God With Us, Us With God

 Sermon preached on Christmas Day at St. Thomas' Church, Bath, NY (via Zoom).

You can listen to the sermon here.

Last Sunday with the children we told the whole story of Christmas, the story that makes up the entirety of first two chapters of Luke.  If you’ve never read those two chapters in one sitting, as one story, I invite you to do so.

It is the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah and the birth of John the Baptist, the story of Mary and the angel Gabriel and of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the story of the birth of Jesus and the visit of the shepherds, the story of Jesus’ presentation in the temple and of the greeting of Simeon and Anna there, and finally the tale of Jesus as a boy in the temple.

It is an extraordinary tale of visitations by angels that turn people’s worlds upside down, of miraculous births, of daring dreams proclaimed has having come true, and of the Holy Spirit dancing through people’s lives, making the ordinary into the extraordinary.

I think the pivotal line in the whole story is uttered by the angel Gabriel to Mary. After Mary says “Yes,” Gabriel tells her that something equally wondrous has happened to her relative Elizabeth. She is also with child, despite her old age, and the angel proclaims in his last words before leaving Mary:  “For nothing will be impossible with God.”

As a student of writing, I had drilled into me the importance of prepositions.  “When you use a preposition, make sure it says what you mean it to say,” was the advice I was given over and over. Prepositions are slippery things, their meaning can be varied. It’s true in English and even more true in the Greek of the New Testament.

Gabriel says, “Nothing will be impossible with God.”  With God. Now “with” in both English and Greek can mean at least two different things.  It can mean the same as the preposition “for,” and some English translations have Gabriel saying, “Nothing is impossible for God.” Something about that seems right.  It is why we frequently call God “Almighty.”

But “with” can also mean “alongside of,” as in “I went with John to the grocery store.”  What if that is how we are to take this “with” from the lips of Gabriel?  Nothing will be impossible alongside of God, together with God.

It is tempting to read these stories about the intervention of God in folks lives and understand them to be examples of the kinds of things that can happen when God takes over a situation and does things “for,” or even “to,” people.

But these stories about the births of John the Baptist and Jesus may not simply be stories about God doing something “to” people or “for” people.  They are stories of God doing something “with” people.  As I read these stories, I get a strong sense that these stories tell us that in order to act in these situations God needed the cooperation of the human characters.

God, for instance, needs Mary. God needs her cooperation. God needs from her something he doesn’t have—human flesh and human freedom, the freedom to participate or not, the freedom to love or not, the freedom to hope or not.

 It is easy for us to say that the world is in such a mess that only God can save it.  Well, no, actually, Luke says in these stories.  The world is in such a mess that only God and humanity, the Creator with the creature, can save it together, by their companionship in faith, hope, and love.

It is this very cooperation and companionship that God desires with us, for we are not fundamentally different from the characters in these stories nor is the desire of God with us any different than it was with them.  The desire is for a partnership of grace, that can bring new things out of old, change the world, raise us up to sing Mary’s song about herself and her world about ourselves and our world.

     From this day all generations will call me blessed, she sings.  It is the song of a woman who is confident that God has called her to be a partner in a great work of God.

     What does this mean in our lives today?  It is only through partnership with God and with one another that we will get through the mess of this world, be it the mess of COVID-19 or the mess of a society so divided we cannot even speak with those who differ from us.

One might say we are in a time when the simple preposition “with” is the only thing that can change our world.

One thing that gets said over and over again in these stories is when angels appear the first thing they say is, “Do not be afraid.”  Do not be afraid Zechariah.  Do not be afraid Mary. Do not be afraid shepherds.

          It happens that the primary key to cooperation with God, and also with one another, is the ability to cast aside fear.  And we can only “not be afraid” together.  It is almost impossible “not to be afraid” alone.

This is what the Christmas message is all about—a new partnership formed with us and God, the result of which is the end of fear, and the fulfillment of the angels’ song:  Glory with God, peace with us.

          In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is told by an angel (after he is told, “Do not be afraid!”) that Mary’s child will be called “Emmanuel,” which, we are told, means “God with us.”  That’s the message of Christmas: God is with us.  But that is only half the message.

          God is with us and we are called to be with God and with one another. That’s the only way we can live without fear.

          That is the simple message of Christmas:  God is with us and we are with God, and only in that relationship can we hope to change the world.