Rick and I have a running joke about something we don't hear much out here. It sure is part life in the Midwest, though--mother-as-martyr. Mother has used clothes while the kids get new school clothes-"Oh, don't worry about me. I don't need a thing." Mother dishing up all the best parts of supper to others-"That's OK. I don't want any." Flood waters about to burst the dam, threatening the children, mother holding the break with her shoulder-"You kids finish up what you're doing, I'll just hold this for you." Is that what is going on with God when David offers to build a "house" for God-a temple? "I don't need a house. You've got your luxurious palace, with your gizmos, the surround-sound entertainment room and indoor pool. I'll be fine with a tent. Don't worry about me." Would God do that?

A lot of ink has been spilled over that episode between God and David. After all the wrangling about what's going on, it boils down to what's important is God's promise to David: to "build a house" for him. God was making a sweet pun on a term for royal dynasty when he countered David's offer to build a "house"-a monumental temple-for God. If Israel is looking for a literal reading of God keeping the promise to David, there is still some ways to go for the promise to be kept. It's an important promise to Christians, but we don't read it literally. Enter Gabriel.

In Biblish, the name for what happens between Mary and Gabriel is "the Annunciation." When I was growing up, that was an exotic Catholic term. Baptists never called this scene anything, but medieval artists were fond of painting it. In those paintings, Mary is always wearing blue, often seated by a window reading. What clues you in that this is the Annunciation is the figure in the background holding a red rose. That's why we have a red rose hanging in our ceiling today: it's the symbol of God's courtship of Mary, Gabriel acting as God's agent.

When my lectionary group read this passage from Luke, our resident political scientist said Mary's situation was a "political statement." To him, the scandal of Jesus' birth wasn't the biological event-unwed mother, embarrassing her fiancé, putting herself on the margins of polite society. The political scandal was God's promise of a dynasty to David, a royal lineage of kingship that would keep on forever-and this promise is fulfilled, with David's heir born to a socially marginalized woman. The young woman, despite her need to point out the technical difficulties of Gabriel's proposal, might not fully understand the politics of what is going on. She simply submits to the angel, "Let it be with me according to your word."

What do all these words mean that we use to explain Mary's situation? Politics, submission, incarnation. Abstractions, every one of them. Putting a name and face to Mary's choice might make it more understandable. Emmanuel. This whole thing is about God-with-us, and the implication is that in the "with us" God is turning the world upside down. I was thinking about this early in the week-deeply involved in thinking about the radical freedom of God, this God who insists on choosing humble people and bringing salvation through them, this God who acts. Something like the thing between the angel and Mary happened to me. Not courtship by God, but definitely God-with-us. The doorbell rang as I studied. When I answered the door, it was not someone with a red rose. The scruffy young man standing there held a loose leaf binder in front of himself, rattling on about Portland Mission and transitional housing for homeless people. He showed me all the federal permits, and I was kind of ho-hum, because the Portland Mission comes every year, and I give them money every year, and that's over so I can go back to my work. I was struck by the fact that he was about the age of my kids. I went to get some money. He wrote a receipt. I was reluctant to just let him go without connecting in some way, so I asked him how he got to Portland. Tears began to stream down my face as I recognized in his story how scary it is to be away from home, to be abandoned by anyone who might help, to be without a place to crash. As the tears flowed, he shook my hand saying, "It's OK, lady." He had a safe place to stay, food, help in looking for a job. "It's OK, lady," he kept saying. It was God turning the world upside down for me.

Later, as if God just couldn't let me rest, I ran across an anecdote in a magazine. "It had been a long week of outreach to poor folks," the woman wrote. "I decided to indulge in a movie. I was running to get to the theater before the popcorn sold out and the best seats were taken.

"A half block from the theater, I recognized a familiar figure." The figure was Michael, one of her clients, standing on a milk crate in traffic, gesturing and shouting, "Reeeepent! The world is doomed and we are all daaaaamned!" The writer tried to avoid eye contact, let alone conversation-it was her day off and she was exhausted. Too late. Michael recognized her, and then he stepped down to whisper in her ear: "I'm running for mayor. Can I count on your vote?" Her answer, she says, came in a flat voice. You know that feeling-don't say too much, avoid looking in his eyes, and maybe you can get away without trouble. But she knows him, so she forces herself to look at him as she answers. Then, as she looks at his face, "his crazy, terrible, awful, beautiful, sorrowful, redemptive face," she says, "He gazed back at me with something akin to sanity, and, for a split second, I could almost sense the beating of his heart." The moment passes, Michael goes back to his crazed street preacher mode and his "mayoral platform" as he announces to the world, "The lady said 'yes!'" He screams this to the cars. "The world is saaaved! We are filled with graace! We are filled with t-h-a-n-k-s! Everything is going to be all right!"

What if that's true? What if it is really true that the salvation of the universe, the redemption of all humanity, hangs on one person's answer? What if it depended on your "yes"? Like that young man who stood on my porch and shook my hand saying, "It's OK, lady." Like Michael, who knew that the world was saved because one person recognized the humanity in him. It's not so far-fetched. All of salvation history hung on the simple "yes" of a young woman improbably believing that it really was an angel talking to her. Maybe all of salvation today hangs on your "yes." What if we are being asked to bear the Christ Child, the God-With-Us, Emmanuel? As Christians, we believe that this is what this table charges us to believe and do. The table is set today. It invites each one of us to take that Christ Child into our very body. That is the deepest, most true meaning of the word, "Emmanuel," that is the action of the sacrament we celebrate. God is with us. God is so with us. God is more "with us" today than we can imagine. God in our very innards, carried into the world as the Christ, carried by us to be shared with the people around us. As if we believed that this is the God who loved us so much that there was no other way to show it than to be God-with-us, Emmanuel. And now, we get to carry God-with-us to the world, showing the very love God wore to get to Bethlehem.