Emmanuel, God with us
Jane Denniston
December 01, 2020
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Isaiah 7: 14 & Matthew 1: 22-23
Isaiah 7
14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
Matthew 1
22 All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’[a] (which means ‘God with us’).
God was born as a baby; he was helpless and vulnerable. He lay in strips of cloth and cried for his mother’s milk; he slept and soiled his nappy. His head, eggshell frail, lay in the crook of his mother’s arm, or cradled in his father’s hands. His hand curled around her finger, tiny fingers, soft bones, fragile hold on life. Hands which shaped the earth reached out blindly, grasping. Jesus, God with us.
God was born as a baby; he was born into danger; the normal danger which haunts any infant, greater all those hundreds of years ago before the advances of modern science; disease, accident, premature death. More than that, he was born into danger because Herod wanted to erase him from the earth. He was born into danger because the shadow of the cross hung over the crib. Jesus, Emmanuel, left the glories and riches of heaven to muddy his feet in the dirt of the earth; Jesus, God with us.
God was born as a baby; just as the prophet foretold, ‘Emmanuel’ God with us, with us in our danger, with us in the frailty of human existence. The point of the incarnation — to experience the trials and triumphs of human life, and in so doing redeem it. If we had been told nothing more, if we knew nothing else, this would be sufficient: Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us.
PRAYER:
God, our God,
with us in the joys of life,
with us in the messiness of life,
we praise and adore you.
God, our God,
with us in the trials of life,
with us in the triumphs of life,
we praise and adore you.
God, our God,
with us throughout our life,
walking in darkness as in light,
holding us in all things,
laughing with us,
weeping with us,
Emmanuel, God with us,
we praise and adore you, Amen.
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