Emmanuel (Mt 1:18-25)

The birth of Jesus means Emmanuel, God is with us. This is supposed very comforting and encouraging. But is this what Joseph had experienced? What is the meaning of Emmanuel? This is my concern today (Matt 1:18-25).

Unlike the Chinese god of fortune (財神), ‘God is with you’ does not imply that people would receive it unreservedly and happily, because to experience God is with you is very risky and costly, and this is the experience of Joseph. When Mary told Joseph what had been happened to her, Joseph found it hard to believe and accept. It was beyond imagination that Mary was carrying the Son of God. Had she had hallucinosis? This was why Joseph wanted to dismiss her. This would be a very painful decision to make if Joseph loved Mary deeply. But nothing had been said on the intimate relationship between Joseph and Mary. Since freedom of love was not the norm at that time, Joseph’s decision to dismiss Mary was more about the matter of righteousness than a matter of the struggle of love. To dismiss Mary quietly was his consideration of Mary’s image. Before implementing his decision, Joseph was told in a dream by an angel of the Lord that Mary’s conception was the work of the Holy Spirit, and the baby would be the savior of the people. The Scripture did not give us details of the possible inner struggle of Joseph, but simply described his reaction calmly and peacefully as that, ‘he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife (1:24).’ If the birth of Jesus means Emmanuel, Joseph has a very different experience of ‘God is with us’.

'God is with us’ is not necessarily bringing us peace and fortune. Contrarily, it brings us trouble and embarrassed. This is not because God is a trouble God, but God comes to us in a vulnerable form. This is the experience of Joseph. Even though an angel of the Lord said that the new born baby was Emmanuel, Joseph did not feel peace at all. On the one hand, he was fallen into the struggle of dismissing Mary. On the other hand, he and his family fled to Egypt in order to escape the killing caused by the birth of Jesus. My interpretation has no implication to suggest that it is better not to have God with us. Rather the nature of ‘with’ is not necessarily about fortune. On one occasion, I met a friend who was a psychiatric doctor. He shared with me that he had a serious mentally retarded daughter, but all the members of the family considered her as the most precious. It is hardly to understand his remark, not only because taking care of the serious mentally retarded is exhausted, but also because the carerer would lose much freedom. However, his remark is shared by many families with similar situation. ‘God is with us’ is to retrieve our love and passion for the vulnerable, because God has taken the form of the vulnerable instead of powerful. Are we happy to received such God being with us?

'God is with us’ signifies that God saves us from our sins. However, we are used to understand sin from a personal level, and as a result, God’s salvation has nothing to do with the economic world and political sphere. Sin is always structural. In China, a typical example of the structural sin is the violation of human rights, and therefore, ‘God is with us’ is to protest against the imprisonment of conscientious persons, such as, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. The most recent one is the arrest of Fan Ah Fung (范亞峰) who is a Christian lawyer defending the right of the people. In Hong Kong, it is the domination of capitalistic ideology. More than 1.2 million of people live in poverty, and they are deprived of the right to live in dignity and freedom. The middle class lose the freedom of life, for they are fully occupied by the mortgage. The ‘us’ of the statement ‘God is with us’ is not simply everyone, but the one who are suppressed and lack of freedom. Thus, God not only announces forgiveness, but also condemns.

However, for many of us, ‘God is with us’ takes the form like the Chinese god of fortune. It may make you feel pleasant but makes nothing concrete impact on your life. It is good to receive such form of ‘God is with us’, but you would not lose anything if you have not received it. It is more a matter of custom than a channel of receiving blessing. I am sorry to say that benediction at the end of worship service sometimes has been turned to something like this, not because the benediction is not God’s blessing, but because we do not believe in it. ‘God is with us’ is God’s promise to us, but also an invitation to receive God in a vulnerable form.