“The Son of Man,” Jesus said,”is coming at an hour you do not expect.” How about here and now, in your town and in mine? Are we aware of God doing anything new in our midst? We often relegate God to the past, to the Bible, to the Christmas of long ago, but seldom are we aware of him NOW! It is almost as if we see God as sound asleep in his heaven and only waking up occasionally to hear our selfish prayers, or when we make “a joyful noise” to him in worship on a Sunday morning.
Martin Luther said that God often wears a “mask.” What he meant is that God doesn’t necessarily come among us as we might expect. As a matter of fact, God seldom comes the way we expect God to come. For example, no one expected the Son of Man to come from Nazareth? Did not the religious people say in that time, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
If God is “out and about” then where should we look? We have some clues. Jesus said we would find God in our neighbor (and don’t try to water that down by asking “who is my neighbor”). He suggested we look for God among the imprisoned, the poor, the thirsty, the outcast, and the downtrodden. “In as much as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it unto me.” The Christmas story itself provides clues. Angels come with promises (annunciations), a star shines in the darkness leading the way to him, choirs of angels visit shepherds in the field and help them find him. Where there is love, where there is hurt and brokenness, where there is light, where there is darkness, where there is hunger and suffering—there we are told we can and will find God.
Christmas is more than a festival of remembrance. This season is much more than a recollection of something that happened “long ago and far away.” The whole idea of “Emmanuel” (God with us) and of “Incarnation” (God in us) is that God is still “out and about” and coming to us and our world in totally unknown, unexpected ways.
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