First Sunday of Advent

Ways We Know Him: Emmanuel

Scripture: Isaiah 7:14

Sermon

Seven hundred years before Christ, the prophet Isaiah was trying to convince his king to trust in God rather than in foreign alliances. When the king remained unconvinced, the prophet told him that, as a sign of God's trustworthiness, a child would be born to an undesignated young woman. Before the child became old enough to distinguish between right and wrong, the nations that the king now feared would be destroyed. The child's name would reflect Isaiah's message; he would be called Emmanuel, which means "God is with us." Undoubtedly, such a child was born. Whether he had any significance for the king, we do not know. But even if he did, it was not enduring.

Seven centuries later, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. When his disciple, Matthew, sought to record the significance of Jesus' coming, he turned back to the words of Isaiah and suggested that these words were more adequately fulfilled by Jesus than by anyone in the days of the prophet. From that time to this, Emmanuel, "God is with us," has stood for what Christians have felt happened at that first Christmas; that somehow, in Jesus, God was incarnated among us, took on human flesh and blood. But what does it mean to us? Perhaps the very title, Emmanuel, can shed some light.

Emmanuel—God Is with Us

For one thing, to call Jesus Emmanuel is to say something about God: that God is with us, not against us. This is consistent with what the Bible has always taught about God. We read that somewhere back in the dawn of time, God created human beings in order to have fellowship with them. Because of human pride and self-sufficiency, the relationship was strained and human beings wandered away from the relationship for which they were made. God has made numerous attempts to call God's children back to their destiny, but they keep losing the way. The stars, the mountains, the trees all testify to God's greatness, but humans have bowed before these things and worshiped them instead of the Creator. God sent Moses with laws that were intended to show that life is ethical, but instead of learning how to live as children of God, people have made a fetish out of the law, attempting to keep the letter, but missing the spirit. God sent prophets to guide people back to God. They taught that God did not desire ritual or ceremony, but justice, mercy, humility, and sincerity. Many of the prophets were killed for their efforts.

Still, God was determined not to give up. In the person of Jesus, God attempted to make it plain to us that God is among us, not as accuser, not as judge, not as punisher, but as love. God became involved with people in such a way that they couldn't miss the fact that he cared. Jesus didn't just preach about leprosy; he touched the leper in love. He didn't just give a lecture on hunger; he fed those whose stomachs were empty. He didn't merely talk about lingering loneliness; he went to people's homes and sat down for supper and an evening chat.

Charles Wesley, in his struggle to find salvation, envisioned himself as Jacob, wrestling with some unknown and malignant spirit in the desert. Then, Wesley discovered that the one he had been wrestling with was none other than God. In his great hymn "Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown" originally entitled, "Wrestling Jacob," Wesley wrote:

'Tis Love! 'tis Love! Thou diedst for me, I hear thy whisper in my heart. The morning breaks, the shadows flee, pure Universal Love thou art. To me, to all, my mercy's move; thy nature, and thy name is Love.

That love still liberates us today. Toyohiko Kagawa, that great Japanese Christian, has said what a great discovery it was for him. In Meditations (New York: Harper and Row, 1950) he writes that he grew up as a frightened child in Japan because he was told that there were evil spirits everywhere, and that they would damn him for the slightest misdeed. He felt that there was nowhere in the universe where he could find love and affection. When he was introduced to the Christian faith he was overwhelmed and relieved to be told that the essence of the universe is love and that God is a loving father. For him, the good news of Jesus was the assurance that at the center of the universe is a loving creator. For him, that was the power of Christianity.

In Christ, God pierces our defenses, and says, "Emmanuel—God is with us."

Emmanuel—God Is with Us

To call Jesus Emmanuel not only says something about God, but about Jesus. When we say that God is with us, we are being reminded that Jesus is contemporary. Of course, Jesus was an historical human being. He had a normal body like ours, familiar with weariness, hunger, thirst, pleasure, suffering, and death. His emotional life was a normal human life like our own. He was at times astonished, compassionate, indignant, rejoicing, and sorrowful. His mental life was normal and human like our own. He learned from observation, he learned to read and write, "Jesus grew in wisdom and stature," says Luke (2:52 NIV). There was humanness in his spiritual life. He prayed, not as though he were God, but as though he were human, sometimes triumphantly, sometimes seeking strength. The reason for listing these indications of Jesus' humanity is simply to remind us that, whatever else he was, Jesus was human. Sometimes, in our efforts to keep Jesus unique, we are tempted to accentuate his divinity, and in so doing, lose sight of his humanity.

However, to affirm that Jesus was an historical person does not necessarily ensure a vital Christian faith. The Jesus of history lived a long time ago, and for many, that relegates him to the past, along with King Arthur and other noble persons of antiquity. Many people will observe Christmas this year, but the coming of Jesus will have no personal significance for them.

For Christ to matter, there must be something contemporary about him, and there is. In his life on earth Jesus said, "Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me" (John 12:44). "I am the gate," he said (John 10:9), but we don't stop at the gate: we go through it to what it leads to. "I am the way," he said (John 14:6), but we don't end with the way; we go along it to what it arrives at. So Jesus saw his own significance, not simply in the life he lived two thousand years ago, but in terms of the everlasting presence of God he came to proclaim.

That presence is with us today. Our problem is that we often miss it. A young father's conversation with his four-year-old daughter illustrates the point.

"Daddy," she said, "God is everywhere, isn't he?"

"Yes," he responded, "God is everywhere."

"Is God a spirit?"

"Yes, God is a spirit."

"We can't see spirits, can we?"

"No, we can't."

"Well, what I don't understand is, if God is everywhere and we can't see God; how come we aren't bumping into him all the time?" (story attributed to Richard K. Wallarab,...