Rev. Teri Peterson
PCOP
Emmanuel
Matthew 1.18-25
21 December 2014,
Advent 4, NL1-16
Now the birth of Jesus
the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to
Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the
Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose
her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had
resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the
child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you
are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this
took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
‘Look, the virgin
shall conceive and bear a son,
and
they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is
with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord
commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her
until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
On Monday this week, the
world watched as a fundamentalist terrorist took people hostage inside a café
in Sydney, Australia for a harrowing 16 hours. In the middle of that 16 hours,
a woman named Rachel Jacobs used Facebook and Twitter to tell how she saw a
Muslim woman on the train remove her headscarf, presumably afraid to be in
public as a Muslim woman while a man misusing her religion was all over the
news.
From that tweet, a
movement was born. The hashtag #Illridewithyou took off, as people used it to
offer to accompany Muslims who were afraid that they would be targets because
of this one deranged person’s actions. Throughout the week, people sat next to
strangers on busses and in taxis, offered rides, and walked to places they did
not need to go.
As this all happened,
I was reminded of the revolution in Egypt in 2011, and in particular of how
when the call to prayer sounded in the streets of Cairo, the crowds of
protestors would divide into rows of Muslim men praying, encircled by Christian
and non-religious people facing outward, holding hands, protecting them.
And then I thought
about the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, and the Colombia accompaniment program.
You may know that Colombia has been torn apart by war. Fighting between various
factions of rebels and government-supported guerilla groups, including
kidnappings, murders, and mass displacements of people from their lands has
been going on for more than a decade. Ten years ago, the Presbyterian Church in
Colombia asked us for help, because people advocating for the displaced people
and working for an end to the drug trade that funds the fighting were being
targeted. Since 2004, Presbyterians from the US have been spending a month at a
time in Colombia, going everywhere with church and community leaders, just
being present. It is tangible solidarity, as well as providing a measure of
safety. It’s a gift of hope and help in the midst of the hard and grief-filled
work.
And I thought of the
two pastors serving the church I was attending at the time my mother died. The
night I found out, one of them called and spoke to me about her parents for a
few minutes. The other showed up in my living room with cookies and tissues,
and sat with me in my shock, and then with my housemates as they tried to
figure out how to help me.
I only have fond
memories of one of those pastors.
To be present is a
powerful thing. We often underestimate the importance of just showing up,
thinking we have to know the right thing to say. Or thinking we have to know
everything that is going on before we can pick up the phone or show up at the
door. We forget that presence is a real gift, and we end up keeping it to
ourselves instead of sharing.
Meanwhile, today’s
scripture reading contains something else we often gloss over or forget. We
have been so trained to not notice, that even I didn’t realize just how
powerful a statement Matthew was making until someone asked me a question earlier
this week.
The angel appears to
Joseph and tells him to stick with Mary, even though that is against every
possibly cultural rule. Joseph was already being overly nice by not having her
stoned in the street, and now he was being asked to make a life with her….to
ride with her, to protect her, to accompany her, to show up and be there. In
the midst of the instructions, the angel tells Joseph “and you shall name the
child Jesus, for he will save his people.” It’s not just their baby to ooh and
ah over, to teach to walk and read and laugh and cry, to dress in special
holiday outfits and to introduce to the grandparents, but a baby born for a
whole people. Already, Joseph and Mary have to share, and the baby isn’t even
born yet. And the name Jesus—Yesu—means “God saves.”
Then in the next
sentence, Matthew explains why this is important, by quoting the prophet Isaiah
regarding a child that shall be born, and he shall be named Emmanuel, which
means God is With Us.
The question I was
asked this week was: why does the angel say to name him Jesus, but the prophet
says his name will be Emmanuel?
We are so used to
singing the carols and using a variety of titles for Jesus that most of us
don’t even think about this, but for those who haven’t been immersed in the
story before, it does seem odd. Two sentences, two names, two reasons, no
explanation. Thanks a lot, Matthew.
If we back up to the
first half of chapter 1, good old Matt does actually set the scene, but in a
way that few of us can pronounce, so again we gloss right over. For 17 verses,
Matthew gives a detailed genealogy so full of people that if we were to read it
this morning, Kathy would be giving me the side-eye while the rest of you
glazed over.
I confess I have
always loved the genealogies, though I’m not sure I could put my finger on why.
I think it has something to do with being connected to these ancestors in the
faith—knowing that I am not the first nor the last to walk this path with God,
but rather part of a long line of God’s people. Then I read a story that
brought me up short. I hardly ever tell other people’s stories in my sermons,
but this one bears telling in its entirety. It is “about
a missionary who worked some years ago among a very primitive group of people
in Papua New Guinea. The missionary worked as a translator of the Bible. His
world and the world of those for whom he translated the scriptures were very
different. To help bridge these worlds the missionary translator always worked
with a language helper. First the missionary would make his translation. Next
he would share his translation with his helper. If the language helper thought
the translation was adequate he would in turn read it to his people to get
their reactions to the material.
“One day the missionary showed some photographs of
places in the Holy Land to the people in order to help them understand. The
people were surprised that the events of Jesus' life took place here on earth.
They had thought the stories about Jesus were stories about the spirit world.
Then an even more astonishing event took place. The missionary was translating
one of the four gospels. The genealogy, the long list of Jesus’ family tree,
given in the gospel seemed to the
missionary to be quite irrelevant and beside the
point. But he translated it any way. Next he read his translation of the
genealogy to his language helper expecting him to be bored to death with the
long list of the names of Jesus’ ancestors.
“The helper, however, was not bored at all. Instead,
he promptly announced to the missionary that a very important meeting should be
held that night so that the missionary might read today's translation to as
many people as possible. When evening came the house was full. The missionary
had never seen so many people attend a Bible reading before. The language
helper asked the missionary to read his translation for the day. The missionary
began to read name after name after name. "Abraham was the father of
Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his
brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar..."
“As he read he realized that something strange was
happening. The crowd was crisply attentive. They closed in upon him as he read.
He was actually afraid they might crush him. He was afraid that what he was
reading must have offended some ritual taboo about which he knew nothing.
Perhaps they were angry with him. And he had no way to escape. He forced
himself to keep on reading the names.
“When he had finished reading one of the men said to
him: "Why didn't you tell us all this before? No one bothers to write down
the ancestors of spirit beings. It is only real people who keep track of their
genealogy." "Jesus must be a real person!" another voice cried
in astonishment. "His genealogy is longer than ours!", cried out
another. Still another said, "Jesus must have been a real man on this
earth. He's not just white man's magic!" “ [1]
Jesus Emmanuel—God
saves, by being with us. God entered the human story, has a genealogy, sits beside
us on the bus,. Not just another story, not just in some heaven light years
away, but here, in this place, now, in this life, with this body, in the flesh:
we are saved by presence. This is not two different names Matthew gives us, nor
even a name and a title—it is a description of exactly the kind of gift God
gives: the gift of presence, and presence saves.
And we are made in the
image of God, called to become more Christ-like…what if we too gave the gift of
presence? What if we embodied God-With-Us, allowing the Spirit to use our bodies
to be good news for those who are lonely, those who are afraid, those who are
sick, those who are grieving, those who are imprisoned, those who are
oppressed?
Yesu Emmanuel—God saves,
by being with us. May we, like Joseph and Mary, participate in God’s work.
Amen.
