Emmanuel 12/19

Most of you recall that I was raised Catholic. Mary's image is deep with my religious core. A certain color of blue reminds me immediatley of her pictures. We sing of the virgin birth in Christmas hymns. When I was little and we sang round yon virgin, I imagined Mary having roughly the shape of Big Boy at the restaurants.The name Emmanuel ( God with us) does not appear as much. (OK, It is in O Little Town and Hark the Herald Angels). Emmanuel brackets the entire gospel of Matthew as a kind of shorthand gospel. At the close of the gospel Jesus will say, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age." God is present but God is still God, elusive and ineffable. Where is Emmanuel present is easier to imagine than how is Emmanuel present. Does it have a sense of God being for us, not against us? This Jesus is GOD with us. What kind of picture God do we carry at this time of year? Douglas John Hall writes of Emmanuel: "ultimate power can only intimidate the ultimately powerless." Luther kniew ell that feeling and counselled us to look upon the baby Jesus. "Divinity may terrify. Inexpressible Majesty will crush us...with love and favor Christ will console and confirm." God moved toward us in the manger and at Golgotha, a few miles away. Emmanuel is God with us in everything. At Christmas we can emphasize the with us, along with the word God alone. (24,000 children die every day, but  we have the Chips program for children's health).

 

When Joseph learns that Mary is expecting, he must have been thunderstruck. the child was a symbol of shame, not hope. Joseph is given the divine information in Matthew's gospel through a dream. In a way the Isaiah passage has a dream like quality, as it is hard to pin down. The name Jesus is given specific meaning by saying that he will save the people from their sins. In both readings, we look into the face of a child. that's a good image for hope. The child and hope both take shape into the future. Emmanuel's vaguefuture birth in Isaiah acquires another name, Jesus.

 

At first it seemed that life was plotting against him. What should he do, engaged to a pregnant wife? Right away his mercy kicks in and he decides not to make her a public spectacle. Still, doing the proper thing has consequences too, for how would Mary and the child make it on their own? Every new father gets slapped upside the head by the enormity of responsibility for helping to bring a new life into the world. I wonder how he started to wrap his mind around the notion that he was to help raise and provide for the Messiah? How did he grasp that he would be raising God with us? Last week we sang "Mary Did You Know".  We could ask the same question of Joseph. Joseph needed to know that God would be with him, as the rush of inadequacy and humility poured over him. He had God's message with him in a dream. Over the years God worked with and through him when he had an insight and wondered where it came from. Matthew's birth story is so matter of fact for the Nativity, no angels, no shepherds, no gifts, yet... God is with us in the miracle of conception and birth, and the perhaps greater miracle of raising a child.. God is with us in the matter of fact movement of life between a husband and wife. God's hand may well lie behind seeming disturbances to the order of things as they are or should. No one raises a child alone. God accompanies us. God is there to help guide us to discern between good and evil, and when the proper thing is not the right thing to do. God is there to help us move toward good when faced with a tough situation. God is with us; God is there, as Jesus was here and is now in heaven, in the church, and carried within the womb our our lives.