(“Come! Save us!” What’s love got to do with it?)
Isaiah 7:10-16 (fuller text: Isaiah 7:1-17)
and Psalm 80:1-7; 17-19; Matthew 1:18-25
What’s King Ahaz of Judah doing in the Advent story? We tend to yank this sign of a young or virginal woman who names her son, Immanuel, out of the text and place them into the nativity story of Jesus without much thought regarding Ahaz, the people of Judah, and the year 735 B.C. in which Isaiah was priest and prophet. Let’s look at Ahaz as a mirror to ourselves. Then let’s listen for God’s word and look for God’s signs.
Here is what is known about King Ahaz of Judah. He became king only a year before this incident was recorded, at about 20 years old, rather inexperienced. (see II Kings 16 and II Chronicles 28). Ahaz was king of Judah, the southern kingdom, for 16 years. Though he was a descendant of David, he was not attentive to the LORD God, but placed his trust in the visible and tangible cultic religions and political institutions he saw around him that would serve his purposes. (It was his son, Hezekiah, king after Ahaz, who helped turn the people and nation of Judah to attentiveness and trust in God.)
The situation that the prophet Isaiah addresses with Ahaz is that neighboring kings and nations were vying for power and aligning themselves with or over against one another. Several kings had come and laid siege against Ahaz to pressure him to their side over against Assyria, the stronger nation to the north. Ahaz was scared to death. Where should he put is allegiance? Whose side should he side with? We read in Isaiah 7:2 that his heart and the hearts of his people were trembling, shaking, like the trees of the forest bend and shake with the wind. You might think that at that point Ahaz would pray and call out to the God of his ancestors; that he might quote Psalm 80…
“Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel…
Stir up your might! Come and save us!
Restore us, O God;
let your face shine, that we may be saved!”
But Ahaz did not call out to God. Into his fear, however, God sends the prophet Isaiah to tell him, ‘Don’t be afraid, do not lose heart, because it is only a matter of time when those and that which is against you will soon fade away.’ But those words don’t seem to console Ahaz. Then God speaks to Ahaz as if to say, ‘You don’t believe me? Go on. Ask for a sign, any sign, big or little, a promise-sign that this will be true.’ Putting on his pietistic mode of operation Ahaz refuses to ask. Fed up with him, the prophet says, ‘Okay, I’m getting weary of your moaning and groaning. How much more you are making God weary! So God will give you a sign anyway, a sign that you can trust, that God is saving you, that God is with you caring for you and rescuing you, all within a short amount of time. As a young woman is pregnant… 9 months time… and gives birth to a son and names him “Immanuel”(i.e. “God is with us”), and by the time he reaches the young age of knowing what is a ‘no-no’ and what makes for acceptable behavior, everything will be alright. Ahaz, all those that you fear will disappear.’
My question at this point is – so what was the sign? A young woman, or a virgin woman? Was it a birth of a child to a virgin? Was it the name of the child? Was it the time frame of nine months pregnancy and two years more – a three year time span? (That doesn’t seem like a short amount of time in our 21st century instant gratification assumptions. Nor does the 65 years mentioned in v.8) Or, is that which enables us to be fearless in the face of overwhelming situations the reminder that Life goes on, that in the midst of warfare and clamor, and fear and death, life is born. What parent, even in the midst of the violence of war and destruction does not pause in awe and mystery at the birth of a child, any child. I may be very wrong but I imagine even in refugee and labor camps, the birth of a child is accompanied, even the briefest of moments, by hope and love.
That sort of sign was not good enough for King Ahaz. He could not trust that God was with and for him in the tenderness of a birth, in the sign of hope, or the sign of new life. Ahaz refused to trust in such ordinary signs as a woman, an infant, or a name. Ahaz’s closed ears and narrowed vision was predetermined; the only way he would recognize Immanuel, God’s presence with him, was in big military power, a loud bang, the bigger the better. Assyria, that big country to the north was the power source that Ahaz trusted, and so to the king of Assyria he said; “I am your servant and your son. Come up, and rescue me from the hand of [those] who are attacking me.” And as an offering of allegiance, Ahaz took the silver and gold from the temple of the Lord and sent it to the king of Assyria. (II Kings 16:7-8) He sold out to the biggest act in town.
Now let’s hold up our mirrors. I wonder how much are we like Ahaz?
What makes our hearts tremble? What are the fears, worries, and disappointments; that which cause us pain and troubled sleep?
What are the “enemies” that seem to attack inwardly or outwardly? What do we need to be saved from? When all around us looks bleak and the future seems questionable, do we ever shout out like the psalmist, “Come on, God! Stir up your might and come to save us!”
How might ordinary signs of God’s loving presence be given to us... and we dismiss them? How might the sign of a pregnant woman and the birth of a child, be a reminder that God is with us, loves us and has not abandoned us?
In his troubled night-time dreaming, Joseph of Nazareth was told to not be afraid nor turn away from a pregnant woman, his fiance` and the birth of her child, but that through that child would come salvation, wholeness, well-being; through this birth God’s intention would overcome humanity's misplaced intentions; in the mystery of life God would be with us, Immanuel. (Matthew 1:18-25) Unlike Ahaz, Joseph believed and trusted the sign of God’s promise and love; ordinary as a birth may be, God in it made it extraordinary. Celtic spirituality would invite us into those ‘thin places’ where the veil between earth and heaven is so sheer that there appears to be no separation of human and divine. A birth is such a thin place. The Celts would look into the face a newborn and see the face of God. “God surprises earth with heaven” in each new life.
Is it possible, in every birth, in every emergence of life to recognize holiness? to see and hear that God is with us? We would like to yank this virgin birth from Isaiah’s prophecy out of our experience and separate it, along with the Jesus’ life, as extra-ordinary, exceptional and relegate it to sometime and some place else. Yes, in Jesus' birth and life we have the gift of seeing God with us in an amazing way, but God has not come near to us just once and only in one birth. Jesus helps us to see the bigger picture of God with us. The Advent mantra is “Come, Lord Jesus” and it means that our God, The Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Love, Immanuel, is always coming to meet and greet us, to “save” us daily from that which would destroy hope, peace, and joy. From the beginning of the story of God in scripture to the very end we are invited to see and hear that God is time after time coming to us to say: I am with you; I am in you; I am for you; I am here to “save” you – to bring you to your full self in and with me, to wholeness and life, with hope and peace and joy; I love you. For God so loved the world, the cosmos, the universe, that God came in ordinary ways, like a birth, through tears and sweat and blood, crying and hungry, into the ordinariness of life, in unremarkable places, to be a life-sign, to give us courage to be.
If we hold up a mirror for ourselves, or look for and listen for signs of God with us, what do we see and hear? Are we like Ahaz, trembling, fearful, quick to head for the easiest, quickest, biggest power source to ease our discomfort? What might these be for you? Or, can we look for and see signs of God who is with us in the most common events, and recognize that they are infused with wonder because God is in them? Can we wait, even for several months to see the unfolding of God who is with us? Can we see or hear a word from God in signs, even in the wonder of silence?
God’s “salvation” is that God is loving us and this world, that God is with us in the midst of all the troubles that surround us; that life and light shines in the darkness and darkness and death cannot over come. May we have eyes to see and ears to hear the signs of Immanuel.
Prayer:
Holy Presence, ever with us,
help us to see and hear and trust that you infuse life
with love and transforming hope in ordinary everyday ways
as well as in the extraordinary.
Come, Holy Wonder, and make us well.
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