Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
I admit to having a bit of a long-standing puzzle in today’s gospel reading (Matthew 1:18-25). The angel tells Joseph to name the baby Jesus. But then just a couple lines later, Matthew proclaims that the angel’s visitation to Joseph, and the discussion of what to name Jesus, is to fulfill a prophecy from the Old Testament: that a virgin will bear a son and he will be called Emmanuel. How is it that this baby is both Jesus and Emmanuel? How do we make this fit? I remember asking my parents about this when I was a kid, and they suggested that “Jesus” and “Emmanuel” mean the same thing.
But, in fact, they don’t mean the same thing. That they don’t mean the same thing is actually part of the point Matthew is making here – one that he hopes will lead us to even greater faith.
The passage gives us the meaning of both names: the baby is to be called Jesus because “he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew also helpfully translates the name Emmanuel for us when he says, “which means ‘God is with us.’” The name “Jesus” tells us something about what this baby will do. He will save people from sins, he will bring salvation. But the second name, Emmanuel, is telling how and why this baby will bring salvation. This is God-with-us.
Note that this is not “Once upon a time God brought us from the land of Egypt and saved us from slavery” nor “Once upon a time God saved us from exile in the North.” God did indeed save the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and from exile in the North (Babylon) as the prophet Jeremiah suggests in today’s Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 23:5-8). From Jeremiah’s perspective, the faith was that God was once with the people, and would be again.
Consider the effect if Jesus’ spoken, written name had been Emmanuel instead. What does that do but give us twenty-first century people the opportunity to say like Jeremiah and the Israelites did, “God was once with us, back in first century Palestine. Maybe God will be with us again someday.”
But, no. I think that Jesus does not have the name “God-with-us” precisely because he IS the “God with us.” If Jesus were named “Emmanuel” couldn’t we all look at each other and say, “Isn’t that a nice name?” But we could also raise the serious question of whether God had really put his money where his mouth is. We could disbelieve, on the basis that it’s a nice name and all, but words don’t mean as much as actions.
God does not come to us with pretty, flimsy words – God does what God says. What God chose to do in first-century Palestine had a lasting effect for all time to come. Once God has entered into human history in that way, it is rather impossible to take God out of it all.
So, it is that God is with us now, and that itself is our salvation, that is how we are saved from sin. We have the opportunity to have God real and present in our lives now, not in some long-ago lifetime ago. As we enter the last week of Advent, may we seek the God who is coming and who has come, and who longs to be with each one of us.
--Jana M. Bennett