Welcome!
To Week 1 of the Sunday School in a Bag Advent and Christmas program – six weeks devoted to Immanuel and the question: What does it really mean to say “God Is With Us”?
If you have not already, check out the program promo trailer below and get a better feel for what these next six weeks are all about. Or continue right on into the lesson for Week 1.
IMMANUEL
That term sums up the guiding themes of these 6 Christmas lessons.
What does Immanuel really mean? What do we really mean when we, as individuals, as Christians, as a Church, make this rather audacious claim that “God Is With Us”?
I have, over the last few weeks, preparing for the Christmas season, become obsessed with this question. And it all began, wholly unexpectedly, here, as I translated Psalm 46. The match to my obsession was the repeated phrase “The Lord of Hosts Is With Us,” which, in Hebrew, is “Adonai Tsavaoth Immanu.”
Immanu, yes. The same Immanu as in the name Immanu-El. And the “Lord of Hosts” in Psalm 46 is, of course, the same God as the El (God) of that name, Immanu-El.
That was it. I translated Psalm 46, not even preparing an Advent service at the time, encountered that one word, Immanu (“with us”), and suddenly, all of Christmas snapped into focus. I translated Psalm 46, and something like the video below happened inside my brain.
Take a listen!
Fun Language Facts
As you may know, there are two acceptable spellings for the name/term Immanuel.
Immanuel OR Emmanuel.
This is because the Hebrew languages uses a different – actually, much older – alphabet than we English speakers use. Different English letters can sometimes be used to represent the same Hebrew letters.
However it is spelled, though, Immanuel (or Emmanuel) is the combination of the Hebrew words Im | Nu | El – literally: “With | Us | God.”
The Hebrew language has a tendency to combine small words, like pronouns and prepositions, into single, longer words. When combining the prepositions Imm (with) and the pronoun Nu (us), Hebrew adds a joining syllable (-ah-) to make everything flow more fluidly. Thus, two words become one, Im + Nu = immanu (or emmanu), the standard way in Hebrew to say “with us.”
El is the most generic word in Hebrew for “a god” or “God.” (Hebrew doesn’t have capital letters, so you’re on your own to figure out if they’re talking about God or god. Don’t worry, though, it’s usually obvious).
What Does It Mean?
Immanuel will be a familiar term to anyone who has spent time in churches during the Christmas season. It is one of the things we are often reminded of during this season – that Jesus, the Savior of the world would be called Immanuel.
How often, though, do we reckon with the profound meaning of Immanuel?
Not the name, but the statement it originated as:
GOD IS WITH US.
The guiding question
One question guides the next 6 weeks: What does it mean for God to be with us – truly, really, spiritually AND physically?
What does this mean, not in some abstract sense, but to us right now, in our real lives, today?
The Follow-up Question
How does the Christmas story shed light on or clarify the ever-present truth of Immanuel?
How is God with the characters of the Christmas story, and how does their experience help us to understand our own?
And the final question
How does (or should) this knowledge that “God Is With Us” change or inform our real lives, behaviors, attitudes – our entire perspective on existence itself?
A way forward
Consider these the guiding discussion questions of all six weeks ahead. Depending on the ages of your children, you may be able to go deep into them. You may just plant the seeds of further thought. You know your own children best, afterall.
It is my hope that dedicating 6 weeks to this question will begin to orientate our minds and hearts toward a life that knows, every step of the way, that God Is With Us. Honestly I do not think the full depth of Immanuel can ever be fathomed by humans. It is a reality to be lived more than comprehended.
To that end, the telling and retelling of these stories, the experiences of those who have lived with God before us, matters more than anything else. It certainly matters more than coming to any kind of conclusive answers. Let us focus in these coming weeks on retelling the stories, learning them by heart, and passing them on to the next generation – a generation which increasingly has never heard them at all.
Let us retell the stories this Christmas season.
The rest, I truly do believe, will follow.
And so, on that note, let us begin, with the first of the Christmas stories, the story of an old priest named Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth. And keep a lookout, the perhaps best known character in the Christmas pageant might just be making an appearance too.
Notes for Discussion:
Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy continues a long-running theme in the Bible – one of the oldest biblical themes, actually – of the woman who cannot have children being miraculously given a child at last by God. This theme runs from Genesis all the way here, to Luke, and serves to highlight to great collaboration between God and woman-kind in the preservation of life in this world.
The point is driven home right away by the first miracle pregnancy story, the story of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham could and did have other children with other wives (polygamy being legal back then). God, however, refuses to accept these other children as the One Promised child. In other words, Abraham is not just the Chosen Father. Sarah is also the Chosen Mother. Without her, there is no Chosen People.
Elizabeth is yet another in a long line of miracle pregnancies. She is also the last. Her encounter with Mary marks a turning point in history. Mary’s is yet another miracle pregnancy, to – but it’s an even greater miracle, a new thing entirely.
The meeting of Mary and Elizabeth in Luke chapter 1 is, in essence the meeting of Old and New Covenants – the boundary line between Old and New Testaments. The New Covenant builds on the old, just as Mary’s pregnancy is an amplification of every miracle pregnancy story before her. But it is also exactly that, and amplification of those other miracles. It goes beyond them.
From this moment on, God is doing a new thing.
That’s all for this week folks!
Unless you want to check out the promo for next week below!
