You will name him Immanuel – which means “God with us”. Curiously the name of the herald of the Good news, Gabriel also means “God with us”. Yet, too often, the model of the mechanics of the Incarnation received is one of misery, shame, and blood sacrifice to a twisted angry deity. Salvation, in this model, is a wholly one-sided affair. Christ bore in his person the entirety of human sin, visualised as his suffering and death on the cross. Jesus became our “scape-goat”. This model leaves one hanging on the question of what happened next? What is more, it cultivates a theology of shame and disgrace – humanity is ugly, depraved, corrupt, an abomination in the sight of God. If that were so – why then did God become one of us? This popular model has another failing, it strips us of any responsibility for realising the gift of salvation, cultivating it into the full flowering of enlightenment. If Jesus is merely a blood sacrifice we have no investment in the project of salvation – no responsibility. We are deprived of our God-given free will, our God-given dignity, and reduced to mere play-things of a mentally unstable deity. It’s all wrong – very wrong!

Throughout the Old Testament the prophets and the Law called Israel to invest in the relationship between God and man. When she did, Israel realised the full benefits of her marriage with God – in tangible ways, freedom, prosperity, peace, and the respect of other nations. Here – at the beginning of our Christian story – it is not “just” God but God and Man, God with us, who enters the arena and sets into motion the essential elements of our liberation from fear, and the oppression of Death. Here, at the beginning of the story, God has invested his whole self his essence (ousia) and invites us to do the same – to be a participant in the process. Through God’s love for us – there is also, respect.