The God I know through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures is a God who desperately wants to get our attention. This God that our ancestors in the faith wrote about in our sacred writings is not a God who is distant or uncaring. The Divine one portrayed in the pages of our Bible is passionately and completely interested in and connected to the humans they had created. And this God we see in our Holy Book is a God who is passionate and interested in their creation as a parent is passionate, interested and connected to their children. The God portrayed in our Bible loves their creation like a parent loves their child.
And just like human parents, the God of Scripture wants shalom for their children. Shalom is peace, harmony, tranquility, wholeness, health, prosperity, and justice. This is what we all want for our own children, and it is what God wants for their children. And why do we want this for our children? Because we want good for our children as God wants good for us.
It is also very clear in our Scriptures that God’s children, God’s creation, have free will. Everything that God has created can choose the path of shalom…. or not. And frequently God’s creation, especially God’s human creatures, choose the path of not shalom. And the God of our Scriptures is not hesitant or shy about calling their human creatures back to the path of shalom.
God loves, yells, whispers, stays silent, and shouts. God commands, makes deals and covenants, appears in dreams and through prophets. Sometimes the people hear him but more often than not they do not. Or, if they hear God, they ignore the Divine voice. God appears in burning bushes, pillars of fire and manna from heaven. God provides water in the wilderness and lands flowing with milk and honey, and still, most of the time God’s people just won’t listen.
So just like human parents do, God gets louder, and louder and louder. Judges and prophets speak with God’s voice. They say things that are difficult and painful to hear. And yet God’s people continue to choose the path of not shalom. God’s people continue to hurt each other and themselves. God’s people continue to ignore the widow and orphan, hurt the poor and the lame, and create idols of wealth and greed. They build larger and larger temples to God, but forgot who God really is and what God really wants for their creation—love.
And God’s heart breaks.
God knew that their creatures, especially their human creatures were made for so much more. God knew they were made for love. If only God could help them to see this. God needed to show them what this Divine love looks like and God needed to do it themselves. Maybe God’s beloved creation would listen if God told them directly, no longer using prophets and judges to deliver the message.
So, God decided to become human, to become flesh and blood. The ultimate being, the one who created everything that was and is and is to come. The one from whom all things flow. The Great I AM. This Divine One would become a limited, mortal and flawed human being. And God would not become a king, queen, or emperor. No, the Creator of the Universe would become a tiny, helpless baby born in a nowhere town in a conquered land. God would become the child of parents of an oppressed man and woman at the bottom of the hierarchal human heap. God would become a nobody, or at least a nobody by human standards.
And God would enter this world in a way that upset the apple cart of human morality and judgment. God would be the child of a young woman who was betrothed but whose marriage had not yet been consummated. Not only would God be a child at the bottom of the hierarchal human heap, but God’s very entrance into this world would be tainted with human scandal. God wanted to make it really clear that the ways in which humans define the world are not the ways in which God defines the world. God wanted to show their creation that shalom was not found in rules, laws, judgements, and hierarchies. Shalom is not the result of power, wealth, prestige, and privilege. Shalom is from God. God is shalom. Peace, harmony, tranquility, wholeness, health, prosperity, and justice is found in how we care for one another, especially in how we care for the least, the vulnerable, and the powerless.
And though God was now bringing their message directly to the people, God still needed the cooperation of human beings to bring about their plan. Mary needed to say yes. And she did. Joseph needed to understand and accept how God was working through Mary’s yes. And he did. Mary had to consent to the pregnancy and Joseph to the marriage. And with their yeses, God’s plan proceeded. God became incarnate. God became us. And in becoming us we could see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears exactly what it means to live a life of shalom. In Jesus we can understand who God is, how much God loves us, and the life of shalom to which God is calling us because God loves us and wants the best for us.
This is the remarkable story of our Scriptures. We were created by a God who loves us so much that they never give up on us, no matter how stubborn, and ill-behaved we might be. We were created by a God who loves us so much that they were willing to become one of us, feeling all our pain and suffering, including death. This is the story that we are about to celebrate a week from now on Christmas Day. The time with family, the gifts, the food, the decorations. These are all lovely things. But they aren’t what the day is really all about. On Christmas Day, we are celebrating that throughout the lives of our ancestors, throughout our lives, and throughout the lives of those yet to come, God is with us. God never abandons us. God sticks with us through thick and thin.
“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” (Matthew 1:23)
God is with us in the good times and the bad. God is with us in joy and sorrow. God is with us when we choose shalom and when we don’t. God is always seeking to bring us back to the path of peace. God is with us seeking connection, relationship, and love. God is with us. And like Mary and Joseph, God is inviting us to say yes too, yes to love, yes to peace, yes to shalom. And when we say yes, God will once again break into human history. God will once again become incarnate. God will once again be with us to bring us back into their love. I pray that we will all say yes.
