How Big Is Us?--December 23, 2025

How Big Is Us?--December 23, 2025

[The angel said to Joseph about Mary:] "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 become pregnant and give birth to a son,
  and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” (Matthew 1:21-23)

It's always in the plural--did you notice that?

The great salvation story and the announcement of the birth of the Savior--it's always told as God's action for "us," rather than for just "me." Even when the scene is a heaven-sent angel speaking in a personalized dream custom addressed to Joseph about his precarious engagement to Mary, the message isn't merely singular--it is in the plural.  The child Mary is carrying won't only save Joseph, but a whole "people" from their sins.  And the callback to the scene from the book of Isaiah about a young woman who will name her son "Emmanuel" drives toward a conclusion that this name means, "God is with us," rather than "God is only with ME."  It's always in the plural--God's action is always for US, and never my private possession.

I suppose that also means that from the beginning of the Christian story, the news of Jesus has always also been news of belonging to a community--the people of Jesus.  It's not an exclusive clique or elite country club, but it is a community.  We belong to the people of Jesus--to the family made up of those who have been claimed and rescued by Jesus.  That may be all that we have in common, honestly--all of us, from a host of different backgrounds, coming from different languages and cultures, with different experiences and identities, we belong to the people of Jesus. We are the "us" that God has promised to be with.  It just turns out that this particular "us" is an awfully large group.

How big, really, is that "us"?  Who is it that God has come to be "with" in this "God-is-with-us" Emmanuel child?  Well, in a very real sense, with ALL of us.  The incarnation--the notion that God fully dwelled in Jesus' humanity--means that God has chosen to share something in common with ALL humanity.  Jesus brings us the fullness of God taking on the fullness of humanity and standing in solidarity with the entire lot of us. There's no fine print or exceptions by which God says, "I'm willing to enter into humanity... but NOT for anybody with RED hair!" or "I've taken on human existence in Jesus... but that DOESN'T include left-handed people!"  God has taken on the heart of our common human experience in Jesus, and that doesn't leave anybody out.  The "us" in Emmanuel's "God-is-with-us" is as big and wide as the whole of humanity!

The other implication of all this is that none of us gets to push the people we don't like outside of the "us" either.  When Matthew quotes that passage of Isaiah's about the child Emmanuel's name meaning "God-Is-With-Us," there is no implied "Them" who are outside of the presence of God.  The point of this coming Emmanuel figure, whom Matthew identifies with Mary's baby, to be called Jesus, is not to set up a contest between "Us-Who-Have-God-On-Our-Side" and "Them-Who-Are-Without-God," but rather to say, "God has chosen to come among ALL of us."  God has chosen to be with the whole of humanity.  It's you, but it's not just you.  It's your neighbors, both the ones you get along with and the ones who always forget to take their trash cans in. It's the people who dress, speak, vote, and think like you... and the people whose clothing, language, worldview, and choices are different from yours.  It's the ones who worship beside you in church, and the ones who have never darkened the door of a church in their lives.  It's the people you find it easy to be kind to, and the ones whose demeanor is as rough as a corn cob.  The "us" is just that big.  The angel said so from the beginning of this story, even before Jesus was born.

As we prepare in the very near future to celebrate again the birth of this Jesus, it's worth remembering that the Christ-child comes as a gift, but not addressed to me alone.  Christ is given as God's gift to the whole world. God chooses to dwell with "us" rather than only with you.  The "people" whom Jesus has come to save is not limited to my narrow "Me and My Group First" interests, but instead is as large a group as the whole human family.  It includes grubby low-class night-shift shepherds and traveling foreigners who practiced astrology. And it includes you and me.  That's just how big the "us" really is.

Lord God, come among us and gather us all to yourself in Christ.