“The virgin will be with child, and will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Immanuel – which means, ‘God with us’ (Mat. 1: 23)
As Christians, we know that God is always with us, and always has been. God has never been confined to heaven, however much some have tried to keep him safely in an insulated box. But when the prophets, like Malachi, (Mal 3:1), foretold that: “Suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple” – there was inherently the certainty that God would come to his people in a highly specific way, and at a specific time and place. But would he come in judgment or in mercy? As it turned out, the answer was both.
And everything that Isaiah and Malachi and the other prophets had glimpsed from afar, found its fulfilment in a way that was focused and specific in a way few, if any, could have imagined – although how remarkable it is to read Isaiah chapter 7, and wonder at his insight and spiritual discernment, whatever at the time he might have been expecting or hoping for. “The virgin will be with child, and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)
I think you will probably agree that, when we think of God, we find ourselves imagining him as “sort of everywhere” but with multi-dimensional hearing-aids which enable him to tune in to our prayers. But this! - (‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...’) – this is something quite different. If you want to know a technical theological term to describe it, it is sometimes called the ‘scandal of particularity’. No other religion in the world has anything remotely like it, and they would regard it as both ridiculous in principle and deeply offensive to their deepest held convictions about God – hence the word ‘scandal’. And it is ‘particular’ because it homes in on a particular and identifiable event in time and place.
Everything that the Old Testament had expressed about God and his relationship with us humans; everything that the Old Testament had prophesied and to which it pointed – had now become filtered and focused down into one pinpoint of accuracy. The whole reach and majesty and breath-taking risk of God’s plan for us, had become focused down into a new-born baby.
When we read that this new-born baby is to be called ‘Immanuel’ – it means ‘God is with us’, not in some general sense, but in a strictly particular and personal way. God came down to us in a new-born baby. And if that sounds absurdly miraculous, so indeed is the whole Christian story. There is no other religion in the world remotely like it. It is totally unique.
WHY DID GOD COME TO US IN JESUS?
What was the purpose of this breath-taking event? As the Christian year goes by, we shall discover a wealth of meanings – forgiveness, judgment, faith, hope and love – which we tend to group together under the general term ‘Salvation’.
HOW DID IT ALL BEGIN?
But at Christmas, we begin at the beginning – and we begin with an embrace – an embrace between a mother and her child.
Some while ago, plastic bags from W H Smith carried a quotation from the American author, John Cheever. It says: ‘I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss – you can’t do it alone.’
Virtually all the great artists of the past, especially in the great medieval centuries, had a go at painting Mary with Jesus. Each had a vision which was unique and beautiful and full of meaning. But what I find intriguing is that (to my knowledge) not one of them quite dared to go as far as to portray Mary doing the most obvious act of all – kissing Jesus. (The closest that comes to mind is John Everett Millais in his 1849 painting of ‘Christ with the Holy Family’ when Jesus was a young boy. And that caused spluttering outrage to the Victorian viewers!). And from the same group as Millais, we have, of course, Christina Rosetti’s famous poem/hymn ‘In the bleak mid-winter’ - with its verse:
Angels and archangels/ may have gathered there
Cherubim and Seraphim/ thronged the air;
But his mother only/ in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved/ with a kiss.
It seems to me that artists have almost always represented the feelings of the wider church in maintaining an instinctive reserve about the relationship between Mary and the baby Jesus. Jesus is held slightly apart, representing his divine status over against the human Mary. It is a psychological step too far for the embrace to become too intimate. Surely you must maintain a pious barrier, (expressed in churches as that between nave and sanctuary). You don’t even get what we would call a ‘cuddle’ and Mary’s expression is ‘holy’ rather than ‘motherly’.
Indeed the Christian doctrine of the incarnation is expressed in the New Testament in ways which rightly stress his divine nature. “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (Colossians 1:19) being a model example. It was crucial to the Christian Gospel that Christ must be fully divine, for if he was not God, he could not have won our salvation. It took the Greek Church over 300 years to work out how to express this, while maintaining also his full humanity. As we say in the Nicene Creed, Christ is ‘Very God of very God...being of one substance with the Father..’
GOD WAS IN CHRIST – RECONCILING THE WORLD TO HIMSELF (2 Cor 5:19)
So, with that in mind, let’s come back to the kiss. You can’t do it alone. There was much to unfold as the Christian story continues, through teaching and healing, to the cross and the resurrection. But where did it all begin – and without which none of the rest would have had the life-changing meaning we give to it?
My thought for you this year about the wonder and miracle of Christmas is that – when Jesus was born to Mary, and amid all the stage set of ox and ass, shepherds and wise men, something very intimate occurred which was of crucial significance to the whole world – then, now and forever. Humanity, expressed in Mary, kissed God. And God did what he had come to do; – in Mary, God kissed us. And all the rest is talk and Christmas presents! Immanuel – God is with us indeed.
Robert
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