The Sign of Emmanuel

It is not unusual for me to be a bit slow getting into the Christmas spirit.  This year, though, I’m not entirely sure I have wanted to get into the Christmas spirit.  I have not gotten out the Christmas music so far.  I have had a hard time uttering the phrase that I am normally anxious to repeat both to friend and stranger at this time of year, “Merry Christmas!”  I even missed my battle with getting the tree in the stand and the lights on the branches.  For some inexplicable reason, both were accomplished quickly and easily.  There was no proclamation after the first attempt, “Uh-oh, it isn’t straight.”  There were no strands of lights that failed to work.  I was deprived even of this yearly ritual that has the same effect as Marley’s ghost paying a haunting visit on Christmas Eve making Scrooge joyful that Christmas has not passed him by after all. 

This year, it has just been hard even to get anxious about getting the Christmas spirit.  With all that has gone on, I haven’t much wanted to.  Senseless killings in Ferguson and Staten Island and the exposure of our country’s racial animosity not far below the surface of everyday life have been much more on my mind.  This weekend the concerns of a very broken world intruded once again to push Christmas out of my mind in the revenge murder of two New York City police officers.  When it comes to the Christmas spirit, I just haven’t been interested this year.

Maybe, though, I have not so much been uninterested in Christmas as coming to terms with it in a new way.  Maybe Christmas this year, for the first time, is not proving to be a distraction from the ills around us and that is how it should be.  Maybe Christmas this year has finally stopped being the most wonderful time of the year and instead become that time of the year when the world as it is runs headlong into the world as it should be, and that really ought to disturb us.  Maybe Christmas this year will remind us of God’s dream for all of us, and not only how far we are from it, but also how much we are needed by God, revealed at this time in the helplessness of a child, to make it so.  Maybe Christmas this year will be about comfort in a way it rarely is, not so much warm, cozy fireplaces, but comfort in the sense of its original meaning, being filled with strength for the task ahead.  

For me, this Christmas has had shed light on a paradox I have pondered for many years.  It is the paradox of Emmanuel.  On the one hand, we have the reference to Emmanuel when the angel reveals the coming birth to Joseph in the Gospel of Matthew (1:23).  We read this as a sign of the coming sweetness and light, of a divine birth, of an angelic announcement of good news and great joy, of shepherds gathered at the manger, and of wise men traveling from the East to worship the child with precious gifts.

The angel, though, is quoting Isaiah about the sign of a virgin bearing a child, and there it is a different connotation I have usually found difficult to accept.  There the sign of Emmanuel announces a terrible judgment.  “The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah” (7:17).  It’s a different picture than what we normally associate with Christmas.

This year I’m seeing the connection.  Emmanuel, God with us, does not mean that all is right with the world because God makes a home among humankind.  It means God’s presence among us in the Christ reveals what is not right and that once again we have the opportunity to make it so. 

The Christmas spirit is taking on a fuller, perhaps more mature, meaning for me this year.  Christmas this year is not a distraction from what is.  It is a call to participate in what will be.  Christmas this year is not an invitation to put adulthood aside.  It is an invitation to grow up into the stature of Christ.  Christmas this year is not an affirmation of the way things are.  It is a promise of the way they shall be.  In that there is good news, and joyful tidings, and comfort abounding.

So, this year Ginger, Annie, and I wish all of you a paradoxical Christmas, one in which we are not lulled into complacency but stirred into action as our gift to the Child, Emmanuel, God with us.

Peace,