LifeWay Bible Studies for Life Series for December 23: Jesus, our Immanuel

No matter how many times we have read or shared the Christmas story, the miracle of both the virgin birth of Jesus and the fact that God has come to live with us (Immanuel) continues to overwhelm us, as well it should. It is not something grasped by human intellect but only by faith, as it was intended.

I recently read the book The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan. It is the story of the Dustbowl days. At the same time, I had the privilege of returning to preach in a church in the Texas Panhandle in a community not far from Boise City, Oklahoma, the epicenter of what meteorologists declared to be the single most significant meteorological event of the 20th century.

I was preaching from Luke 1:26-48, the text in which the angel Gabriel announces to Mary she is to give birth to Jesus. In the text for this lesson, we are told that Joseph, after Mary had miraculously conceived, also was visited by an angel.

When Mary first heard the news, Luke reports she was very troubled. Most of us would have been troubled by the mere sight of angel. Can you imagine that Avatar moment? What apparently troubled Mary most, however, was that she was a virgin, which meant she had never had sexual intercourse. In her understanding, and ours, without the introduction of sperm to egg, conception is not possible.

There were enormous social implications, to put it mildly. To start with, imagine her going home to her mom and saying, “Mom, I’m pregnant.” “Who’s the father?” she’d certainly demand to know. Mary says: “There’s no man involved.  An angel told me.” We can only imagine how that conversation would have gone. Try telling your fiancé you are pregnant and you and he haven’t had sex just yet. Mary, Scripture reports, was troubled. Who wouldn’t be?

In an act of compassion, Joseph felt compelled to hide her away, to protect her from gossip and perhaps even being stoned as an adulteress, as was the custom of the day. The angel assured Joseph something holy was to come of this birth, and he remained faithful to Mary.

When Mary had been informed she would give birth, she asked the angel, “How will this be” (Luke 1:24). Gabriel replied, “‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.’”  

As I was preaching that morning, it occurred to me that I was standing in a pulpit that was in the heart of the Dust Bowl for the entire decade of the 1930s. Having grown up near Lubbock, just a quarter century after the Dust Bowl days, I had a little sense of what those days must have been like. Even then, “blue northers” would blow in unannounced. Though they didn’t last for 10 years, one bad afternoon was all it took to get some sense of the horror of the 1930s.

One beautiful day during spring football training, we saw a blue norther approaching. To the north, it first appeared as a long-distance mountain range on the horizon, except that the mountains were growing. In less than an hour, the mountains grew over us, overshadowed us, blocking out the sun. Then, the wind hit, 40-50 mph gale-force winds. The temperature dropped 20 degrees in a matter of seconds and the sand the wind was whipping up blasted everything. Dressed only in shorts and T-shirts, we ran for our lives to the field house.  

That was only one spring afternoon. During the Dust Bowl, for 10 years, the wind blew. It would lift the sand over 10,000 feet in the air as the northers cut a swath across hundreds of miles of open prairie, stretching from southeastern Colorado and western Kansas, through the Oklahoma panhandle and hundreds of miles into Texas.  

Then, the dust would begin to settle. It came down in fine particles, like talcum powder. It filtered into everything. Hair, eyes, noses, lungs, well water, food, through the cracks of houses. It covered everything. Many people died of what doctors called “dust pneumonia.” It actually was true that taking a breath could threaten your life.  

Cattle suffocated or got lost in the blast and just died. When their bellies were cut open they were found to be filled with the fine powder the wind blew in. There are people still living from those days who survive now only on supplemental oxygen. People from those days say that when the dust overshadowed them, it would be as black as night at midday; they weren’t even able to see their hands in front of their faces. This overshadowing of dirt was nothing less than a visitation of evil to the people who survived it.  

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary wanted to know how in the world she would become pregnant. Gabriel told her the Holy Spirit would “overshadow” her, making her’s a holy overshadowing. Since sermons aren’t fully written until they’re fully preached, I edited as I preached through the manuscript, adding the word “overshadow” in a new light that had just dawned on me while sitting on the front pew.

Mary would get pregnant because Holy God would overshadow her, and the finest particles of grace would filter into her soul and her body. One of those particles of grace would reach her womb and there fertilize holy salvation for all mankind in her womb. Through Mary, Jesus would become our Immanuel, God with us, in the flesh.

Christmas means the overshadowing of holiness on mankind. May we pray God would overshadow us even now? May God’s grace filter down into every crevice of our souls? May it heal the fractures of caused by sin? May it unlock our hearts so that they spill out in generosity on all those around us?  May it filter down into those parts of us still hidden away in shame, those things we’ve never confessed to anyone?  

May God overshadow us the Holy Spirit? May God become Immanuel to us, in our lives, in this day, just as God did in Jesus to Mary and Joseph?