Real Power

Mighty God

Psalm 28:6-9

We tend to focus so acutely during Christmas on the baby in the manger that we forget the mighty power of God behind the whole event, not really pondering too deeply how this event ties directly into the same presence and being of God revealed in the entire history of God’s relationship to creation. Isaiah the prophet, though, snaps us to attention in his delineation of the names of the Messiah in Ch. 9 of his oracles—the second name is “Mighty God.” All we see in Jesus, we see of God. The images are inextricable from one another. Jesus is simply the ultimate mighty act of God. 

Now, theologians use this observation as call to ponder the intricacies and mysteries of Incarnational Theology—how God became human—which, sadly, results in losing everybody except them in seeing the connection to us in our world as we are.

Thank God for the Psalmist.

As with so many theological doctrines, the Psalmist is the absolute genius in the field of practical theology. Again and again, the Psalms bring even the most esoteric of dogmas right into the here and now. This ability is no more manifest than in Incarnational Theology, even though for the Psalmist, this was not a doctrine the Hebrews really pondered, but through our lens of Christ, we see in Psalm 28 a direct bridge into fully comprehending the power of Christmas as hope, intervention, and intercession of God made human.

Begin with the shout of affirmation—

Blessed be the Lord!

For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.

God is present. God answers prayer. God is closest to us when we are sure we are farthest removed from God. 

How can we be so sure?

Christmas.

Christmas means little else if it does not mean that God hears us, intercedes, and redeems us from the mess, chaos, and muck of human existence. Jesus is God’s ultimate answer to human suffering. In Jesus, God enters the full reality of being human, experiencing all that we experience, living all the we live, and enduring all the frailty of being created. God takes all of that into God’s own being. God understands. God knows. God shares. All of this God does with and for us by working through us as we are. The proof that this is so is the infant in the manger. God becomes the weakest form of being human that there is—a newborn. God exists in utter dependence. God exists in utter helplessness. Remember that the next time you feel hopeless, helpless, and hapless just as you were the day you were born. God knows. 

Because the Psalmist finds God inextricably with him, he realizes that all the power of God is there for him—

The Lord is my strength and my shield;

in him my heart trusts, and I am helped…

As God becomes Immanuel, God in provident grace offers the fullness of God’s own being for our poor sakes to redeem us from whatever trouble we are mired within. 

That, too, is deeply a part of the Christmas gospel. 

God became human and dwelt among us to use God’s own love to make us whole and well. The ultimate act here, though, is not in Bethlehem, but in the last act of this child’s life—the Cross. God enters the absolute nadir of human existence on Calvary and breaks its power. 

That does not dismiss the Christmas narrative from this song of hope, however.

The shepherds are told of savior born who will be good news for all people, even them. Mary sang of the redeemer within her womb as the advocate for the Least of These in her Magnificat. Joseph is promised that the coming child will be the savior of all Joseph’s people, near and far. We can trust good news to be good because of this child born in Bethlehem. We can trust God to be with us because we have found a child, lying in a manger, wrapped in swaddling cloths. This child is the Mighty God. 

As we grasp that message, we can turn to Matthew’s strange Nativity, full of danger, peril, and mad king set on a singularly wicked moment of destruction—issuing a death sentence on children—preschoolers. God enters the worst of evil. God experiences the full power of human evil unleashed on the earth. God experiences flight before such evil as Joseph hauls Mary and the infant Christ to Egypt. Here is the shadow of the cross in Christmas, reminding us—demanding of us—that we acknowledge the full story of this child born to us. The Mighty God makes it a song of joy, even through its tears.

The Psalmist realizes the universal power of God’s intercession, as well—

  The Lord is the strength of his people;

he is the saving refuge of his anointed.

Oh, save your people and bless your heritage!

Be their shepherd and carry them forever.

The Psalmist sees in his very personal experience good news for everybody. If God does so for him, then God must do so for everyone else. 

So, send a Christmas card to the world. That is the best and most proper response to Christmas—tell its story to someone else; proclaim the good news of salvation; and embody that good hope in your own words and actions. Be Jesus for the world just as Jesus was God for us. 

So, we end by being called to the manger, but with different eyes. See with the eyes of the Psalmist. See the Mighty God revealed. Take in the full promise, possibility, and power of what you see. As the carol sings—

Go, tell it on the mountain,

over the hills and everywhere

That Jesus Christ is born!