"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us." Matt 1.23
I’ve just moved flat and seriously ‘downsized’. It meant getting rid of about 4,000 books to various good homes, and of course you begin to look at them once you start bidding them farewell.
And so it was that last night I found myself reading The House at Pooh Corner, the Latin version of course, Domus Anguli Puensis.
“Pooh”, said Piglet taking his paw.Humans, like piglets, are social animals. We need the sense that someone is ‘there’. We are, for all of our lives, in some way dependent upon others.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. I was just checking that you were there…”
God himself is a social being: Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the mystical, eternal intimacy of the Trinity.
Then in his incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas, God became a tiny dependent baby, mewling for his mother’s milk. The little boy, Jesus, needed Mary to be there, to hold his hand.
As a grown man too Jesus needed companionship and had many friends: men, women and children.
He had an inner circle of close friends: James and John, and Peter - there with Jesus through the ups and downs of his ministry.
And there at the end of his short life 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 some were there at his crucifixion: his best friend John, and his mother Mary, who had bought him into the world in that stable in Bethlehem.
So now, physically, he is with us on this planet no more. No hand to hold. But there is an even profounder reality of God’s continuing companionship. For Mary has conceived and born a son, and his name is Emmanuel, which means, God is with us.
He is with us because he lived here 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.
Sometimes at Christmas, they show that wonderful animated version of Oscar Wilde’s lovely story, The Selfish Giant. The Giant has been taught to share his garden with all the local children by the appearance of a mysterious little boy at a very low ebb in his life.
But although he searches for this child among the children throughout the rest of his long life, he never finds him, until one day he sees him in a tree in his garden.
Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who hath dared to wound thee?"By being among us Jesus has also taught us that all humans are made in his image, and are to be loved and cared for – another theme of Christmas and our compassion for the poor and needy.
For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.
"Who hath dared to wound thee?" cried the Giant; "tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him."
"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."
"Who art thou?" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."
This means that all our kinships and friendships are part of God’s being with us, being there.
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 there with them.
But companions leave us and Christmas is always a reminder, especially as we get older, of the empty seats around the table.
At the end of Matthew’s gospel, the disciples are filled with foreboding as they realise that Christ is leaving them, from the manger to the skies.
So the end of Matthew’s Gospel re-echos the beginning. 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; he’s there, here, with us.
It’s of course very subjective, but nonetheless real for being that. Loving our partners and friends is very subjective, but nonetheless real for being that.
We started with the boy Christopher Robin, thought about the boy Jesus, and I end with a lesson from another little boy.
A while back I was in Stockholm with my good friends Stefan and Helena and their little boy Einar. We were in a flat he’d never been in before and at one point his parents left the room with our host.
He looked at me, said something in Swedish, then remembered I was that poor simple man who didn’t understand anything anyone said. So he came over, put his thumb in his mouth, and reached up and held my hand. Just checking I was there.
I hope you have a very happy Christmas, and a deepening sense in your life of the continual and reassuring presence of God.
"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means, God is with us."
