A few years ago, the female rocker Joan Osborne recorded the song, What if God Was One of Us? As the song soared into the realm of metaphysics with its penetrating questions, the song soared atop the charts. Osborne asks:

If God had a name,
What would it be
And would you call it to His face
If you were faced with Him
And all His glory?
What would you ask if
You had just one question?

Yeah, yeah, God is great.
Yeah, yeah, God is good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What if God was one of us;
Just a slob like one of us;
Just a stranger on a bus
Tryin' to make His way home?....

When Osborne asks, "What if God was one of us?" we're encountering metaphysical questions, as well as grammatical questions. We're dealing with Philosophy 101 as well as English 101. Looking at that sentence, you might hear a little voice inside your head, a voice which sounds strikingly familiar; in fact, it probably sounds exactly like your junior high English teacher. The little voice is asking you, "Does Miss Osborne have her grammatical construction right? Should it be, 'What if God was one of us' or should it be 'What if God were one of us?' "

You envision Mrs. Junior High English teacher pacing around the room awaiting your answer. She pauses to look out the window. She returns to the front of the room. Her chalk hovers just off the chalk board. While your classmates are staring at you, the wall clock ticks away, a loud intrusion into the silence....tick-tick-tick. "Mr. Tamerius, please tell us your answer."

Just then, the answer arrives, as if carried on the wings of a dove. You remember the lesson you learned the day of the school sockhop -- about the subjunctive mood.

"According to traditional rules, you use the subjunctive to describe an occurrence that you have presupposed to be contrary to fact: If I were ten years younger, if America were still a British Colony. The verb in the main clause of these sentences must then contain the verb would or (less frequently) should: If I were ten years younger, I would consider entering the marathon. If America were still a British colony, we would all be drinking tea in the afternoon. When the situation described by the if clause is not presupposed to be false, however, that clause must contain an indicative verb."

The proper grammatical construction hinges on whether or not I presume the Incarnation to be an actual fact of history, that God did indeed become one of us, or could, in fact, become one of us. In this matter, theology dictates the grammar. The possibility or possibility of God entering into the human story, taking upon Himself flesh and becoming one of us, establishes the proper usage of the verb.

Knowing the subjunctive mood and knowing the witness to the Incarnation, you answer that Joan Osborne got the grammar right. She supplied the right indicative for the conditional.

There is an important grammar lesson in this song, illustrating how language works. But even more important than the grammar lesson is the Gospel lesson. The song asks the question which the Holy Scriptures answer when they declare the world-altering reality of God’s becoming man:

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory" (John 1:14). "In Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them" (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Our hope and our faith hang upon the fact that in this grammatical sequence, the subjunctive mood takes an indicative verb. That is good grammar. Even better, that is good news.

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