Old Testament: Isaiah 7:10-16
Gospel: Matthew 1:18-25
Epistle: Romans 1:1-7
Gospel: Matthew 1:18-25
Epistle: Romans 1:1-7
Well, I am a day late this week but that is what happens
sometimes around the holidays. I think
we have a strange collection of Scriptures this week and other than the fact
that Romans 1:1-7 says Jesus four times I’m struggling to find a connection to
the other three readings. The central
theme this week is that God is Immanuel, which of course means “God with us.”
Names had significance in the Old Testament.
When Jacob’s 12 children are named, they each got a name which expressed
how either their mother or Jacob was feeling about the child or sometimes a
message about how their life would go.
In the same chapter from our Isaiah reading, Isaiah is told to go and
meet king Ahaz with his son Shear-Jashub, which means “a remnant shall
return.” Setting aside what unfortunate
names some of the prophets’ children got, the names became signs and messages
to the people.
And so we have this message from Isaiah, while standing by his son, that the Lord will deliver Israel from their strife and the sign will be a son named Immanuel. The immediate meaning is clear; God is with Judah and will protect them from the immediate plot of its enemies. However, this passage is picked up by Matthew to interpret and provide context to Jesus’ birth: the fact that he is born of a virgin and that he is literally and more profoundly than anything else, God with us.
That is the message of Advent and Christmas. God is near.
In the Psalms we hear cries of desperation, hurt, pain, but also joy and
praise, and every other human emotion; the message is that God hears all of
this and is near to us. Isaiah, was
alive and prophesying in a very uncertain time for Judah and Israel, a time
when it might have seemed that God was a far as possible from his people. Yet Isaiah still declares that God is with us,
and even when he is punishing his people, he is involved and active on the
earth. We move forward to Matthew’s
message and the birth of Jesus, whose name roughly means “the Lord saves,” and
Matthew draws on this heritage to say truly and finally God is with us in a new
way. All the hurt, and sin, and
brokenness in the world, God is doing something about that. We don’t serve a God who is far off and
removed from what is happening on the earth.
We serve the Great Immanuel.
Which leads me to perhaps why we have the first chapter of
Romans as the Epistle reading. This
might be pointing us to the fact that this is still true. Even after Jesus’ death and resurrection,
Paul is still exhorting us to follow him and saying God is still with us. Jesus hasn’t left us alone to fend for
ourselves until he returns, in fact just the opposite. He has left his Spirit to actually reside in
each believer’s heart and mind, to lead us in the ways of God.
God doesn’t change so that one day he is Immanuel and the
next he is far off leaving us to our own devices. He is still at work in the world today and
drawing all creation unto himself.
Perhaps this is the real mystery of our faith, and what we all must come
to terms with. We serve a God who is the
Great Immanuel, omnipotent and all loving, yet also a God who allows genocide
and natural disasters. We serve a God
who promises not to rescue us from hardship, but a God who always promises to
be Immanuel and live with us in the pain.
May we continue to reflect and ponder the divine name
Immanuel and what that means in our lives and for the world. May God continue to reveal his presence in
our lives.
May we continue to pray, Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Grace and Peace
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