Tomorrow is this year’s Christmas Day. It is a day on which adherents to the Christian faith all over the world commemorate the birth of a very special individual: Jesus of Nazareth.
Quoting Isaiah 7:14, the Gospel writer, Matthew, mentions that Mary’s son would be called Emmanuel. He says in Matthew 1: 22 – 23, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”)”.
Emmanuel is a Hebrew name comprising two words, namely “Immanu” which means with us, and “El” which is a contraction of Elohim, meaning God. The two words combine to form the phrase “God with us”. Hebrew names with “El” at the end say something about God. For example, “Isra” means “to struggle”. When you add El to Isra you get Israel, the name that was given to Jacob after he had struggled with God’s messenger. The name simply means to struggle with God. Another interesting example is Samuel, which in the original Hebrew is Shemuel. Shem is Hebrew for “name”, so Samuel can mean “God’s name”. Sh’ma means “hear” and, therefore, Samuel can also mean “God hears”. Considering the circumstances in which the Biblical Samuel was born, the second meaning is probably more applicable.
At the time that Jesus was born, Judea was in the shackles of Roman imperialism and, therefore, desperately needed the presence of God to make their situation bearable. Not a kind of God who remained aloof in the heavenly places, but one that dwelt and interacted with them at personal level. They needed an Emmanuel.
Coming, as he did, after a four-hundred-year silent period, Jesus, the Emmanuel, must have offered hope to some people that God had finally arrived.
Some scholars believe that Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, was the last book to be written in that Testament. Many more believe that Malachi was written in 430 BC and predates Nehemiah, which was written in 400 BC.
Whether Malachi or Nehemiah was written last in the Old Testament, it was not until at least four hundred years from that book that God started dealing with His people regularly again. The silence was interrupted by the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus. There is no record of God having spoken to His people through any prophet during the four-hundred-year silent period. Little is known about this period in terms of what happened in Judea, except that is it a period that gave rise to the Jewish sects of the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes. Essenes have never been mentioned in the Bible, probably because they believed in living a monastic life, often characterized by celibacy.
None of these sects believed that Jesus was the Messiah, but some ordinary folk did. They saw a possible new beginning in Judean affairs. Indeed, the way things played out, ordinary people were not left out. Luke records an episode in which angels appeared to very insignificant people in Jewish society, shepherds, bringing to them exciting news about the birth of somebody special: “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
The Shepherds had no idea that the baby whose birth the host of Angels had proclaimed to them was Emmanuel. It was other people who, on interacting with Jesus, realized that the man that had been born in Bethlehem showed characteristics of God living among them.
The 25th of December is a day like any other day. It will come and it will go. Do not let it scar you, physically, financially or otherwise, as result of your overstretching yourself trying to celebrate it. The real significance of the day is not in the celebrations we traditionally undertake by holding parties or exchanging gifts. Rather it is in realizing that, in Jesus, God descended from heaven to live among men.
Just like the Judea needed an Emmanuel, so too does this country, which is shackled by all manner of social ills. That the baby whose birth we remember on Christmas is the Emmanuel should not be lost on any of us. Like the writer of one famous carol, Charles Wesley, wrote, “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail the incarnate Deity, pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.”