When God Came to Dwell Among Us

     “Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion; for behold I am coming and I will dwell in your midst,” declares the Lord.  Zechariah 2:10

There are many passages in the bible that call for us to rejoice but the most significant for us to consider at Christmas time is the above verse from Zechariah. God has come to dwell with His people. The whole Old Testament can be seen as preparation for the time when God will come to dwell among us. We realize that God is everywhere but in a unique way, He comes to dwell among His people, to walk and teach, to heal and instruct, and finally to die to redeem us and that plan launches with His birth in Bethlehem.

The people of Israel knew that it was inappropriate to worship any human being as God. But they failed to understand that God could choose, if He desired and it suited His purpose, to become a man. The Jews refused to worship Pharaoh. They would not worship any king as God. They refused to worship Caesar as God. They knew that these mortals were not the true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But would they recognize the Lord when He came to dwell in their midst?

And how could this happen? How could the all holy, all powerful Creator of the universe, the one who existed before all things, the one who made all things from nothing, enter into His fallen creation in human form? It seems that God was waiting for the right time, the right place, and the right woman. It should be obvious to all that there is a unique relationship between Mary and Jesus, between her body and His body, between her flesh and His flesh. Fulton Sheen once remarked that often we note how a child looks like it’s mother but in this case, we should note how the mother resembles her Son.

It would certainly have made life easier for Jesus if He had come floating down out of the clouds and landed in Jerusalem. Maybe Satan was onto something when he suggested that Jesus throw Himself down from the parapet of the temple. Movie star Tom Cruise certainly attracted a lot of attention and adulation when he descended from the roof of the Stade de France in Paris and landed among the star struck athletes at the closing ceremonies of the 2024 Olympics. No one seemed to be upset that he relied on hidden wires to accomplish the feat. For many watching around the world, it was the highlight of the evening.

But when God comes to dwell among His people, He takes a completely different approach. No adoring crowds, no fanfare, no attention at all. He seems to want to avoid notice. “God”, wrote C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, “has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.” Jesus is born in the small town of Bethlehem, not Jerusalem and not in a palace, but a cave. Yes, Bethlehem, the city of bread, is the birthplace of the great King David, but it has fallen on difficult times. Conquered by the Romans, the Jewish people have to do what they are told, they have to obey the dictates of their pagan rulers. This included travel to their hometown to register for a census imposed by Caesar Augustus but inspired by God.

But before Jesus could travel to Bethlehem in the womb of His mother, before He could be born there, He had to come ‘to be’. Jesus, the Word made flesh, had a physical beginning.  Almighty God, of course, is pure spirit and exists without limit. The Son, to be clear, is coeternal with the Father. But God chose to become man and entered into human history at a particular time, in a particular place and through the cooperation of a particular young Jewish woman.

The incarnation of God Had taken place months earlier when this virgin, betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the line of David, said ‘Yes’ to God. It was precisely then, when she replied to the angel Gabriel’s request and said, “Be it done to me according to your word,” that the Word became flesh. And the Word became flesh not just anywhere but precisely there, in the womb of a woman named Mary who was also from the line of David. St Paul wrote in first Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are temples of the Holy Spirit?” If it is true for us, how much more so for Mary?

Adam had once said of Eve, “at last this one is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” And all of tribes of Israel once went to David and said, “We are your own flesh and blood,” before they anointed him king. But when Jesus became one with us, He became bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh through the ‘Yes’ of a virgin, betrothed to a carpenter, not a king.

The one who can most appropriately say, “At last this one is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” is the teenage girl who hails from Nazareth. Jesus is bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh in a singular way. The God of all creation took up residence in the womb of the Virgin Mary for nine months. Jesus and Mary share much more than a culture and a lineage, they share the same genetic makeup. All Israel was aware that when the Messiah came, He must come from the line of David. And, indeed Jesus is a descendant of the line of David but not through Joseph, but rather through Mary, the Virgin who found favor with God. Joseph, a good and just man the scriptures tell us, is not the biological father of Jesus. However, Mary is His biological mother. Joseph, a distant relative of the great King David, will protect the newborn king but the promise made to David is fulfilled through Mary. We should realize that Jesus and Mary shared the same blood type, the same genotype, and as Paul reminds us, the same Spirit. She is not God, but she is a fitting temple where God can dwell, the new living ‘ark’ of the covenant.

“Can anything good come from Nazareth?” asks Nathaniel in John’s gospel. Such was its reputation. And one can only wonder about the reputation of the unmarried virgin who found herself with child after being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. The short answer is yes, something good can come from Nazareth. Not just something but someone; God incarnate, God in the flesh, the one all Israel, all of humanity has been waiting for. The young girl risked death to bring the author of life into the world.  She could have been stoned to death for becoming pregnant before marriage. However, Mary, like her Son, was completely abandoned to doing the will of God no matter the cost. If Mary’s response to the angel had been different, if she had politely declined the angels request, would Jesus have seen the light of day at that time and in that place?

All human suffering, all of the disorder of the human condition will be done away with during a Passover thirty-three years later. All of the hatred, envy, malice, misunderstanding, cruelty, stupidity, violence, all illness, and yes, even death itself, all of the consequences of sin that have afflicted humanity from the time of the first sin of Adam and Eve, all of that will be washed away one Friday afternoon through the blood of the spotless lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice, who was God’s only Son. The blood and water pouring from His side will wash the earth clean and make all things new. And that Son, was Mary’s Son too. God has come to dwell among His people. Let heaven and nature sing, let all the world rejoice!