Immanuel - God is with us
Advent 2004, week 4by Scott Bessenecker
Advent is the Church’s month of preparation for Christmas – one of the three primary Christian holidays. In the spirit of preparation, urbana.org is running a series this year on the theme of the coming Christmas. This week Scott Bessenecker meditates on Immanuel.
Other essays:
Week 1: Ritual in Worship
Week 2: Gift Giving
Week 3: Home for Christmas?
Week 4: Immanuel - God is with Us
God said to his defeated and conquered people, "Do not fear for I am with you." (Isaiah 41:10).
Jesus said to his disciples "I am with you always" right to the very end (Matt 28:20).
Jesus was given the name Immanuel which means God is with us (Matt 1:23).
How is it that with the world falling apart around us we can say, “God is with us?” In the Sudan people hungry and worn-down – many of them Christians – are being driven into their graves by militias purchased by the powerful. In Iraq the death toll rises as the world waits to see who will gain the upper hand and what that will mean for the entire region. At home we are bruised and bloodied by a particularly vicious election that has left many bitterly divided. And around the world there are millions of personal tragedies unfolding every day. A mother stricken with AIDS is dieing and leaving children who must now fend for themselves. An eleven-year-old prostitute experiences her own horrors as men as old as her grandpa pay to use her body for a few moments. Somewhere a drunken father beats the daylights out of his little boy for leaving his tricycle in the driveway.
Each second brings with it a personal tragedy that changes forever the course of a dozen lives that are crushed under the weight of sin and circumstance. So just what does it mean that Jesus is said to be “God with us?”
When Jesus gave his inaugural address in his hometown of Nazareth in Luke 4, he insulted the people among whom he had grown up by suggesting that he was the One Isaiah had prophesied would come to set things right. “‘How can this be?’ They asked. ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’”
We urbanites have forgotten what it’s like to grow up with the same 100 families our whole lives. Your grandfather played with all of your friends’ grandfathers when they were kids. You know everybody’s business as soon as they do. And in an honor-shame society like first century Palestine, your family’s place on the social ladder is clearly fixed by things your parents or grandparents did. When a 15 year-old girl gets pregnant, she shames not only herself and her boyfriend (whom she says isn’t the father), she also shames her dad, her brothers and her children. That pregnancy burrows its way into the lives of everyone in the family for more than just one generation.
Jesus was born under the scourge of illegitimacy. A poor illegitimate joe from nowhere can, with luck and determination, maybe, just maybe become a Rabbi, but no way could he be Messiah. Leave that for one of the Herods or one of the High Priestly families. God had no business being born in Nazareth, let alone born of first-century trailer trash. Born to a poor family among a defeated people in a world spinning out of control. Born to hang out with prostitutes and beggars. What was God thinking anyway?
God with us is a statement of solidarity, a pledge of companionship on a long,
difficult journey.
God with us is three men being thrown in the fire but four men being seen – “And
the fourth is like the Son of God.” (Daniel 3:25).
God with us is being locked into the inner cell of a prison but having a song
well up within you (Acts 16:25).
God with us is being hard pressed but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (II Cor. 4:8-9).
God with us is not being alone in our troubles.
God with us is the promise of something more complete that is yet to come.
I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, "Look, the home of God is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will remove all of their sorrows, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. For the old world and its evils are gone forever."
Revelation 21:3-4 (NLT)
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