Whose story is this?

Last weekend I had the privilege to have breakfast with a Vietnam veteran and another man, a father of four. The vet. told me much more than I ever knew about the war through his eyes. He was truly a patriot as well as a humble and grateful man. What amazes me most (upon reflection) is how his experiences of 40 years ago shaped everything - everything - about his life since then. He returned to the states wanting to attend college, but even though he had access to government financial aid, he could not imagine associating himself with a university (hotbeds for anti-war protests). His career, his passions, his family life, his faith - all of them - are what they are because of his tour in Vietnam. I could not understand him until I began to understand his war experiences.
I had planned to preach the next day from Matthew 2. The statement in verse three says a great deal about the story in which the Jews (generally) saw themselves: "When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him." The birth of another, rival, heaven-sent king marked a new "chapter" in Herod's mind. Others in Jerusalem: Zealots, Pharisees, Sadducees, and maybe even the hermetic Essenes outside Jerusalem would have been "troubled" for various reasons - either worry or hope. But, I can guess, most people saw a new king - the Messiah even - as the next chapter in their story, a resolution to their prolonged Exile and subjugation by foreign powers (which the Prophets said was God's judgment on idolatry and injustice). Israel was largely defined by one big story - Exile unending. Maybe the Messiah would be the one to turn the page, getting their story into the good times.

But then there is that word about fulfillment just back in Matthew 1:22-25. Jesus was Immanuel. "God is with us," the straightforward meaning of that Hebrew compound would certainly have been understood to imply "God is on our side (finally)" to King Ahaz of Isaiah 7 (when the prophecy was originally given). This phrase was still the hope of Jews who heard of Jesus' birth. Maybe God will be on our side, clean up our mess, restore his blessing on us. Maybe God would fix their story.

Matthew, the other Evangelists, and Jesus himself, ultimately, understood "God is with us" to mean more than "God is on our side." God was now one of us, a baby among us. The genealogy of the last chapter reminds us that the earlier son of David had built the majestic temple where God would make himself available to his people - where he would be with his people. This later Son of David accomplished a permanent residence of God among men. Jesus' story stretched at least as far back as Abraham, just by the genealogy of Matthew 1. We know from other texts that 5 BC (or whenever exactly Jesus was born) was not a new chapter for the story of Israel - Israel's story was (as were and are the scores of stories still going) an introduction to the story of God's Son.