ADVENT 4

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: ADVENT 4
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 23, 2001

TEXT: Isaiah 7:10-17 – “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”

Matt. 1:18-25 – “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”

ISSUE: Isaiah tells King Ahaz to trust God: “Ask God for a sign.” But Ahaz intent on not changing his policies and looking to the powers of the world to be his salvation comes under great judgment, by the time a woman conceives and the child grows up to eat common foods of the land, curds and wild honey. This last Sunday of Advent is our day of decision to choose between the powers of the world and the culture or to cling closely to God, who comes among us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
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The scriptural passages from Isaiah and Matthew were rich in meaning for the people who first heard them read in their early Christian Churches, and for the folk looking for hope in what was at times a grim world.
First let me give a little background into the passage by Isaiah the prophet. It was a particularly politically troubled time when Isaiah spoke to King Ahaz. Ahaz was not a very good king. He wearied his subjects, which means he placed great burdens of injustice upon the poor. His policies were lacking. He feared the political enemies of Israel and Syria, and chose to align himself with the more powerful Assyrians at the time. Isaiah implores him to ask for a sign from God to guide him in the right direction. Isaiah knew that the Israel and Syria were not the enemies that Ahaz thought they were. But, Ahaz refuses to ask a sign from God. He gives a pious excuse that it is not appropriate to test God. What he really meant was that he didn’t want either Isaiah or God to meddle with his policies. He was refusing to change, and chose to align himself with the greater powers of the world for protection and safety, which saved him from Israel and Syria but landed him in great trouble with the Assyrians who turn Judah into a vassal state greatly oppressed.
Isaiah turned to Ahaz and said that if he would not ask a sign or turn to God for protection, then God would give him a sign: A young virgin, or a woman of marriageable age, would conceive and bear a son and name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” By the time the child would be old enough to know good from bad, about age 12, the nations, political powers, and kings Ahaz had feared would be gone. Then, Judah and King Ahaz would be humiliated by the Assyrians.
The simple message of Isaiah in a complicated political situation was “trust God.” God is with us. We really do not know who the pregnant young woman was. We do not know who the son was. It could most likely have been Isaiah’s own wife, and Isaiah named the child, like prophets did in those days, a prophetic message: “God is with us.” Remember his first son was named, “A Remnant shall remain.” But remember the message: Trust God and not the powers of the world alone; God is with us. There was for Isaiah and the people of that time no concept of what would happen in far off future years. They lived mostly in the present and the very near future.
Some 700 plus years later, Matthew is writing his Gospel account of Jesus’ story. He’s writing some 70 years after Jesus’ actual birth. Matthew is writing largely for a Jewish community of early Christians, and thus is intent on conveying how Jesus and his ministry is rooted in Hebrew Scriptures and the hope of the nation, which be this time didn’t have much left. For Matthew both genealogy and the work of the prophets played a significant part in his presentation of who Jesus was. The fact that Jesus was son of Joseph made him in the line of the ancient King David whose lineage God had promised would never end. Mary was related to John the Baptist, giving Jesus a priestly prophetic background.
In the Old Testament, Joseph was a dreamer and an interpreter of dreams from whom came the great leader Moses, followed by Joshua who eventually leads the Israelites into the Promised Land. For Matthew, Joseph, the father of Jesus, is the dreamer, interpreter of dreams and protector of his people gives us Jesus, Joshua another form of the name Jesus, to lead his people into the Kingdom of God, the Garden of Eden, the Realm and Dominion of God. Jesus is savior of his people. John the Baptist like Moses calls for a ministry of repentance that is eventually turned over the Jesus to fulfill the hope of God’s kingdom.
Matthew is also famous for picking out passages from the prophets and attempting to illustrate how Jesus is their fulfillment. He quotes in this case, Isaiah 7:10f, “Look, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Immanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” What was and is the church’s teaching? From Mary, a young woman of marriageable age, and by intervention of the Holy Spirit came a prophetic-priestly son whose life revealed the presence of God to his faithful people. The message: Trust in God; God is with us in Jesus Christ our Lord. You need not fear, and you must not place your faith and confidence in the world and the world’s culture for your protection and salvation. Trust God. Put your loyalty in the way of Jesus Christ and therein you find the purpose and the meaning for your life. “Isaiah said it,” says Matthew to his people, “God is with us.” Now we see the fulfillment in the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To a world rife with violence, fear, cruelty, poor and questionable leadership, the message comes to trust in God for both Isaiah and Matthew, and Matthew for us more clearly reveals who that woman is that bears the son and who the son is. In our world today, we still live with a great deal of violence and crime. Our communities rural, suburban, and our cities are not immune from it. We do live with fear, and the events of September 11th have increased our fears. Our imaginations have been triggered with all kinds of on going horrible scenarios of terror from dirty atomic weaponry, to poison gasses and germs, to atomic power plant melt downs. We can look to the culture, to the powerful to save us. But sometimes the culture is as much a mess as our private lives, and the nations powers can be just as uncertain and confused as to what to do, and with whom to make appropriate alliances. Nationally we once backed Osama bin Laden.
As a Christians the message of this season is that God is with us. Turn around to putting your trust and faith in God, which means to repent. Turn back and dream dreams and have visions of hope that come from the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Jesus came and comes in love. He came to serve the world and to show people the way back to a deeper and profounder meaning of what God is, and to reveal the meaning of life. Jesus ministry was first and foremost to reveal the love and forgiveness of God. His proclamation was that God loves and adores his creation. God loves as Jesus did the children who had no significant merit of their own. His intention was to raise up all that had fallen and subject to discrimination and injustice. Jesus’ ministry was an empowering one. His healing ministry was to restore the cursed and oppressed. His ministry was to teach folk to love one another, to keep attached to one another and do what needed to be done to reveal the God that is with us, with you and with me. It was in dying, changing, sacrificing and turning away from the past that Jesus and his disciples came to life full and eternally and meaningfully.
This Advent-Christmas season often gets caught up in giving to the poor and needy. We gave generously stocking gifts for women and their children in refuge centers for the abused. We’ve given generously to The Ark for homeless children. Many of you may also have given to the Red Cross, Episcopal Relief and Development in the wake of September 11th. It is the season of giving. But the core of the season is not just giving it is in a deeper understanding that God is with us. That God comes among us. The season evokes a spiritual understanding that God calls us to love Him, and to recognize our dependence upon him to keep us human. Otherwise we drift away in to being just proud of ourselves, or stuck in past traditions and old ways. God is alive and with us now to evoke dreams and hopes and appreciation of God’s world as a place where peace and justice are meant to abide, where we are directed by God to wherever it is that God may be calling us.
This is the season where we change, turn around to God, or turn back to God. We come to realize that God is there; God is with us. He has been there in the past, is now, and ever more shall be extending his presence, his love, and his call to us. This is the season of letting our human spirits to be renewed with the very presence of God. Come into our hearts Lord, Jesus. There is room . . . . . . . . .