One Promise - Luke 2:1-7

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She held in her arms a promise, her hands and her eyes memorizing him and holding him like he might disappear the way a dream fades. Hardly believing that he was true, tracing with her finger the shape of his nose and his ears.  

She held in her arms a brand new human baby. But she also held in her arms an ancient, long-ago Promise made and now kept. Because this tiny sleeping body was the eternal Yes. 

She held in her arms God's “Amen.”  

This tiny, infinite Promise now had hands and feet, fingertips and toes. He needed to be fed, warmed, protected.  

He had a name that he had chosen for himself: Yeshua, which means “Yahweh is salvation.” He was not the first to bear that name. There were other Yeshuas out there: probably even others born that same night.  

But this one... this one was the Promise kept.  

______

The promise that she herself received, delivered by an angel. Only months ago:  

He will be great, and he will be called the son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom will never end. Luke 1:31-33 

To Joseph as well, only months ago, the angel came to say: 

...He will save his people from their sins. Matthew 1:21 

That angel-delivered promise reminded Mary and Joseph of another promise, made centuries before, through a prophet named Malachi:  

I am sending you a prophet before the great and dreadful day of the lord arrives, and his preaching will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. Malachi 4:5-6 

That promise reminded the people who heard it in Malachi's day of a promise made long before, through the prophet Isaiah:  

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. And he will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from that time and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. Isaiah 9:6-7  

That promise reminded the people who heard it in Isaiah's day of a promise made generations before, to King David:  

And when you die, when you are buried with your ancestors, I will raise up one of your own descendants, one of your own offspring, and I will make his kingdom strong. He is the one who will build my house, who will build my temple, and I will secure his royal throne forever. 2 Samuel 7:11-13 

The people who heard about that promise to David would have been reminded of a promise made generations before their time, through Moses: 

Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among all the peoples of the earth, because all the earth belongs to me, and you will be my kingdom and my holy nation. Exodus 19:5-6 

Now, this promise was a little different from the other ones. This one has a condition:  “If you will... Then I will.”  

Which is important.  

They had just come out of Egypt, out of slavery. They were just beginning to walk as a free people. They had no idea where they were going.  

So God gathered all of these people together and organized them into their family groups. Moses stood at the centre, and laid down the Law. Literally. He told them exactly what God expected of them.  

"If you will... Then I will...” For example:  

• Cursed will be the one who worships any other God. And all the people shall answer and say, amen.  
• Cursed is anyone who leads a blind person astray on the road... "Amen."  
• Cursed will be the one who denies justice to a visitor, to an orphan, to the widow... "Amen."  
• Cursed will be the one who strikes down his neighbour in secret... "Amen."  
• Cursed will be the one who does not confirm the words of this Law by doing them... "Amen." (Deuteronomy 27, selected) 

That was a big "Amen." A big commitment.  

Those yeses, those amens, were spoken aloud and in unison by people to whom Yahweh God was saying ‘yes.’ God who said through Moses, ‘This is who I am... This is who I expect you to be.’ They heard themselves—they heard each other—say, “Yes, we will.” 

That mutual promise between God and his people (that we call a covenant) was the first hint of the reality behind a promise made generations past, through Abraham: 

I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you, and all of the families of earth will be blessed, abraham, through you. Genesis 12:2-3 

Abraham stood in that same wilderness, centuries before. One man, looking up at the stars alone, trying to imagine what that future might look like. 

Because Abraham's promise was the first hint of how God might keep a promise made generations before, but not to an ally, not to a friend, not to a servant... but to an enemy.  

The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed... I will put hatred between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring, and he will crush your head, and you will bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:14-15  

I wonder if the enemy, hearing that promise, shivered just a little bit. Realised he'd made a mistake. Recognized that this darker promise rested on a promise that God had made, to all of creation:  

So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. And then God blessed them and said, “be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it.” Genesis 1:26-28 

The enemy had not just struck out at the creator's favourite pet. He had struck out at Yahweh God himself, the image of God on earth. And one day, one of these creatures made in the image of God, but carrying that wound, would end the power of the enemy.  

The amazing thing is that all of these promises—to Creation, to the enemy, to Abraham, to Moses, to David, through Isaiah, through Malachi, to Mary and Joseph... every single one of these promises is the same Promise.  

There is one Promise that God has made to us, and it is this: 

that God's creation will be blessed with a humanity that lives with God in a two-way promise of faithfulness and love, speaking with his voice, doing his good and beautiful work, existing in his image.  

That is the Promise. Everything else is the work he is doing to get us to the point where that Promise is made “Yes, and amen.”  

The enemy knew, on that Nativity day, better than Mary could possibly understand, that she held in her arms that child. The evil-crushing, perfect image of God.  

She held in her arms that Promise keeper, and that Promise kept.

______  

For Jesus Christ, the son of God, does not waver between yes and no. He is the one who Silas and Timothy and I [Paul] preached to you. And as God's ultimate yes, Jesus Christ always does what he says. For all of God's promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding yes. 2 Corinthians 1:19 

In Christ—in his birth, in his life, his death, his resurrection—every one of the promises we read earlier is kept. Mary held in her arms that present, timeless, long-ago promise. A cute little, sleeping, serpent-stomping, evil-crusher God-man.  

Through Christ our amen our yes ascends to God to his glory. 2 Corinthians 1:20 

As believers in Christ, we do not have the luxury or the option of settling. Of feeling sorry for ourselves, and sitting back to wait for Jesus to come back to stomp out evil. God made it clear to the people of Israel and to us that we have a voice, we have a choice, and we have a responsibility.  

It is God who enables us, along with you, to stand firm for Christ. He has commissioned us. He has identified us as his own, placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment that guarantees everything that he has promised us. 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 

________ 

As a human being, I am part of the problem. 

I am just as wounded by the enemy's bite as anybody else. I have the same inclination towards arrogance, callousness, apathy, judgmentalism, corruption, or the hunger for power. I am just as capable of striking a blow for the wrong side in the battle for what God is doing in the world.  

But as a follower of Christ, I am part of the solution:  within me resides the Holy Spirit. God himself. The next step in the Promise kept. 

Moses defined God’s expectations of his people. Jesus taught the other side of the coin. (Matthew 5:3-12) 

I am blessed when I admit that, yes, I need him. I don't have it all figured out. I can't walk a life of faith by myself. I don't have all the solutions. I need him.  

I am blessed when, yes, I grieve the way things are. The world is broken. Anybody going to argue with me on that? I am blessed when I open myself to the potential of lament. 

I am blessed when, yes, I hunger and thirst for rightness and justice. Thirst is your body's message that you need to receive something nourishing, life-giving. Rightness and justice are life-giving. We thirst for those things, and we celebrate when we see justice done and right win out.  

So, yes, I will: 

Yes, I will show mercy.  

Yes, I will live with integrity.  

Yes, I will work for peace.  

I won't sit back waiting for God to snap his fingers and make everything perfect just because I’m living right.  

He will... if we will. Because he works in us and through us.  

______ 

On that, day so long ago, Mary held in her arms the one who was the first serious blow against the enemy. She held in her arms a Promise kept. With both her and her child’s cries still reverberating those clay walls, the Promise lay silent in her arms, preparing for the day when he would stand as a man. Take his place. Begin to walk the path that only he could walk, do the work that only he could do: giving us the opportunity to say our ‘yes.’ Our ‘amen.’