Sermon - 4th Sunday of Advent (12/22/2019)
Is. 7:10-16; Ps. 80:1-7, 17-19; Rom. 1:1-7; Mt. 1:18-25
“All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”
For the next year, our Sunday gospel readings will mostly be taken from the gospel according to Matthew. One of the unique things about Matthew’s gospel is that he wants very much to show us how the story of the revelation of God in Jesus is profoundly and deeply connected to the revelation of God in the Jewish Scriptures. And he does that by, in a number of passages starting with the one we read today, making an explicit connection between a story he tells about Jesus and a specific Old Testament story – a connection that Matthew believes will help us understand what God is saying to us in both stories.
In telling the story of the birth of Jesus, the Old Testament story Matthew wants us to think about is the passage from Isaiah we read this morning. Isaiah is speaking with King Ahaz in Jerusalem. Ahaz is the 7-great-grandson of King David, who ruled in Jerusalem over two of the 12 tribes of Israel. The king of Syria and the king of the other 10 tribes of Israel were threatening war against King Ahaz, and he knew Judah was not strong enough to defend itself against them. So he was planning to make an alliance with the Assyrians, which was the evil empire of the day. This alliance would have required King Ahaz to allow for the worship of Assyrian gods in the temple in Jerusalem.
So Isaiah goes to King Ahaz to plead with him not to make an alliance with Assyria. Ahaz may think that serving the gods of Assyria will give him more power, but Isaiah tells him that the god of Israel is about something entirely other than the power of this kingdoms of this world. It’s about the kingdom of justice and peace of which Isaiah spoke so passionately and beautifully in the passages we have been reading all during Advent: the kingdom where the lion lies down with the lamb, where swords are beaten into plowshares, where the desert blooms and the blind see. The world in which God eventually will take flesh and suffer violence rather than inflict it. So Isaiah pleads: Your Majesty, God appointed David and his offspring to rule over a kingdom that is fundamentally different from the kingdoms of this world. Just because you’re worried about invasion from two little kingdoms isn’t a reason to sell your soul.
And, Isaiah adds, by the way, even though you should do the right thing here no matter what the consequences, I will also tell you, you really don’t have anything to worry about from these two kings. If you don’t believe me, ask for a sign and I’ll give it to you. And King Ahaz says, Oh no, I would never test God by asking for a sign. (Of course, he says this not because he is so pious. It’s because he’s already decided to say no to Isaiah and yes to the Assyrians.)
But Isaiah says: Well, I’m going to give you a sign anyway. There is a young girl right now who is getting ready to give birth to her first child. And those of you who have had children know what it’s like to come home from the hospital for the first time with a helpless, vulnerable new human being, and think: Good God, what have we done? I am not ready for this responsibility. I don’t know how to take care of this thing. What are we doing?
Isaiah says to King Ahaz, There is a young woman preparing to give birth to her child. She is facing an overwhelming responsibility for which she feels unprepared. The father of the child will not even be there to give the child a name, as tradition dictates is the father’s responsibility. So she will name her child, and she will name him Emmanuel: God is with us. You see, King Ahaz, you may not have faith that God is with you, that God is right now at work in the world – but she does. You, King Ahaz, may think you’re doing the practical and responsible thing here, but this young woman is doing something risky, something daunting, something amazing and wonderful and beyond what she can imagine she can handle, and she will do it because she has faith that God is with her. And by the time her child is walking and talking, everything she is afraid of today will all be resolved – and I tell you, so will be the problem of the two kings that you are worried about today. That, Your Majesty, son of David: that is your sign.
Matthew reminds us of this story of Isaiah the prophet as he tells us another story, about a 14-great-grandson of King Ahaz by the name of Joseph. Like his ancestor King Ahaz, Joseph was faced with a difficult situation that was not of his own making: his fiancée Mary was with child, and the one thing Joseph knew for a fact was that he was not the father. Joseph did not want to accuse Mary of adultery, for which the penalty was death by stoning, but he also didn’t want the shame of getting married to a woman who was already pregnant with someone else’s child. So in the great tradition of his family, Joseph came up with a face-saving compromise: a quiet divorce.
But just as the Lord sent the prophet Isaiah to speak God’s word to King Ahaz, a messenger of the Lord came to Joseph and said: Don’t be afraid, Joseph, to do the right thing here. And I know your mind is made up, and you think you’ve made the practical, reasonable decision, and you probably don’t want a sign. But I’m going to give you a sign anyway. There is a young girl who is about to have a child. And she has faith that this child is from the Holy Spirit of God. You may not have faith that God is working in the world, you may not have faith that God can bring something good and wonderful out of this apparently shameful situation. But she believes it. She is willing to act on her faith that God is working in her. This is your sign, Joseph, son of David: a young unmarried girl getting ready to bear a child, full of faith that God is still with us, even in the fear and uncertainty of this moment. Is this so different from the sign that was given to your 14-great-grandfather? Can you accept this sign that your ancestor King Ahaz would not?
Matthew invites us to see these stories together, because Matthew sees them as the same story: the story of the one God of Israel. The story of the sons and umpteen-great-grandsons of David, who so often make up their minds to do what makes sense in the human world of power and respectability, and the story of brave young women of faith whose trust that God is with us, that God is active and present in the world using God’s people to bring about reconciliation and second chances and new life, that the Holy Spirit is working in ordinary people willing to do extraordinary things.
King Ahaz refused the sign. Over his 20 years as king, he never got over his infatuation with the power of the Assyrian Empire, and the second book of Kings tells how he perpetuated horrific crimes on his people and even his own family in the Assyrians’ name. But his descendent Joseph, Matthew tells us, accepted the sign. He abandoned his sensible plan, took Mary as his wife, and took on the responsibility of a father by naming her child. As the messenger of the Lord instructed him, he named her child not Emmanuel, but Yeshu-yah, in our language, Jesus, a name which means: The Lord saves.
Like Ahaz and Joseph, we live in difficult times. We face complicated situations that are not of our own making, we often know the right thing to do. But it often feels so impractical, this kingdom of God of which Isaiah speaks, this dream of wholeness and peace. But if we doubt that God’s kingdom is real, if we are unsure how God can bring something good and wonderful out of whatever difficulties we are experiencing, there are signs all around us that God is, in fact, still at work in women and men of faith. In the words of the great modern Advent hymn that we are about to sing, all the earth is hopeful, the whole world is yearning for God to come and save us. Look to the hope of people of faith, let the faith of others carry you if you don’t feel it right now yourself. For a young woman is ready to bear a child. If you are willing to accept it, this is a sign that God is ready to come to life in you as well.