This Christmas Promise: The God Who Walks Among Us Jamie Maciejewski
Isaiah 45:15-22; 2 Corinthians 1:17-22; 6:16b-18 December 31, 2023
When Pastor Don asked me to preach this Sunday, I readily said Yes. The Sunday after Christmas, the third of a three-part series on the Christmas Promise. I love this! Then I read the texts he had assigned. I double-checked that I’d gotten chapter and verse correct. It didn’t help when I discovered this week that I should have triple-checked the assignments, because on one of them I was a full chapter off!
I think what confused me is that none of the texts is what I would call “traditional” Christmas. Even more, I couldn’t figure out what tied the three of them together! I read them over and over. Even in different Bible translations. Why did Pastor Don select these passages? What did he want us to find in them? Honestly, the verse that kept standing out to me was the very first one we read: “Surely you are a God who hides himself.” (Isa 45:15, CEB)
Now, I trust that God doesn’t hide just to trick us. It might be more like a parent and child playing hide-and-seek. Maybe he hides for us to work at finding him. Recall those squeals of happiness when your child finds you!
So I kept seeking and, happily, God didn’t stay hidden. I found these texts rich in helping me understand God’s Christmas promise. We’ll need to work a bit at uncovering what they have to tell us, which is why you might want to refer to the text in your bulletin if it’s hard to follow without slides.
I want to go straight to the promise that anchors the readings to Christmas. It’s found in the last of the readings, 2 Corinthians 6:16b: “As God has said:
‘I will live with them
and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they will be my people.’”
It’s a promise from the Old Testament, where it refers to the presence of God in the Temple. (Lev. 26:12; Ezek. 37:27) But it’s fulfilled at Christmas. Here’s how John puts it at the beginning of his gospel:
The Word became flesh
and made his home among us. (John 1:14a, CEB)
The Message Bible translates it this way:
The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.
God promised to live with his people and walk among us. With the birth of Jesus, God made that promise a giant, resounding Yes. Emmanuel, God with us. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.” (2 Cor. 1:20a, NIV)
We could end here, I could sit down, you might think to yourself, “That was blessedly brief,” and we could continue with the service. But. There is so much more to draw out of our texts, more that has to do with Christmas, as it turns out. As George’s and my old pastor Henry liked to joke: “Do you know what it means when a preacher looks at his watch? Absolutely nothing!” Sorry. Just kidding. But let’s go back to that puzzling verse that started the very first reading:
Truly you are a God who has been hiding himself,
the God and Savior of Israel. (Isa. 45:15, NIV)
What if there’s more to this verse than God wanting us to look harder for him? What if the reason it seems like God is hiding is that we simply don’t recognize him? What if he’s hiding in plain sight, under our nose, so to speak, and we just can’t see him? And if we can’t see him, why not?
Do you ever wonder why not everybody loved Jesus? I used to think he was a very popular guy when he walked the earth. And he was, but only with some. A lot of people couldn’t recognize him as God walking among them. Why do you think that was? This is what I think: He wasn’t who they were looking for.
A lot of people wanted a messiah who would bring back the glory days of Israel, a king who would fight their battles and free them from the shame and second-class citizenship imposed by Rome (and other dynasties before that). Make Israel great again.
And here is Jesus. Born in a stable, welcomed by the underclass and irreligious. Jesus was not the God-with-us that almost anyone expected. God hiding in plain sight.
Something that is vital for us, if we don’t want to miss God, is that we understand our own vulnerability here. It’s not just the Israelites of long ago who didn’t recognize God in Jesus. Truth is, we are often expecting God to look or behave differently than he does, even now. We don’t love the humility of Jesus. There’s a strong refrain in Christendom that Jesus was humble then, but it’s different now. People want Jesus to come and blow away the bad guys. A turn-the-other-cheek Jesus makes us uncomfortable. And yet, Jesus hasn’t withdrawn his instructions to his followers: love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you; whoever wants to be first among you will be your servant. (Matt. 5:38-48; 20:20-28)
This brings us to another thread that ties our passages together this morning. Idolatry. When God doesn’t meet our expectations, we become vulnerable to idols. Pastor Don spoke about idols several times during the recent series on Elijah. They’re whatever takes up room in our heart and unseats God as our first love.
We can make people into idols. We want a strongman to make things right. Or a charismatic leader who makes us feel good. Or someone who will love us unconditionally. We can make possessions or money into idols. Or status, or popularity, or power.
Or for goodness’ sake, give us a god who is at least predictable. Or one who is not too demanding, who allows for some measure of human vacillation or equivocation. Who shows up when it’s convenient and helpful and stays out of the way when it’s not.
The core of idolatry is this: with idols, I’m in charge. With God, I’m not.
Idols give us a jolt of good feelings; with God, we’re in an intimate relationship with someone over whom we have no control. “He’s not a tame lion,” remember? (C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia)
God comes in disguise. He is not who we expected. We can look all we want for a god that fits our expectations of what a god ought to be. But it won’t be the Lord God. He’ll be hidden from us, because we’ll be looking for the wrong god.
On Christmas, a Baby was born in the humblest of circumstances. He wasn’t noticed, expected, wanted, valued – or worshipped – by the religious or the powerful.
Truly you are a God who has been hiding himself,
the God and Savior of Israel.
All the makers of idols will be put to shame and disgraced;
they will go off into disgrace together.
But Israel will be saved by the LORD
with an everlasting salvation;
you will never be put to shame or disgraced,
to ages everlasting.
Declare what is to be, present it—
let them take counsel together.
Who foretold this long ago,
who declared it from the distant past?
Was it not I, the LORD?
And there is no God apart from me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
there is none but me.
“Turn to me and be saved,
all you ends of the earth;
for I am God, and there is no other.” (Isa 45:15-17, 21-22)
Our one Lord, God-the-only, Creator, Savior, Redeemer, God’s great Yes revealed in Christ – this Lord promises to live with and walk among us. Friends, we are his temple. More? We are his sons and daughters! Our part of the covenantal Christmas promise is to let go of our idols and our equivocation and answer Yes to God’s Yes. May God open our eyes to find him among us!