God can sometimes surprise us and disrupt our habits, our plans, our comfort and even our understanding of our relationship with him.
King Ahaz was somewhat shaken when God said to him, “Ask for a sign from your God”. According to the spirituality I was taught, I would have responded like Ahaz: “No, I will not put the Lord to the test.”
But here’s the thing… When God asks for something, we must respond positively, even if his request is sometimes incomprehensible or contrary to what we have learned.
Ahaz then receives this prophecy: “The Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel, which means “God with us”.
The history of humanity is shaken. God with us will become one of us. His announcement will take a few centuries to be fulfilled, but it is already shaping the hopes of an entire people. God has taken the initiative to change the world, but it requires a considerable investment on his part. God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, the King of kings, the Prince of life, will one day come knocking at the door of our humanity to be born as a child, humble and lying in a manger.
The promise is fulfilled a few centuries later. We see Joseph, a righteous man, ready to send his betrothed away in secret. Mary has told him about the great mystery within her. She is pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph, a righteous man, believes Mary. He does not doubt her. She has not been unfaithful to him. It is too great a mystery. If she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit, he, Joseph, cannot claim paternity of the child of God. He does not feel worthy of it.
It is then that God comes to him and entrusts him with the mission of taking care of Mary and the child who will be born. And it is he who will even give him the name Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us. In this way, he will assert his paternal authority over the child.
This is indeed the heart of Paul’s message to the Romans: “This gospel, which God promised beforehand through his prophets, concerns his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh”.
This gospel is the good news already announced by the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz. This Son, Emmanuel, Jesus, was born of the seed of David, through Joseph, who will give him his name.
And Paul announces it to all the pagan nations, to all nations other than Israel, to us who still receive the good news today.
This good news overwhelmed Joseph. He responded positively to God’s call, even though the mystery was far too great for his fragile human nature to bear.
Joseph did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him. He took his wife and her unborn child into his home.
Does this good news still move us today? Does it affect our habits, our comfort, the way we understand our relationship with God?
A few days before the birth of this God-with-us, it is good to ask ourselves this question. We are so used to celebrating Christmas that there is a real risk of treating it as routine.
Let us therefore allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by this good news. God, the Almighty, became one of us, human, like us in every way except sin. God Almighty, in Jesus, is here among us, close to us, one of us. It is unimaginable! What humility from God! The risk he takes is also enormous: the risk of rejection and death! But that is love, true love without limits, without return. A completely free love is given to us in Jesus.
God’s promise was thus fulfilled in Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us. And it continues to be fulfilled day after day. God never ceases to come to us, becoming incarnate in us every day. God never ceases to be God-with-us, close to all those who labour, to those who wait for a sign of his love.
Jesus is undoubtedly there at our door, standing beside someone in need, a forgotten and rejected soul. As we walk through our city, our neighbourhood, and our village, we need to stay alert. We shouldn’t close our eyes to the unexpected, to the person who, in Jesus, will catch our attention and ask us for a sign of love.
Christmas is every day when we open our hearts and accept being shaken out of our habits, when we respond, like Joseph, positively to a mission that God entrusts to us and which takes us out of our usual comfort zone and opens us up to some unexpected love to give, a sign not to refuse when God asks us to give it.
To make sure that Christmas is not just a routine, but a new event worthy of celebration, let us open our hearts to the unexpected.
By: Georges Jacques, M.Afr.