Emmanuel
"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us." Matt 1.23
“Pooh”, said Piglet taking his paw.I did a project on piglets when I was an undergraduate. It was really my room-mate, Andrew’s project - he was an applied biologist.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just checking that you were there…” (The House at Pooh Corner)
We weaned 6 piglets at two weeks, 4 weeks and six weeks. Then we jogged out to the university farm before breakfast each morning and weighed the 18 little piggies (easier said than done), each alone in their own snug little sty. The experiment was to see how early they could be safely weaned.
Sadly, our main finding was that piglets have little piggy nervous breakdowns when they are separated too early from the litter. They are social animals, and integral to their health and well-being is companionship, the warmth of others.
Piglet needed Pooh to be there.
Most mammals are social, and humans are no exception. We were not created to be alone, and we only sustain aloneness with some difficulty.
In the first chapters of the Bible we read of Adam naming the animals and finding none suitable for the companionship he longed for. But then Eve is created: bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh; a companion.
God himself is also a social being: Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the mystical, eternal society. And so it was natural for God to enjoy friendship with his creation. He walked in the garden with the man and woman, in the cool breezes of the evening.
Then in his incarnation, he became a tiny dependent baby, mewling for his mother’s milk and subject to Mary and Joseph for half of his life.
As a grown man too he needed friends. Jesus was fully human. He had many friends: men and women; he loved children and had presumably watched many grow up in his wider family and had doubtless played with the children of some of his disciples.
But he had an inner circle of close friends: James and John, and Peter - there with Jesus for the transfiguration; there in the Garden of Gethsemane - Jesus wanted them with him in his most agonising hour of decision. He goes off to pray, but keeps returning: “just checking that you are there, and preferably awake”. And they were there, after the women, at the resurrection. Of the three, Jesus had a Best Friend - John, who stands by his mother at the cross.
Now there is no more God, walking with us in the cool of the day. There is no more physical Jesus, ready to sit and chat, and share a drink.
But there is a profounder reality of God’s companionship.
For the virgin has conceived and born a son, and his name is Emmanuel, which means, God is with us.
He is with us in a number of ways.
Since he lived here on earth, and shared our joys and sorrows, he can empathise with us in all that we go through. He is not distant and unmoved, but he is with us in all the richness and vagaries of our lives.
Then he has taught us that all humans are made in his image, and are to be loved, second only to God. So all our kinships and friendships are part of God’s being with us.
We cannot hug God, but we can hold the hand of a friend to check that they are there. And in our turn we can sit with friends and strangers, and by our physical presence assure them that God is with them.
And if through the birth of this baby, Emmanuel, God is with us; then as St Paul says, God is for us and who can be against us? Christmas dispels any superstition that God is somehow out to get us; ready at the least excuse to consign us to hell!
The manger scene is charged with love and a self-giving God who longs still for the companionship of his creation.
But companions leave us and Christmas is always a reminder of the empty seats around the table. The disciples were filled with foreboding as they realised that Christ was leaving them, from the manger to the skies.
So he reassures them in his words of parting: “I am with you always, to the end of the age”. (Matt 28.20)
Here is an even deeper spiritual mystery. For it has been the experience of Christians through the ages, that by God’s Holy Spirit, they sense the loving presence of God; Emmanuel, closer than the breath on our lips.
It is of course very subjective, but nonetheless real for being that. Loving our partners and friends is very subjective, but nonetheless real for being that.
And what of Emmanuel, God with us, beyond the close of the age?
This has been a year with not a little grief and anguish. John the Divine lived in more uncertain and turbulent times than ours and in his vision, Emmanuel gives the ultimate reassurance of his presence and Being:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away." (Rev 21.1-4)"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us."
