Choosing to be the People of God

January 01, 2017

Feast of the Holy Name

This year I received an unusual gift for Christmas from my husband -- a DNA analysis kit from ancestry.com. Some of you know my husband and know that he is a scientist — not just by profession, but in the way he responds to the world. When I went into labor with our first child, my husband pulled out a pad of graph paper and began graphing the frequency of my labor pains. Over more than 24 years of marriage, be assured that Stuart has given me many wonderful, more typically sentimental gifts that husbands give their wives. This one is the only one I can recall that involved spitting into a test tube.  But I have to say that I consider this year’s DNA kit an especially romantic gesture and a deeply caring gift. To offer someone a window into  who they are is a profoundly loving and generous act.

The penchant for genealogies is not new to us, as  Bible readers. We can groan under the weight of the so-and-so begat so-and-sos that fill page after page. But, just like the ancients, we, too, want to know where we came from.  We are curious about our family lineage, what it signifies, and what it might mean for our futures.   We know that each human being is embedded in a story that is bigger than any one individual, we are part of a history larger than any single self—our DNA makes this concrete and visible to us, even as our experience teaches us this truth in our everyday lives.  There is a deep structure to all of life, though it can be hard for us to see in the midst of the surprise and unknowability we experience as daily existence. 

Just as my DNA test will reveal an inner reality, a reality which has been there all along beneath the surface of my life, and which is crucial to who I am, so the angels and the shepherds in our Christmas story reveal a deep, purposeful structure to the chaotic, lived, felt, tasted, smelled experience that the shepherds and Mary and Joseph were living out in Bethlehem.  Just as my DNA test will tell me something about who I am, the angels and the shepherds and eventually the wise men reveal things to Mary and those around her that Mary and the shepherds could not have discerned on their own. Whether the news comes from a modern laboratory or from an angel, who we are as pieces in the larger puzzle of life—that information is always given to us by others; that knowledge always comes from outside the limits of our vision; it is always a revelation.

When we take a look at Scripture, we see a God who has repeatedly entered into time to be with us.  This  God of Scripture acts in specific times and places, takes on real, tangible forms, sends messages in concrete language and symbols that humans can understand.  This God willingly stakes a claim in historical time, takes on dna, if you will.  This God chooses relationships with specific human beings, specific places, even specific days and seasons. 

We call our God the God of life—not just as an idea, or a philosophical construct, but as the God of all of us actual, messy life forms in our fleshy particularity and diversity. Both science and Scripture tell us the story of structure growing out of chaos, of boundaries being set, and the physical constants and laws that make life possible being determined.  And then, built into that world, countless open possibilities yet-to-be determined “decisions” at all levels—from that of the sub-atomic particle up to the cosmic—open possibilities which must be “chosen”, made concrete, moment by moment, for life to move forward.  In any given moment, from the microscopic to the astronomical scales of life, there are countless small choices being made—to be here and not there; to do this and not that--  that in turn affect the myriad of possible choices available to each of us in the next moment.  Some physicists say that there are, in fact, an infinite number of universes, playing out each and every possible scenario, in parallel existence with our own. 

Scientists are learning that even our DNA is, to a large degree, a set of potential choices.  In ways we do not yet fully understand, our genetic material, apparently, can turn on and off over time—because of what we eat, how we care for ourselves, the levels of stress and suffering we endure.  At our very core, then, there is an initial givenness that takes a distinctive shape through choice and experience.  Every parent looking at their newborn baby, not just Mary looking at Jesus, knows this double-edged truth--to be alive is to forge a path, choice by choice, decision by decision, between the pre-determined and the possible.  This life that God has given us is not just a packaged gift for the taking.  It is also a challenge and a risk. 

My own choices and decisions have already shaped the futures of my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, just as the lives of those who preceded me shaped mine. Like Mary, just like the shepherds, each of us, right now, sits at the cusp of time. Every moment we are given contains new possibilities within it.  God has not stopped looking for ways to be born into the world, for ways to be part of history.  God continues to offer those possibilities to us each moment of each and every day.

In Galatians we hear that, through Jesus, we have been adopted and made children of God.  Though we may not carry the actual DNA of the line of David, as Jesus did, we are part of the story of purpose and belonging that God continues to tell in the world.  My DNA report will tell me about my ethnic heritage, the people with whom I share a physical connection.  For the ancients in the Bible, the significance of that familial line was as immutable as the speed of light or a mathematical law. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus challenges those around him with the question “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”  And pointing to his disciples, he says, “Here are my mother and my brothers!  For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Jesus’ assertion, his new and radical opening of the word family—we can compare this announcement of freedom and possibility to the miraculous genetic engineering we read about in scientific journals.

The messengers God sent to Mary and the shepherds brought a loving gift—a chance for them to see and understand themselves within God’s larger story.  And when Jesus grew up, he offered that same gift to each of us.  We do not need a special pedigree or lineage.  We do not need a DNA test to qualify.  We need only the courage to risk the challenges ahead, as we, too, stake our claim, as we choose this specific God, in this specific time and place. As followers of Christ, we are part of the cosmic story of God’s purpose and love.  We are part of that holy and life-giving family we call “the people of God.” 

Amen.