, even today, this hour, this moment, in our midst. With our small membership, we who are weak by the worldly standards of numbers and dollars are open to being used by God in a way that those who are strong by worldly standards can’t. Our numbers and our resources, our own might, won’t get us very far; it is only by God’s grace that we can stand at all. Paul’s words again: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Sounds like us at Emanuel all right! But those are the very people with whom God’s presence will abide, the very people who are open to being used by God to bring God’s great good news to others.

One of the prayers of confession in the UCC book of worship begins, “God, we confess that it is not easy to wait for you. Our world worships the power that acts quickly through force; how difficult it is for us to wait for the power of your rule which comes slowly through love.” Advent’s season of waiting will soon be over; in a few days, on Christmas Eve, we’ll celebrate the birth of the Christ child. May the season of Advent waiting give us patience to wait for Jesus, called Immanuel, God with us, to be attentive and alert for the signs of God’s presence.

Hear these words from Catholic author and mystic Thomas Merton, as he meditated on Jesus’ birth in a manger: “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.”

And let me close with these verses from a familiar hymn, written not so far from here in Philadelphia:
“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”

Let every heart prepare him room. Amen.
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At Emanuel Church, we are thankful that God has been with us for almost 150 years. You can be with us, too, on Christmas Eve at 7 p.m. We're at 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson) in Philadelphia's Bridesburg neighborhood. Let every heart prepare Him room!