Deus Nobiscum: God With Us

On the First Sunday of Advent, I preached this sermon.  The text is here.  In it I spoke about my experience in the theatre with deus ex machina or "God from a machine" who descends from on high to fix all the problems.  I made the case that instead of that Greek tragedy kind of a god, Christianity has deus nobiscum, Emmanuel, "God with us."  On this 8th day of Christmas, this first day of a new year, this first day of a new decade, I think I could preach the same sermon.  God is not coming to magically resolve all of our issues with the wave of a magic wand (as much as I often wish that were so.)  Rather, God is here with us, in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our joy.  God is here with us, loving us, equipping us, crying with us, and rejoicing with us each and every day.  May each and every one of us know God's presence with us and do our part in this new year to be the people God created us to be.