4 Advent

December 21, 2025

Isaiah 7.10-16; Romans 1.1-7; Matthew 1.18-25

It’s either an advantage or a disadvantage having a poet for your priest.

 

Because, as a poet, as you all know, I obsess over things.

 

Like words.

 

I will take a word and just examine it from every side.

 

I will weigh it and throw it around and take it apart and put it together again.

 

And sure enough, this morning is one of those morning wherein we encounter a word I’m kind of obsessed with.

 

Because in our readings today, we have a word that sort of permeates everything we hear.

 

And that word is. . . .

 

Emmanuel.

 

Emmanuel is not a word we think about very often, unless we know someone by that name.

 

Certainly, throughout our scriptures readings today, we  hear that one common echo:

 

Emmanuel.

 

It’s beautiful!

 

It just kind of rolls off the tongue.

 

Emmanuel.

 

In our reading from Isaiah today, we find God speaking through the prophet announcing that, through the lineage of David, Immanuel will come to us.

 

Paul in his letter this morning talks of how God worked to bring about this revelation of God’s Son.

 

And in our Gospel reading, the angel calls Joseph, “son of David” and that through this lineage, through Mary his spouse, we have Emmanuel.

 

Sadly, we almost never hear it in our reading outside of Advent and Christmas.

 

But here it is.

 

And in addition to it being a beautiful word—it really is—it’s also a vitally important word.

 

It means, “God with us.”

 

In Hebrew, the “El” is the word or name for God.

 

Emanu means with us.

 

So God is with us.

 

In the Jewish understanding of this it means that God is not only with us—God’s very Presence is with is—but that in being with us and present with us, God is also faithful.

 

Now we see why it’s so important to us.

 

Just think about what that word and name means.  

 

God with us.

 

God is here with us.

 

Right now.

 

In our turmoils.

 

In the difficulties of this life.

 

In the griefs we are enduring.

 

Understanding that and embracing that we realize:

 

Our relationship with God changes.

 

No longer is God that distant presence—out there.

 

That word, Emmanuel allows God to become a real presence. Right here.

 

And we feel—truly feel—that God truly does LOVE us!

 

And accepts us.

 

Fully and completely.

 

For who we are and what we are.

 

This coming week, like almost no other time in the Church Year, we recognize that what happened in the birth of Jesus is the collective experience for us who have experienced that intellectual and spiritual realization that God is truly with us.

 

We realize that we, like Jesus, are anointed.

 

We, like Jesus, are called to be the Presence of God in this world to others.

 

We are called to be Emmanuel as well.

 

I know that seems somewhat overwhelming.

 

It seems strange that Emmanuel is something each of us can embody as well.

 

But that is what we are called to do as followers of Jesus.

 

We are all called to be like Jesus.

 

And in being like Jesus, we are called, as Children of our loving God, to embody God’s Presence in our lives, and share that Presence with others.   

 

This coming week we are very strongly and uniquely reminded that God is no longer that distant, vague God out there.

 

We celebrate God’s Son coming among us in that manger, born to the Virgin Mary.

 

But if we only objectify that birth, if we only see it as an event that happened then and there, in that time, in some place distant from us and our current world, we have missed the point of what it means to truly follow Jesus.

 

That birth of Jesus then is a reminder that each of our births was sacred and holy in their own right.

 

That God was with us in our own births.

 

That each birth is a kind of Emmanuel moment.

 

Emmanuel shows us that there are no longer barriers.

 

No longer is there is a distance.

 

No longer is there a veil separating us from God.

 

In Emmanuel, we find that meeting place between us as humans and God.

 

God has reached out to us and has touched not with a finger of fire, not with the divine hand of judgment, but with the tender, loving touch of a loving Parent.

 

This is what Incarnation is all about.

 

And Incarnation, it’s important to remember, continues to happen.

 

It happens in each of us.

 

Jesus shows us that reality.

 

God came to us, where we are, and met us.

 

God dwells among us, within each of us.

 

Now.

 

We may not have asked for it happening.

 

We may not even have imagined how it could have happened.

 

But it did.

 

And we are so much better for it.

 

This time of Advent and Christmas reminds that “God is truly with us”

 

Emmanuel is that point in which God and humanity met.

 

This week, as we celebrate that event in a special way, let us never forget that fact God continues to reach out to us where we are.  

 

Let the events of this week remind us in a beautiful way that God truly  breaks through the barriers and, in doing so, destroys those very barriers.

 

Hopefully this realization that each of is Emmanuel as well will transform us and leave us ultimately changed in ways we might not even fully realize or appreciate even at this point.

 

The coming is Emmanuel—God with us—is here.

 

Because of Jesus’ birth, we are Emmanuel to those who need God’s Presence in this world.

 

This week, we see the trees, the lights, the Santas and the reindeer.

 

But the real Christmas—that life-altering event in which God has come along us where we are—is here.

 

It is in each of us.

 

It is in those we encounter in our own lives.  

 

Truly this is Emmanuel.

 

 

Because God is with us, we should rejoice.

 

So rejoice!

 

The star that was promised to us has appeared in the darkest night of our existence.

 

It is a sign.

 

It promises us light, even when all seemed bleak before.

 

There now is a way forward through the darkness.

 

And we will not travel that way forward alone.

 

And that light that reminds of this holy and amazing fact is now shining brightly, right there, before us.

 

And its light is burning away those dark clouds of fear and doubt and despair.

 

I don’t know about you, but that for me seems as good of a reason as any to rejoice.

 

Amen.