God with us

Immanuel, God with us, is the name that God directs Joseph to give Jesus, taken from a promise made through Isaiah.  It is a very special name for Matthew, for whom it forms a through-line of his Gospel culminating in Jesus’ promise that concludes the story: “I am with you always, even unto the end ofthe age.”

It’s grand to think of “God with us.”  He’s with Israel against the threatening foreign armies, he’s with the Church unto the end of the world!

Yet Immanuel is not merely a grand concept that sweeps across cultures and epochs, conjuring armies and kingdoms.  It’s as finite and real as a baby in the arms of a young couple in a small village on the outskirts of the Roman empire.  

Joseph and Mary weren’t grand.  They were simple, devout, young.  Joseph was faced with the hard dilemma of a pregnant fiance and social shame.  Matthew says that Joseph “considered” these things–which may be appropriately translated as “took to heart, was concerned about, was angry at.”   There is intensity in it.  

And God was with him, concrete and accessible. He provided an answer for Joseph in a dream.  The answer was the infant. The angel said to Joseph, “you name him.”  Jesus was the answer for Joseph–both in that moment of trial, and for all the moments thereafter.  

Jesus isn’t just a means to end.  Jesus himself saves: “he will save his people from their sins.”  And this is how he saves: by being with us. In our sins and also our predicaments, pressures, concerns, and struggles. And in our joy.