All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

There are scores of ways to say something without ever uttering a word. In particular, our bodies say things to others every day, virtually every moment, most often when we are totally unaware. Wordless language can communicate emotions like sad, happy, frightened, angry, “I think I’m cool,” and so on. This is all called “body language.”

Without even saying a word, lifting a finger or even twitching a facial muscle, a wife or husband can communicate to their spouse all the way across a crowded room at a party which they feel has gone too long and say, “It’s time to go.” In my case, the party has gone too long if it has gone past 9:00 p.m., maybe 9:30 on weekends. Of course, body language communicates both ways. The wife can also communicate back, “Go take a nap! I’m not leaving.” To which the husband replies, “Yes, dear. Whatever you say.” All of this using only their bodies to communicate, not saying a word. Sometime later, having practiced their body language skills so well at the party, they make their way home singing carols of joy to each other.

Is that not what this text is about, God’s “body language”? We know from John’s gospel that, when Christ was born, the eternal word “became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).” There are some things you just can’t telegraph in. Your presence, or lack thereof, whether you say anything or not, says it all. When God was trying to tell us what he thought about us, he did it with his own son’s body language.

Before Jesus came, the angel stopped by one day to fill Joseph in on how to interpret the body language of God when God was born a baby among men through his wife, Mary. These words form the crux of what the Christmas season should say to us, in fact, is saying to us. “‘The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him ‘Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”

Please note the present tense. God is with us. Can’t miss that. Or, can we? When did you see your first Christmas tree this year? We saw ours walking into a department store on Labor Day weekend! The merchants, already pre-thinking the economy, weren’t going to take a chance. They pole vaulted right over Halloween and Thanksgiving to put the rush on Christmas sales. The early bird gets the layaway, right? But, Labor Day?! For whatever reason, we’re anticipating the Christmas season earlier and earlier every year, and I fear for reasons less than Jesus could have ever imagined!

In church history, an attempt has been made to hold off on celebrating Christ’s birth until at least the third Sunday of Advent (Thanks to George Mason, “Christmas present,” The Tapestry, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, December 16, 2007). You’ve heard us talk about that and practice that this year with our Advent celebration. Brad has asked us to sing only selected verses of the traditional Christmas hymns, holding off on others so that we won’t start the celebration too soon instead of waiting until now, when the birth of Jesus is actually upon us. Yet, in the church, we still too easily fall into the trap of thinking of Christ’s comings as exclusively either past or future tense events.

Some of the hymns we sing like, O God, Our Help in Ages Past focus us toward the history of God’s work in the world, in other words, past tense. Some of our hymns call us to think of what God will someday do in the future, as in O, That Will Be Glory (Charles Gabriel). Great hymns all. Nothing wrong with celebrating Christ’s coming the past and future. Just remember that Advent and Christmas call us to celebrate what Isaac Watts also wrote, Joy to the World, the Lord IS Come. His choice of words may not be great English grammar. They are fantastic theology! Watts also wrote O God, Our Help in Ages Past. But, when it came time to pen Christmas music to paper, his focus changed to the Emmanuel the angel proclaimed. “The Lord IS come, let earth receive her king.”

Because at Wal-Mart we spend our time anticipating Christmas to come and, at church, too often, we celebrate Christ’s coming as either past or future tense, we run the danger of making his coming as an event located in time and space totally dislocated from our lives and world now. Scripture calls us to remember the birth of Jesus in language that includes all of time, “‘God is with us.’” The angel announces the meaning of Jesus’ birth as one all-encompassing eternal present (Thanks again to Mason). Which means that there is no place in time or space where it could have been said, could be said, or could not be said, “‘God is with us.’” God, in this world, in your life, past, present and future, has been, is now and always will be with you.”

Are there places in your life that feel God-forsaken? Would you go there now and sing to yourself, in those dark, wind-blown prairies of godforsaken soul, “Let earth receive her king”? Go there, throw open the door and receive your king there, as the present-tense presence of the living God.

As this Christmas begins to wane on the calendar, let us take its promise with us into all our new years and days and hours and minutes. We can never set our foot on any space on this planet that we will not be treading places God has already set his foot. There is no place in time or space where eternal God has not, is not or will not be, “God is with us”!

As Barbara Brown Taylor and her husband finally discovered the simple but spectacularly beautiful and remote piece of Georgia countryside where they would make their home, she surveyed the acreage and spoke of it this way. Where other people see acreage, timber, soil and river frontage, I see God's body, or at least as much of it as I am able to see.  In the only wisdom I have at my disposal, the Creator does not live apart from creation but spans and suffuses it.  When I take a breath, God's Holy Spirit enters me.  When a cricket speaks to me, I talk back.  Like everything else on earth, I am embodied soul, who leaps to life when I recognize my kin” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving the Church, Harper San Francisco, 2006, p. 80). Would we think differently of our environment, even our own bodies, and treat them with more honor if we thought of them as what they truly are, extensions of eternally present God with us?

“Emmanuel . . . ‘God is with us,’” the angel told Joseph. Call him “‘Jesus,’” because he’ll bring salvation, healing, from all of our sins, past, present and future. With a simple tense of verb expressed in the original Greek of the New Testament for which English has no adequate equivalent, we can celebrate this eternally present God of salvation with these simple words. “For by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:8a). You have been saved, you are being saved in this moment and you will be saved. God promises it. The body of his son born, crucified and raised again says it in language louder than any human words could ever express.

In response to that kind of body language, we sing, “Joy to the World, the Lord is come!” Now, let earth, and each of us on it, receive our king!