I had the privilege of giving this brief message this morning at Franklin Street Church.

I saw a meme on the internet the other day, you know, that infinite well of wisdom formerly known as the world wide web. It was about Christmas, it had a picture of a simple nativity scene with Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus in a stable. It said, the first Christmas was pretty simple. It's ok if you celebrate Christmas simply too.

Now I'll go ahead and say I agree with the sentiment that's evident here, that's a voice against the intense commercialism we have surrounding a day that's supposed to be remembrance of our Lord's birth. There's nothing wrong with that part of the message, and it's certainly ok to celebrate simply. But as we peel the layers back in Scripture, we'll see that nothing about this story is simple.

In this event where Messiah came into the world - this is an event foretold by prophets through the centuries. An event so important that the angel who spoke to some of the key players, Mary the mother of Jesus and Zechariah the priest, is actually named. Only a few angels are named in all of the Bible. We  have Michael, the archangel. We have Lucifer, who fell from heaven with a multitude of other unnamed angels around him. And one of them is right here, Gabriel. The angel who visited Joseph isn't named, since Matthew isn't apparently interested in telling us that detail, but it's certainly possible that Gabriel is the guy visiting all of these people surrounding this magnificent event,  whether in person or in dreams.

So important an event in the divine narrative of Scripture that it was also heralded by many angels to the shepherd witnesses they would bring to that blessed stable in Bethlehem. The fabric separating heaven and earth was thinning, as if something was about to pass from one to the other.

A political situation that was already tenuous and uneasy, that takes a body blow from the visitation of the divine. As a king overseeing a people group that had mounted attempted rebellions in recent history, he's trying to quell any unrest before it starts, and now we've got angelic appearances. He knows that's where it starts. I imagine that the events of these divine messengers was talked about quite a bit in the community even long before the wise men got there. And as the natural fears the king has from the growing unrest around him combines with the deep wickedness in his heart, he turns murderous.

So upending an event in all of theology, that it has perplexed theologians for thousands of years. How can this little baby be completely God, and also, completely a little human child? Not just God possessing a human vessel. Not just a sufficiently advanced human achieving some portion of the divine.

Not just a divine savant who would be aloof and teach us all how to be monks and nuns. No - this is God with us. Not God among us. God with us. Immanuel. As Jesus was born into the world, he took an identity of being human. From the very beginning of being human - experiencing childbirth and infancy here. Who knew that if God became a man, that he would come as a child completely dependent on his mother and father.

Rich Plass is a wonderful counselor whom I've had the privilege of sitting with in classes and otherwise, and in his writing and teaching, he has this concept he calls the permeation of souls. Now what does that mean? Well, it's like our souls have an aura about them. And as we spend time with each other, our auras interact together, intermingle, and affect each other. We have a presence that we bring with us everywhere we go, and we will affect the souls around us.

Jesus had that too. Instead of being "just" a person in the trinity, and making proclamations from on high,  as was his right... He makes his ministry  to us  incarnational - becoming one of us, bringing his presence to us, and permeating the souls around him. With his birth, he signals the coming age that we are now in, when as we put our  trust in him, he  permeates  our souls, brings his presence to us.  And what is his presence for us if we believe in him? It is the presence of God's peace.

The God who traversed heaven and earth to be present with us and take on a lifetime of human experience, this is the God who cares for us. Cares about our troubles, our struggles, our weak moments, our weakness throughout years. We can have this voice in our minds telling us God doesn't care about our baggage. That we have to get it together. Get with the program. That if we want God to use us, we have to be better, pray better, speak better, react better. But this is Immanuel. This is God with us, the one who came before our story began on the day of our birth.

We see sickness around us. Sadness. War. Violence. Life rarely looks like the  serene  location in a Thomas Kinkade picture. For someone who is in pain, there is no complete answer to the questions of God and evil in this world. But a strong reach toward that answer is seeing God's approach to the world, that he wants to be in the thick of this experience with us. That he cares more about all these things than we do, or ever could. And he did show us that. We have in this little baby in the stable, Immanuel, God with us, forevermore and always.

Notes:

• Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash