Florida Catholic | Sunday Word

Fourth Sunday of Advent

God, Emmanuel, wants to remain with us

December 21, 2008 :: 2 Sm 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16; Ps 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29; Rom 16:25-27; and Lk 1:26-38

MSGR. MICHAEL V. REED | SPECIAL TO THE FLORIDA CATHOLIC

They say in our present economic climate that it’s a “buyer’s market.” Unfortunately, the experience seems to be that no one is buying. There just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of people who are able to qualify for loans or have the financial resources to do much buying when it comes to homes and property. In fact, there was an interesting article in the local newspaper that featured a divorced couple who were moving back in together because they couldn’t afford to go it alone.

King David in our first reading from the Second Book of Samuel is looking to give God a home of his own in the city of Jerusalem. But God isn’t interested! As the prophet Nathan tells King David the will of God, we realize that there is more going on here than we might have thought. God doesn’t want his own palace or temple, because God wants to continue to travel and journey with his people in a tent as he had done since time of Moses. The downside of a glorious temple is that God would lose the mobility and availability that was a sign of his special relationship with his chosen people. God’s not buying it!

There are many circumstances and situations in our lives that would push us to buy into and accept a distant relationship with God. But God wants to be with us. And he is with us in so many ways through the sacraments, our parish communities, in our families as we struggle to love one another and in our workplaces and schools. God doesn’t want to be pushed out and moved away. He wants to be “Emmanuel” which in Hebrew means “God pitches his tent,” i.e., “God with us.”

Emmanuel is the miracle we hear about in Luke’s Gospel which tells us of the Angel Gabriel’s announcement to a young woman named Mary. She is to conceive and bear a son and name him Joshua after the great successor of Moses who led the people of Israel into the Promised Land.

Now don’t get confused, because Joshua is the Hebrew form of the more familiar name we use for the Son of God: Jesus. Both names mean “God saves” and each name highlights God’s glorious plan of salvation for his people. In Jesus, the hoped-for Messiah (which in Greek is the name “Christ”) has come, for “nothing is impossible for God.”

Isn’t that the real point? God has come to be with us through the incarnation and thereby be with us in a new and extraordinary way. We have known of God’s love for us all along as we remember how he saved and delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, exiles, war, conflict, division and persecution. Through Jesus, God has destroyed the power of sin, the power that would have us with all best intentions tell God to get out and move somewhere else. God’s not buying it and so he sends us his Son.

During this Advent and Christmas season, we shouldn’t buy it either, especially in these times of financial uncertainty and woe. Instead, let us celebrate that we are not alone and that our God is not far away. Indeed, we have been given another opportunity to have a deeper and stronger relationship with Jesus who is Emmanuel, the God who pitches his tent, the God who is with us.

Msgr. Reed is chancellor of the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese.

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