Mary, you will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

(A Sunday School Song:) Mary had baby, yes, Lord. Mary had a baby, yes, my Lord; Mary had a baby, yessss LORD, the little child of Bethlehem was born for us … Mary had a baby, so what…What was the big deal…What does it mean to me?

This past week I had coffee at the corner of Baseline and Broadway. As I sat there drinking my coffee, I pondered our Gospel text for today. I looked at the people who passed by my table and wondered what they thought about this baby that Mary was going to have. I wondered for how many of them had the meaning of Christmas gotten lost in tinsel and trappings. How many of them were like the kids at the beginning of our play- thinking Christmas was about Santa and presents? For how many of them had Christ been taken out of Christmas?

How many of them might say, “Yes, Mary had a baby, and He was Jesus,” but when asked the question, “So what does that mean to us today.” How does that really impact how you live today, day-to-day? Many of them and even some of us might be hard pressed to explain how such an event so long ago really impacts our day-to-day lives.

For me to engage the people in that coffee shop, for us to engage the people around us, we must prayerful ponder the “so what” question. “So what does it mean that Mary had a baby?”

To me, it means that God is good to His Word. He had promised to send us a Savior. When Adam and Eve had opened the Pandora’s box of sin all manner of hurt, unfairness, hate, disease, war, and malice flooded into the world. As if that weren’t enough - along with sin came separation from God and death. God would have been justified in leaving Adam and Eve and their offspring to rot in their sins- to abandon them- but He did not. He gave us the promise of a Savior. One will come who will reconcile us to God. ( 2 Cor 5.19) One will appear who will destroy the work of Satan. (1st John 3.8b) One will come who by His wounds we will be healed. (Is 53.5) One will come who even though that serpent, Satan, will strike at His heel, The Promised One will crush the serpent’s head and free us from the bondage of sin. (Gen 3.15) In Mary’s baby we see that God is good to His Word. Even though we often are not good to our word or good at living up to our promises, God is. God and His Word can be trusted.

Mary had a baby, so how do we know that this baby really is the Promised One? Many have come claiming to be the Christ and still come claiming to be the Christ. So how would we know that this child of Mary is the promised one? God in His wisdom gave us some prophecies and some signs so that we would know to follow this One and not the others?

Look for one whose ancestry is of the house of and line of David. (Is 9.7b) He will be born of a virgin; He will be born in Bethlehem; be called out of Egypt; and be called a Nazarene. (Is 7.14, Micah 5.2, Matt 2.23) This will be a sign to you, you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. (Luke 2.12) Oh yes, and one day He will preach the good news to the spiritually poor, restore sight to the blind, the deaf will hear, and the lame will be made to walk. (Is 35.4-6) It would take the hand of God and a series of miraculous events for all these things to come to pass at just the right time and in just the right way, and come to pass it did.

So now we have a God so powerful that He can make the impossible, possible. We have a God who is true to His Word - so what now? How does that make a difference to me today? I may believe that Mary had The Baby back then and that He was Immanuel, which means “God with us.” I may believe that He lived, died and rose again but does that really make a real difference to me at the corner of Broadway and Baseline, or at my job, or amongst my family, or in my kitchen. So what?

The answer I believe is this: The same God who came for us in the person of Jesus 2,000 years ago is the same God who comes to us today. The Scriptures declare that Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. (Heb 13.8) Some 2,000 years ago He had great compassion for the people because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Since Jesus does not change, He then still has great compassion for sheep like us.

We can live our lives knowing that this God/man, Jesus, has compassion from the depth of His being for us. Oh, it doesn’t mean that He will miraculously rescue us from all that daily assaults us any more than He rescued them from daily struggles, but just as He saw them through all things He will see us through all manner of things today. He has declared, Never will I leave; never will I abandon you. (Deut 31.6) He promised, and He has proven Himself trustworthy.

The prophet Zephaniah wrote to those who believe, The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. (Zep 3.17) He took delight in them and thus He takes delight in those who believe. The world may not delight in us, and sometimes because of the way we act we don’t even delight in ourselves, but we can live knowing that God does. He delights in us even more than a grandfather delights in his first grandchild.

He delights in us like He did in them when by the working of the Holy Spirit we confess our sins and seek to turn from them. He finds delight in us when we stop trusting in our works, reason, and good intentions and trust solely in His grace and mercy. His forgiveness quiets us and gives us peace and a future. He rejoices over us when we look for meaning and direction in our lives now and in our life after death, not in the vain imaginings of other men, but in the Words of a trustworthy, timeless, changeless, all-powerful God. St John wrote to the people of his day and to us (God’s Words) are written that you may believe that Jesus is Christ and by believing in you may life in His name. (John 20.31)

In Jesus we have real life and with it comfort, direction, and peace that comes from God. It is this life that we have to share with those who pass by. It is all this and more we have to share with those who will comment, “Mary had a baby, so what?” Mary had a baby and that makes all the difference in our here and now and it makes all the difference out there and for our eternity. But how will all of them know if no one tells them: Mary had baby, yes, Lord. Mary had a baby yes, my Lord; Mary had a baby, yessss LORD, the little child of Bethlehem was born for us.

Amen.