Year A: Advent 4 | Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
December 21, 2025
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page (available for three weeks after the date of streaming).
“They shall name him Emmanuel”[1]
is probably one of the most famous statements in the Bible. As Christians, we immediately think of our Gospel reading from Matthew, which quotes this prophecy that Isaiah announced to Ahaz, a Judean king who’s included in Matthew’s genealogy for Jesus,[2] a little more than 700 years earlier.[3]
The Bible does not remember Ahaz kindly. II Kings introduces him by saying, “He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord his God, as his ancestor David had done, but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even made his son pass through fire,[4] according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the people of Israel. He sacrificed and made offerings on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree.”[5] Either he or the court record keepers even appear to have shortened his name from Jehoahaz to remove any reference to Jah, the ancestral god who rescued the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt.[6]
A few weeks ago we talked about the threatening circumstances under which Isaiah prophesied. It turns out that Ahaz is actually responsible for a good bit of that,[7] having invited the Assyrian Empire into the region to distract Judah’s northern neighbors, the two kings mentioned in our Isaiah passage, each of whom had already inflicted massive damage on Judah, crushing them in battle on multiple occasions and even killing Ahaz’ heir. During his mission to become Assyria’s vassal, Ahaz saw the emperor’s altar to Ashur, their national deity, and had his chief priest replace the one in Jerusalem’s Temple with a replica, moving the old altar his ancestor Solomon had consecrated into the palace for private use. The book of II Chronicles tells us that Ahaz eventually boarded up the Temple after having begun to worship Ashur and other Assyrian gods.[8]
So, that is the king to whom Isaiah was speaking, apparently some time before he made his pilgrimage to visit Assyria’s capital. It’s likely that at this point Aram and Samaria (homes of the two northern kings) had already slaughtered more than 100,000 of Judah’s warriors, the prince among them,[9] and had begun to deport almost twice as many of Judah’s citizenry as slaves.[10]
Under those circumstances, it’s easy to see why Ahaz isn’t too eager to “put the Lord to the test.”[11] One of two things was already clear: either Judah’s god had abandoned it, or Jah simply wasn’t strong enough to protect the nation anymore.[12] Hearing that these two kings, each of whom had already brutalized his populace, had joined forced to invade—and with no one to succeed him even in the off chance of a miracle—there was no hope. The end of the story was in plain sight: Ahaz would be Judah’s ultimate—its final—failure of a king.
But not so, Isaiah declares. Despite Ahaz and his people’s faithlessness, neither Samaria nor Aram would be Judah’s death. Preparing for siege, or possibly already under it, Isaiah points to an unmarried teenager[13] and announces she’s not only going to survive this offensive but live to have a child of her own. And despite present circumstances, neither the child nor Judah’s people are going to starve: they’ll all be able to enjoy rich foods like cheese and honey while her son is still a toddler. So despite Ahaz’s rejection of Jah, not only will this future baby’s name state that God is still active among Judah’s people; the entire populace will have already seen it for themselves!
There we have the original context for Isaiah’s famous quote—one likely realized in the birth of Hezekiah, the son who eventually succeeds Ahaz and labors to turn Judah back to their ancestral god. But this is prophecy, which means that Isaiah is beginning to see the glimmer of a pattern, one eventually fulfilled in the birth of Jesus, whom Matthew equally declares to be “Emmanuel.”
The translation Matthew offers of the name is interesting. The structure of the “with”[14] indicates something drawn toward you—something owned or held tightly. It carries the idea of “beside” or “in company with”—possibly a human parallel to the “at hand” John and Jesus use to describe God’s Kingdom. One way of interpreting the phrase could even be “God as our comrade.” This isn’t a god who’s with us in the sense of being a protective talisman or some sort of blessed token we carry in our pocket so we might remind ourselves of a vague sort of divine presence as we go throughout our day. This is a god standing right there beside us, an actual companion present to interact with us and challenge us and support us. This God is with us.
As I already noted, as Christians, we see this as a remarkable reference to who Jesus[15] is: the incarnation[16] of the highest of all divinities walking beside us as an actual human. But again, what we’ve read is prophecy, which means Isaiah’s statement reveals a sort of motif underlying human history and behavior. That means while Jesus is definitely our most celebrated fulfilment, “Emmanuel”—and the whole situation surrounding him—is something we may still experience today, should we be paying attention.
God with us.
In the midst of failure, God with us, carrying us through. In the face of fear and chaos, God with us, undergoing the same trials, experiencing the same pain, and surviving alongside us through the same confusion. Unfaithful and even having rejected the Divine, still, God with us. As destruction, chaos, and even death rise to overwhelm us, God with us. In hope and dread, joy and sorrow, rage and shame: God with us—Love with us; compassion with us; generosity with us. The root, source, and expression of Life itself with us—the very basis of existence, with us wherever and whenever we may be! Challenges rising, circumstances threatening, the future collapsing into the maw of Hell before our eyes—even so, God with us.
What will it take for us to see it? What will it take for us to turn and embrace this underlying reality? What will it take for us to embody the depth of what it is to be God’s true Image, to rise with the authority, mercy, and perpetual kindness, generosity, and devotion to our neighbors’ good? When will we finally claim the fulness, power, and joy of God’s genuine companionship, of our constant baptism in and empowerment with God’s own Breath? And why not this season, this week? Why not now as we, along with Mary and Joseph and millions throughout history, make our final preparations to
“name him Emmanuel”?
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[2] Luke’s genealogy varies significantly between King David and Joseph of Nazareth. Although people have speculated multiple reasons for the differences, no one is truly sure why they diverge so dramatically.
[3] Ahaz reigned in Judah during the second half of the 8th Century BCE.
[4] A reference to Molech worship
[5] II Kings 16:2-4
[6] History gives us his full name as “Jehoahaz II.”
[7] Isaiah 7:17; 8:6-8
[8] II Chronicles 28:22-24
[9] II Chronicles 28:6-7
[10] II Chronicles 28:8
[11] Isaiah 7:12
[12] With Samaria also claiming Jah’s protection, to some extent, Ahaz may have assumed that the god was already taking sides against him anyway.
[13] The Hebrew term describes an unmarried woman of marriable age.
[14] A genitive preposition
[15] The Greek transliteration of a Hebrew name meaning “Jah delivers” (or “protects” or “restores”).
[16] Not simply an avatar or other representative or messenger