God Friended Me

Matthew 1:18-2

“God friended me” is the name of a recent tv programme. On facebook one can receive “friend requests” and our hero receives a friend request from God. After he accepts this friend request, he receives “friend suggestions” from God and they turn out to be people in need, people that he can help. 

In the 90s, the pop song “What if God was one of us?”  inspired a tv programme called “Joan of Arcadia”; in it a teenage Joan experiences strangers talking to her as God’s voice, giving her messages about her life, family and friends. 

Wouldn’t that be great? If God could “friend us” on facebook and send us messages? We could respond with the “like” button and give a thumbs up, heart, laughing face, a sad face or angry face. It would be so much easier to understand what I should do and how I should live. Or if, as in Joan of Arcadia, a stranger would turn to me and say “Sue that conversation you had with Joy was important - make sure you phone her and follow it up”. 

I sometimes ask myself Why doesn’t God do things this way. 

God had spoken to Israel through the prophets down the centuries; then, following Malachi, there was 400 years of apparent silence. Israel had returned from exile; but it wasn’t that nothing was happening. There was a series of occupations of the Holy Land - first the Persians, then the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Syrians. The Maccabean revolt lead to years of independence but they were not trouble-free - they were full of coups and corruption. Then, a little over 60 years before Christ, Rome conquered Jerusalem and took over Israel. THROUGHOUT all of these events there was no prophet of God speaking to them. 

Many in Israel must have asked “Why not? Why does God not have a word of comfort or a word of warning?” This was how things stood at the beginning of Matthew’s story. 

The people needed a saviour, they needed deliverance from the Roman oppressor, slaves and political criminals were brutally crucified, taxes were a terrible burden and Rome brought pagan gods and installed puppet rulers. They needed deliverance from a corrupt priesthood ruling the temple with an iron hand and demanding yet more taxes from an overburdened impoverished people. Surely God would send a deliverer to overthrow the Romans and cleanse the priesthood? But 400 years of silence …..

Then God sends not a magnificent deliverer charging in on his white camel but a baby. A baby born under dubious circumstances with a threat of scandal. Matthew gives us Joseph’s side of the story about Jesus’ birth. Joseph had a dilemma - Mary was pregnant but the baby wasn’t his - what to do? One option today might have been to “out her” on facebook - it has an ugly name “slut-shaming” and many women and girls have been victims of this. Back in Joseph’s time, the usual course was public shaming with a high chance of the woman going on to be stoned. Joseph is described as noble, good, righteous. Perhaps he tossed and turned in sleepless nights trying to decide what to do…

That was Joseph’s crisis. Our newspapers are full of crises at every turn - climate crisis, political turmoil, refugee crises with the dreadful situations for the Syrian and Rohingya peoples, the measles epidemic, depression and the suicides of young people, the widening gap between rich and poor, homelessness, and recently the terrible tragedy of the Volcanic eruption of Whakaari / White Island ….  

“O that you would rend the heavens and come down,” said Isaiah and that is our cry today. Our hurting world needs words of comfort and challenge, acts of compassion. 

We are looking for a saviour. - Some place their hopes in political figures. Barack Obama was an extremely charismatic leader; but I remember, when I saw scenes of his inauguration, thinking the burden of others’ hopes and expectations he carried was vast - too much for one person to carry. Whether you were a fan or not it was clear that one person could not possibly solve centuries of racial disharmony in one or two terms. “Messiah Obama” could not and did not deliver - the US remains a divided and violent country. Neither political parties, political figures, celebrities nor activists can deliver our world. Some have suggested that policies will do it or education? But they haven’t delivered either.

One solution is to give up - to accept that our world is doomed and then live or die with the hopelessness. That is a choice that some make but most of us look at our broken world through our tears and cry out for something more, we long for a message in the silence, we long for change and action.“O that you would rend the heavens and come down” 

For Israel, while there had been no prophets, the silence was not as profound as first thought. God spoke through creation, God created the world and it was good. God spoke through Israel's history; the history of salvation that came alive in a new way with the celebration of the Passover every year, when they remembered the Exodus. Israel meditated on the Scriptures and God was not silent there. 

And yet - centuries of oppression and no prophet….

Joseph tossing and turning about Mary’s pregnancy - what to do? 

Then there is a message - Joseph hears the voice of an angel in a dream.  “Joseph - don’t divorce her, marry her and name your son “God saves’”

Joseph’s dilemma is solved - he finally begins to understand his own reluctance to react in the “normal” way. This pregnancy is different and Joseph has a role here - he is asked to be the child’s father, to adopt him and name him and raise him as his own. 

The message is for more than Joseph - it is a message for Israel, for all the world - then and now. God has heard the cries of the people and God sends not a prophet but a saviour. And not the saviour they think they need - not a political or military saviour to overthrow the oppressor. This saviour is to save the people from their sins, a new kind of saviour. His very name is to reflect his nature - Yeshua, ‘Iesous, Joshua, Jesus. However you say it - it means “God saves.” Matthew goes on to explain this further as he quotes from Isaiah but here the name used is different, here it is Emmanuel - God-with-us. 

In my family, most of us have 2 names (my brother has 3). I’m Susan Margaret. Susan because they liked the name and Margaret after family. So is this what scripture says? - is the child to be called Jesus Emmanuel Josephson? No, not at all. Hebrew Scripture is very careful with names - they have great significance sometimes in the meaning, sometimes in reminding us of someone else who carried the name and many times both. So Emmanuel is not Jesus’ middle name - the message is theological. 

This salvation offered by God is found in God come among us. God did answer the cry of Isaiah to rend the heavens and come down. God came down in a new way. It is in God’s revelation in the person and work of Jesus, who is ‘God-with-us’ Emmanuel, that salvation is found. Salvation, Revelation, Incarnation - what riches there are in this text and all wrapped up in a tiny baby. 

Just as God was not really silent during the intertestamental times, God is not silent in our world. God has spoken to us in multiple ways. As I look out my window I see a spectacular Jacaranda tree, these fabulous purple flowers are a sign of advent here in the southern hemisphere. The beauty, diversity and interdependence of creation are a part of God’s message. God speaks through scripture, through Jesus and (following his death, resurrection and ascension) through the Holy Spirit, God speaks through the church, through people, in word and action. Sometimes God even speaks to us through the television - but not in a creepy way! 

The tv programme “God friended me” is a bit of fluff but it made me think. We don’t need God to friend us on facebook, or write signs in the skies, or take out ads in the paper. God speaks to us all the time if only we would listen. Sometimes it’s words of warning and challenge, sometimes it’s messages of comfort and compassion. God is not silent. 

The salvation we need is not found in political messiahs, education, policies, activism. The salvation we need is God-with-us. 

What about our world? where is that message of salvation for a world that does not know the scripture? (and in our post-Christian world that is most people). 

On the morning before my ordination, while I was on retreat at Titoki, we had a small Eucharist service together - just a handful of us. And at the end, Rev Jo suggested we sing a song. It’s a very simple song and we have sung it here many times.

“He came singing Love 

and he lived singing love;

he died, singing love

He arose in silence.

For the love to go on 

we must make it our song;

you and I be the singers

He came singing faith …

He came singing hope …

He came singing peace …

For the peace to go on 

we must make it our song;

you and I be the singers.”

’You and I be the singers’ speaks so powerfully to me of my calling to be God’s voice in the world; but it’s not just the calling of a deacon or priest - it’s the calling of every saint to be “God-with-us” Emmanuel in the world. Joy Cowley wrote a poem called “Virgin Birth” - it’s a meditation on Emmanuel and finishes like this:

… ‘Where the life of God fills us,
The Emmanuel space where we conceive
And become pregnant of the Holy One
And day by day, give birth,
To Christ in the world.”

This is something God does in and through us - God enables us to live out God’s message, to sing love, hope, peace, faith, salvation in the world. The message of salvation and the mystery of the incarnation are not confined to God-with-us in the baby Jesus, the incarnation continues in our lives. 

Let us pray (in the words of Malcolm Guite)

O come, O come, and be our God-with-us, 

O long-sought with-ness for a world without, 

O secret seed, O hidden spring of light. 

…

Unfold for us the mystery of grace 

And make a womb of all this wounded world. 

O heart of heaven beating in the earth, 

O tiny hope within our hopelessness, 

Come to be born, to bear us to our birth, 

To touch a dying world with new-made hands 

And make these rags of time our swaddling bands. Amen

SOURCES:
Malcolm Guites "Waiting on the word"

Joan Osborne "One of Us"