Immanuel for a broken world

News reports continue to pop up about problems, inequalities, prejudice, violence, and tension in our communities, in our nation, in our world.  Like many of you, I, too, would love to see news outlets publicize stories that do not lend themselves to screaming headlines and fear-inducing reactions.  Alas, we cannot control the news media any more than we can control most of the events in our world. But, of course, the word "gospel" means "good news."  And we are in the midst of that season of the Church's liturgical year when one word keeps getting brought to the forefront of our worship and our attention:  Immanuel.  (And just for "inquiring minds that want to know," you sometimes see the word spelled Immanuel and other times Emmanuel.  It all depends on whether it comes from the Hebrew or the Greek Scriptures, respectively.  So both are okay.)

In an Advent devotional booklet I wrote for a congregation I once served, I shared this poem concerning my thoughts about Immanuel...

Every lover of dinosaurs knows:

Herbivores eat plants,

Carnivores eat herbivores,

and other things with meat.

Carnivores love the carnal,

that which is flesh and bones.

Thus Jesus is God who has become

intimate with the carnal --

become flesh and blood,

just like us --

The Creator has become the creature.

Why?

So that we know,

for a certainty,

that God Almighty now knows

the real struggles we know,

living in this less-than-perfect world.

More than that,

we now know,

for a certainty,

that God will never leave us alone.

For God has become one with us,

Immanuel.

The world in which Jesus lived was, at times, violent, oppressive, broken... just as is ours.  If there had been such a medium at the time, The Jerusalem Times probably would have run the same stories with the same sensationalistic headlines as The New York Times does now.  But the truth of those long-ago days is just as real and present and dependable as the Truth is now for us, in the midst of our sometimes violent, oppressive, broken world.  Jesus, Immanuel, is with us as we walk our path.