If I say,' Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night',

even the darkness is not dark to you;

The night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you....

And I awake

And I am still with you.

The Psalmist

Remember I am with you, to the end of the age.

Jesus in Matthew

Look the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him, Emmanuel,

which means, God is with us.

The Angel of the Lord in Matthew

The sense of the presence of God is a universal experience. It is not the province of any one religious faith or spiritual path.

In fact these arise because people have experience of a presence with them that they need explaining.

Recently we baptised a man who took these experiences seriously. He explored what they meant with various religions until he discovered the Quaker way gave him the space and the time to reflect on God.

Another 10 years passed before his relationship with God became focused on Jesus and thus baptism became necessary. So he came to us. Gradually his experience of God's presence became centred on Christ. His relationship with God was immersed in Christ.

Among the people who watched the baptism of Les was a young woman. She has never seen anything like it and was full of questions. They came down to this: why do Christians make so much of Jesus? She was questioning whether Christ can fulfil all the hopes and longings created by those times when we become aware of God's presence.

This is what the gospel at Christmas proclaims. We can be with God because God was reconciling us to himself in Christ.

Psalm 139 is a beautiful meditation on the nature of being a human being. The writer cannot imagine himself apart from the all-encompassing mercy of God. He cannot avoid God, but this is not a reason for fear; rather it is a cause for feeling safe and well.

The Gospel of Matthew closes with Jesus sending his apostles into a world of potential disciples. They will not go alone. This is what happened earlier in his ministry.

But now as the Risen One, liberated from the cultural limitations of his human origins, his Spirit will take the shape of every place and time. Christ is the Son of God who has many faces now.

Matthew begins his Gospel with the tale of the angel of the Lord visiting a surprised Joseph. He convinces Joseph that his future son is no accident by calling up the old story of a prophet's promise.

More than 400 years before the time of Jesus, Isaiah discovered that a child would be born whose name had been already chosen. The tiny baby would be called Immanuel.

His parents placed their faith in the heart of the future. Isaiah took their little boy to be a sign from God for a time of national crisis.

It is ironic that this is the last time in scripture that 'Immanuel' is used to describe Jesus. Perhaps it was too Jewish in background. But it enshrines a wonderful truth.

I AM WITH YOU are some of the most profoundly compassionate words we can hear in our times of distress and uncertainty. They are simple words.

Yet they can join us in the depths of our darkness and fear, and quite wonderfully that darkness seems to become full of light.

As the Iona Community prays together they never forget the Immanuel God. They bid farewell with these words:

In work and worship

GOD IS WITH US

Gathered and scattered

GOD IS WITH US

Now and always

GOD IS WITH US.

They are beautiful word with which to walk into a new chapter in life; or end a Sunday's worship; or to greet the dawn of another Christmas Day.