God with us, Emmanuel
This Christmas Eve, the church holds before it the image of God born among us. The Genesis 1 creation story makes the bold claim that humankind is made in the image of God. This is the occasion of God remaking God's own self in human flesh, as one of us. This is an imaginative leap - for God, for theologians, for all of us. I have been pondering this. Not to ask "how could this be?" But to ask "was ist das?" - what is this? What does it mean? How does it matter? I have found more than a few ways to answer this for myself. One is rooted in the historicity of who this Messiah was. Not an elite. Like 90% of those in his time and place, Jesus was born and lived a subsistence life, on the margins. He was in the form of a servant/slave, so that his Lordship was not one which presses down from on high, but chooses to be with the lowly. In her womb, his mother saw that God wanted to upset the powerful and exalt the lowly. This is a God who speaks to humanity, for we...