Advent Reflection 2025: What if God was one of us?

Do you remember that song from the 90s by Joan Osborne called What if God was One of us? It went like this:

‘What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home?’

As a Christian, I always thought that song told a profound truth. Well, two profound truths really. The first is that it’s not a ‘what if’ because God was one of us – as the beginning section of John’s gospel tells us, The Word (which John later reveals as Jesus) was ‘with God and the Word was God… All things came into being through him and without him, not one thing came into being’. What?! This is what some people call ‘The Universal Christ’ – Jesus Christ, who is not just the man who walked the earth at a specific time but also the Christ and God who has existed through all time. Just let that sink in for a minute.

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This means that the mysterious and incredible revelation of the Christian faith is that Jesus was God, God came into this world and lived alongside us. Jesus was not just a Middle-Eastern 1st Century man, but the eternal ‘Word’ – God himself. It’s not an easy thing to get our heads round but it’s something for us to ponder deeply. The Word, says John, ‘became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son’.

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John begins his gospel with the same words that begin the Bible in Genesis, when we hear the stories of creation – ‘In the beginning’. This is done on purpose. John is letting us know that this was not just a regular human being born in that manger at Christmas, but also God who existed before time began. It’s mind blowing and seems ludicrous, but it is not. This is really what happened. God became one of us and lived our human life. This means that God knows what it is to feel the pain and joy of our lives and is always close to us on the journey of life – whether we’re laughing or crying – God is holding us and knows intimately what we’re experiencing.

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That is the first profound truth. The second is something Jesus said himself – that whatever we do ‘to the least’ we do to him. There is that of God in everyone and when we are kind to others, we are kind in turn to Jesus, to God. When we are cruel to others, we are also being cruel to God. That is why the two commandments Jesus gave are so linked: Love God and love your neighbour as yourself. We love God when we love our neighbour. And the more we grow in love for God, the more we learn about how to love others.

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In summary, the two profound truths of the song ‘What if God was one of us?’ are 1. God became one of us: he knows how we feel and feels things alongside us, and 2. God is present in each person we meet and feels everything we do to them as if it were to God himself. Let’s take these two profound truths to heart and live the best life we can for God with the knowledge of God’s amazing revelation in Jesus. God was one of us. God is one of us. Amen.

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