Emmanuel

       The Promenade Mall over in Westlake always has the most perfect Christmas tree. It is not only huge — 60 feet high — it is perfect. It is the epitome of all that a Christmas tree should be. It is towering and symmetrical. There are no bare spots to hide against the wall. That tree is the model against which I have gauged my ideal tree. It has been what I have sought to recreate on a smaller scale in my own home — which is pretty hard to do on a ten dollar tree budget.

       But early on a November morning about ten years ago I saw the great tree in its natural state before the cosmetic tree surgeons went to work. It wasn’t a pretty sight.  It was like seeing the beautiful face you've known from the movies in real life — pushing a shopping cart through Big Lots without makeup, with her hair in curlers wearing a mu-mu.  I know I’ve shared this trauma before but my therapist insists that sharing it again is essential to my healing.  He said something about catharsis.

       Oh, the tree was tall enough. It was even sorta symmetrical. But it was ragged. There were bare spots here, bare spots there, with no wall to hide against. Beneath the tree were piles of branches taken from other trees. Workmen were cutting and shaping these branches and using them to fill in the bare spots. They drilled and plugged in a branch off another tree. I suspect that workmen come late at night throughout the season to remove branches that are turning brown and replace them.

       The shock of seeing the deceitful origins of my Christmas tree ideal was overpowering. I had lost my vision.

       Fortunately there is at least One who will never disappoint. I am talking about Jesus, whose birth is somehow connected to that tree.

       According to Matthew 1, here's what happened at Christmas. A young man named Joseph is engaged to a woman named Mary. Joseph is a "righteous" man. He has faithfully kept to God's design for human sexuality and marriage. He has refrained from sexual intercourse until he and Mary are husband and wife. Now Mary turns up pregnant. Joseph knows that her pregnancy is not his doing. The only "natural" explanation is that Mary was involved with another man. Joseph decides to call off their marriage. But in his care for Mary he plans to do this quietly so as not to disgrace her.

       While Joseph is working out this plan in his mind an angel speaks to him in a dream: "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit."

       Those are the facts. Matthew then interprets the facts to tell us what they mean. He reaches back in history, 700 years before the birth of Jesus, to the prophet Isaiah. He pulls up the prophetic words in Isaiah 7:14. "Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel".

       There is a lot of controversy over Matthew's use of Isaiah. People have a lot of issues.  But before we look at the issues, let's look at what Matthew says. Biblical prophecy often has a smaller, immediate fulfillment and then a second, greater fulfillment. Matthew says that this is what has happened here.

       First, the smaller, first fulfillment. In the setting of Isaiah 7, two kings plan to attack Ahaz King of Judah. Ahaz decides to appeal to the powerful king of Assyria for protection ~ which would be like a chicken to ask a wolf to protect her from a dog. But God's prophet Isaiah comes to Ahaz with a message from God. Ahaz can count on God to protect him and Judah. And God gives a sign of this promise. The sign is that a young woman, a virgin, will give birth to a child who will be called Emmanuel. In Hebrew, Emmanuel means "God with us." Before this child is old enough to know right from wrong, the threat to Judah will be removed.

       We don't know from history who that child was. But the point of the sign to Ahaz is clear. "Don't do something stupid by giving yourself over to the Assyrians. God has not abandoned Judah or you. "The sign says that He is still "with us"   The Rabbis always saw that as a prophecy of the Messiah. 

       Now, 700 years later, Matthew sees in this verse the promise of another child. But this is the second, much greater fulfillment. For Matthew sees that this child is not only a pledge of divine help. He is the Divine Helper. Not only is Mary's baby a signal that God will rescue His people, He is God the Rescuer. Not only is Jesus a tangible token to the world that God acts to save, He is God the Savior acting to save. Matthew says that this is what the event in Bethlehem means ~ that the child born there is none other than Emmanuel the Lord God who is now with us. He quotes the words of Isaiah as prophecy of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

       So let's talk about the virgin birth. Matthew and a medical doctor named Luke both absolutely insist that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born.

       But some people, including some Christian teachers, have a real problem with that. Among other things, they think that Matthew is playing fast and loose with the words of Isaiah. They will tell you that word almah in the Hebrew language doesn't mean virgin but "young woman." They will tell you the Hebrew scripture uses a different word, bethulah, to mean virgin.

         Now it's true that bethulah is used to describe Rebekah in Genesis 24:16. But the word there is then amplified with the statement, "neither had any man known her." So if the common understanding of bethulah were "virgin," the passage would not have needed the addition, "neither had any man known her." Almah comes from the Hebrew ne'elam for a "hidden girl" -- a girl who is sheltered and protected from sexual contact.

       This is why the Jewish rabbis and scholars who translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek in 240 B.C. deliberately translated the almah in Isaiah 7:14 with the Greek word for virgin which is parthenos like the Parthenon. They knew what it meant.

       Matthew uses the word virgin because it's the word that Isaiah uses. And he uses it because it's what actually happened. It's the same the same word, Mary used to describe herself.

       Dr. Luke tells us that when the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to tell her that she is going to have a baby she interrupts Gabriel's announcement with a very logical question. "How can this be for I am still a virgin?" -- a parthenoi. Gabriel's announcement is in conflict with all she had ever learned about human reproduction in her Biology class at Nazareth Middle School.

       A friend told me about a fourth grade girl named Amy who was asked in the school lunch line, "Are you a virgin." Amy didn't know the meaning of the word but she used logic. The only virgin she had heard of was Mary. She knew that Mary had a baby. So she figured that a virgin is a girl who has had a baby. On the basis of this reasoning she replied, "No, I am not a virgin." As her fellow students looked at here in surprise, a more worldly fifth grade girl took her aside and said, "Amy, I don't think you know what you are talking about."

       Well Mary knew what she was talking about. You don't grow up in a small village around farm animals without knowing what's what. The angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you; and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the Holy Offspring shall be called the Son of God."

       Mary has her answer.

       But Mary's question, "How can this be?" has been asked over and over again by people who have a problem with what the Bible teaches about the virgin birth.

       One person who might have a problem is the person who has a scientific leaning without much scientific awareness. This person knows enough of science to think that anything true can be measured in a test tube. He does not know enough to recognize the areas of truth that science does not and cannot consider.

       Science considers events, which are natural, repeatable and measurable. A miracle by its very nature is supernatural, unrepeatable and immeasurable. The very nature of miracles is beyond the confirmation of science and depends on the fact that "all things are possible with God" -- that the God who created and structured the universe can also alter the universe.

       Other people don't have a problem with miracles.  They easily believe in things like the wondrous tree at the Promenade.  They love miracles.  They just don't like what the Bible says about the virgin birth because they considerate an insult to sexuality -- as an indication that the Bible thinks that normal married sex is somehow unclean.

       But as C.S. Lewis points out in his book, Miracles, "they might just as well see the feeding of the five thousand as an insult to bakers." The purpose of the virgin birth is not to insult sexuality which God Himself created and declared good. The purpose is to leave no doubt as to Jesus' parentage – that God Himself is the father.

       The virgin birth is not an anti-sex message. If it were God would not have chosen Mary. Mary is not pictured as a maiden resolutely determined to avoid men. She is the opposite. Mary is visited "when she was legally engaged to Joseph" We meet Mary at the beginning of verse 18 as a fiancé, and we leave her at the end of verse 24 as a wife.

       The Bible also doesn't teach Mary's perpetual virginity. In fact, the Bible identifies several half brothers to Jesus including James who became a leader in the early church. Nor are we told that Joseph was warned never to touch Mary. Quite the contrary: "Joseph, don't be afraid to take Mary to be your wife"; and "he did not know her until..." Mary is not only "the blessed virgin." She is also the blessed fiancé and then the blessed wife. Mary is a real woman, not a plaster statue.

       The final issue some people raise with Matthew's use of Isaiah 7:14 is that during His earthly ministry, people didn't call Jesus Emmanuel.

       Now I had a friend in school named Emmanuel Jesus a name given by his devout Catholic mother. He kept this disguised for years with the nickname E.J. We never knew his real name until it was announced over the loud speaker at high school graduation. We never called him Emmanuel.

        In the same way, we never hear Jesus called Emmanuel by his mother or by any other person in the New Testament. No one ever said to Jesus, "Hey, Emmanuel, come over here" or "how about healing my child, Emmanuel?"

       But this misses the point. Matthew doesn't say that Mary is going to call Jesus Emmanuel. He doesn't say his disciples are going to call Jesus Emmanuel. He simply says that some "they" will give Him that title.

       Who are the "they" Matthew is talking about?

       We are -- the church. We are the "they" of Matthew 1:23 - for we know that Jesus is exactly who Matthew declares Him to be -- "God with us." We call Jesus Emmanuel because that name perfectly describes who Jesus is -- "God with us."

       As mystery writer Dorothy Sayers asks about the incarnation of God in her essay The Greatest Drama Ever Staged. "What does the church think of Christ? The Church's answer is this: that Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of words, the God "by whom all things were made." His body and brain were those of a common man; His personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms. He was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; He was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be "like God" - He was God.

       "Now, this is not just a pious commonplace;" Sayers continues. "It is not commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things; that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - God had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game God is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money, to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man.   He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought the whole thing worthwhile.”

       Think of what this says about human life in general. "God with us" gives us profound dignity.  In spite of all that is in humanity which is ugly, twisted, and evil, God does not abandon s or give up on us. Instead, God takes up into His own being the very nature of humanity. In spite of our brokenness, we have worth. We are worthy enough of the second Person of the Trinity to become human.

       In Jesus of Nazareth, God participates fully in all that we experience in this life. He is, "God with us", going through the trauma of birth, going through the stages of physical, emotional, intellectual development. He is, "God with us", at 12 years old in trouble with His mother because He was seeking to understand His identity and mission independent of her. He is, "God with us" touching the limbs and faces of those rejected by the world. He is "God with us" in our grief, feeling the emptiness of loss and separation, feeling the sense of futility and despair. He is, "God with us" in Gethsemane wrestling with doing what He knows to be right but trembling at the consequences. He is, "God with us," in the Roman Palace — the victim of injustice. After that mockery of a trial, there kneels Emmanuel, spat upon and whipped by soldiers -- God experiencing first hand the ugly side of our humanity.

        Jesus was never as attractive as that tree at the Promenade in its made-up state.  Isaiah 53 says that he had “no form or beauty that we should desire Him.”  This is especially true at the cross. 

       But there He is, "God with us," at Golgotha, nails being driven into His hands and feet. There He is, "God with us" taking upon Himself the curse that is justly ours. Here is the one who knew no sin becoming sin for us and absorbing its punishment. Here is the One who made all things subjecting Himself to that which ruined His creation — Emmanuel, "tasting death" as Hebrews 2:9 declares, swallowing it whole and draining the poison of its sting. .

       And then we see Him once more. There He is, Emmanuel, the same one born in Bethlehem's stable standing outside the empty tomb alive! And He says: "Do not fear, for I am the living One; I was dead, but now am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death" (Rev. 1:17-18). "Because I live you shall live also!" (John 14:9). And there He is, "God with us," standing before those who would follow Him declaring "Go — I am with you always even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20).

       2010 will soon be here. We have no idea what this next year will bring. We live in a highly unstable world where anything can happen. Our economic conditions could drastically change. Our health might deteriorate; we may lose loved ones. But none of this will change the meaning of Christmas -- God will still be here with us and totally for us.

       That is the good news of Christmas. In Bethlehem the Lord of the Universe, the King of Nations, became and now is and will be forever "God with us."

       And if we belong to Him, we have unchangeable worth. We will never, ever again, be alone. No place you go or are taken, nothing that happens in you or to you, changes that fact. Unlike that cut off tree at the Promenade you don't have to be taken to the landfill next week. Emmanuel, "God with us" declares God's commitment to us and our wholeness -- a commitment to be our Helper, Rescuer, Healer, Savior - forever.