A Sermon for the First Sunday of Christmas (27/12/20): The Meaning of Christmas

 

The Meaning of Christmas

Galatians 4:4-7

What is the meaning of Christmas? That is the sort of rhetorical question which a preacher is likely to ask at this time of year. Or perhaps it might be posed more sharply, or even bitterly: What is the true meaning of Christmas? The implication of asking the question that way is of course that the true meaning of Christmas has been or is being obscured by something else. And it is not hard to see why a frustrated preacher might feel it necessary to ask such a question, and ask it in that way. 

For one thing if you didn’t know it would be easy to assume that the meaning of Christmas was any number of things. The preacher’s frustration may grow out of how much of the messaging around the subject and the moment of Christmas seems determined to direct our attention away from what preachers might like to make us think about. Most often at this point preachers complain about the commercialisation of Christmas. The meaning of Christmas, if you didn’t know, would appear to be a massive celebration of spending. Much of that messaging would seem to imply that for Christmas to be Christmas a great deal of money must be spent. Money spent on gifts. Money spent of food and drink. Money spent of decorations. Money spent on holidays, afterwards, to have something to look forward to when it’s all over. If you didn’t know you might think Christmas was a massive sacrificial offering to be made to Mammon and to the gods of consumer capitalism. In the face of such Christmas messaging a preacher might be tempted to say: “Bah, humbug!”

Of course materialism isn’t the only message which is being promoted for Christmas. One might think the message of Christmas is noting more than nostalgia and sentimentality. One might ask the question, “What is the meaning of Christmas?” not with a sense of irritation but with a sense of regret. Looking back one might wonder what happened to the Christmases of the past, which some how felt different or better. Perhaps this Christmas this would be the strongest temptation of all.

Given all that has conspired to make us miserable this year, and all they ways nothing is normal, our efforts might be directed to recapturing that sense of joy and wonder that seems to be have been lost, buried under whatever it is that Christmas has become now. Maybe we might recognise that part of what has been lost is our own childlike innocence. That even before this year happened nothing is as wonderful as it once was. Nothing is a sweet as it once was before living in a world that includes pandemics, injustice and naked greed, made us hard-boiled and cynical. We might look to children to help us recover what has been “lost”, use their excitement and happiness to try and recover our own. We might tell ourselves with a tear that is mixture of joy and sadness that "Christmas is for the children."

Of course preachers being preachers, another temptation that is hard to resist is the temptation to moralise. We might tell ourselves, alongside Charles Dickens who gave us Ebenezer Scrooge’s “Bah, humbug!” that the message of Christmas is to make us better, perhaps kinder. Every year charities and “causes” surf their messages of generosity and unselfishness on the larger tide of self-indulgence and acquisitiveness that goes with the season. Every year their a charity singles and charity campaigns designed to to remind us that there are people around us and throughout the world who are not having as nearly a good time as we are. The slightly unpleasant truth about such campaigns and about preacher’s moralising at Christmas is that the best it can really hope to do is replace joy with guilt. And guilt is seldom a helpful emotion.

In the face of all this the puritanical streak in many preachers might tempt them to abandon Christmas altogether. A preacher might say that what Christmas has become is irredeemable, whatever the message of Christmas was, it cannot now  be recovered. We don’t have the power and resources to compete with those who want to sell us stuff or even those who want us to help others, so perhaps we shouldn’t try. After all, we might tell ourselves, isn’t Christmas a relatively late addition to Christianity? Isn’t Christmas an attempt by the Church to colonise a pre-existing pagan festival? It can hardly be a surprise then that the pagan messaging of the older mid-winter festival seeps through a Christian attempt to bury it under something else. Besides which isn’t it entirely possible to believe what Christians believe, and live in the way Christians are supposed to live, without reference to Christmas. After all isn’t it the small minority of the authors of the New Testament, Matthew and Luke who find it necessary to recount the Christmas story. Paul, a preacher might reassure us, has no mention of Christmas. And despite how we arrange the books of the New Testament, Paul is the earliest Christian writer whose works have come down to us. And Paul by himself is responsible for fully 28% of the New Testament and his biography is half of one of the other books, Acts. Can’t we be like Paul, and save ourselves the aggravation and do without Christmas altogether?

Preachers are predictable creatures. Everyone just knows that the answer to that rhetorical question is “no”! We can’t do without Christmas. What is more, despite what we might think, it is Paul himself who can tell us what the meaning of Christmas is. Paul in just two verses summarises the message of Christmas: 

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as children as children.

Despite the fact that Paul doesn’t recount the Christmas narrative, the whole story is implicit in those two verses. And what is more this story is not, as some might think, a late addition. This is Paul writing to his friends in Galatia, and there is good reason to believe that this is in fact the oldest book of the New Testament, the first to find its current written form. 

In a single sentence Paul tells the whole story and draws our attention to the meaning of Christmas:

When the fullness of time had come. . .

There is a trajectory, an arc of history, in what God is doing. Much of that history is told in what we call the Old Testament. The image I like is that of a bow being drawn back, pulled back to its greatest tension, and held for a moment, until the string is released and the arrow allowed to fly. What we call the New Testament is the climax of that older story. It is the flight of that arrow. In the build up to Christmas we remind ourselves of the preparations God makes for Christmas to happen. The final step in that preparation is John the Baptist. Mark doesn’t tell the Christmas Story but John is very prominent in his account of the Good News. And Matthew starts his telling with a genealogy, all the generations that lead up to the moment of Jesus’ birth. Then:

God sent his Son. . .

This of course is the key to the meaning of Christmas. It might be insufferably twee, but it is not wrong to assert that “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Christmas is about the way God comes to us. Without Christmas, without Jesus, God’s Son, there is no way for us to find our way to God. Without God’s action we would find ourselves as pagans worshiping not God but power or money. Or we would find ourselves trapped in moralising guilt or sentimentality. For some the idea of virgin birth is hard to swallow, but the story is told that way for it to be clear to us, that Christmas is something that God does. The initiative is with God. God sends us his Son, we are not taking anything to God.

All sons have mothers:

Born of a woman. . .

Jesus is God’s Son. To encounter Jesus is to encounter the fullness of God The likeness between Jesus and God is sufficient for John to say, in the introduction to  his Gospel:We have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son full of grace and truth (John 1:14) But whilst Jesus is God, the great mystery of the Gospel is that Jesus is also entirely human. Paul doesn’t name Mary, but she is as present in his account of the meaning of Christmas, as she is prominent in Luke and Matthew’s telling of the Christmas story. My favourite Christmas hymn, one which we don’t sing enough because it’s not really a carol is Charles Wesley’s “Let earth and heaven combine” (Singing the Faith 208). Wesley says: “our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.” Perhaps Wesley’s poetry is better, but Paul was already saying from the start.

There is a particularity about the Christmas story. Jesus is born as a human. But there is a particular context to Jesus’ birth:

Born under the law.

One of the things which Christians have often been forgetful even resentful of is the Jewishness of our faith. God is not God in general. God is not a philosophical abstraction. God is God in particular and God has acted in a particular way. That way is sovereign grace. God of God’s own deciding choses to act through Israel. Jesus is in continuity with the history of Israel. One of the Christmas stories we often tell on this Sunday is Jesus’ parents’ fulfilling the law by having him circumcised and presenting at the Temple. Jesus’ birth is the context of faithfulness to Israel. The only true and living God is the God who makes himself known in this context.

For Paul though the law also stands for everything that goes before this “fullness of time” that has now come about in the birth of Jesus. The law for Paul means all the efforts that humans make to either approach God, or conversely to avoid God. God brings this to an end in the Christmas story.

Christmas must also point to Easter.

In order to redeem those who were under the law. . .

Paul knows you can’t have one without the other. Christmas implies Easter. Easter requires Christmas. Christmas by itself is sentimentality or it is self-indulgence. Jesus is born with a mission, and it is a mission which leads him inevitably to the cross.

But for Paul story telling isn’t enough. For him even theology isn’t enough. Paul always moves from theology to life:

So that we might receive adoption as children.

Paul is fascinated by ethics, how we should live. But he knows God wants us to escape the burden and oppression of moralism. And this is the true meaning of Christmas. God knows we cannot help ourselves. There is nothing that we can do that will bring us closer to God. Which is why God acts, which is why Christmas. God comes to us now, as his natural born son, so that we might be adopted as the children of God. The meaning of Christmas, according to Paul and the whole of the New Testament is this: God comes to us, so that we can call God our Father.

Amen.

The Meaning of Christmas by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

A Sermon for Christmas Day (25/12/20): The Birth of Jesus

The Birth of Jesus

Luke 2:1-7

We all know that the focus of Christmas, the very reason for our celebration, is that scene which we can picture in our mind’s eye. Mary and Joseph are bending over the manger gazing at their new-born son Jesus. But in telling the story Luke has us look somewhere else first:

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken when Qurinius was governor of Syria.

A first sight Luke is merely being what he claims to be, a careful, diligent and thorough historian. He has located the birth of Jesus, measured against other known historical events. The birth of Jesus does take place at a particular time. And to be sure it takes place in a particular place, as Luke points out, Bethlehem. This is an event that happens in our world. And it occurs within the sequence of events that make up our history. But Luke is actually making a stronger assertion. He is claiming that this is the moment that defines history. This is the moment against which all other history is measured against. 525 years after the event, a monk called Dionysius Exiguus counted back to the birth of Christ. And he set his calendar according to that date, calling it Anno Domini. The system was popularised for the use of historians by none other than St Bede. Now all of history is dated according to the event of Christ’s both. An acknowledgement, in most cases now inadvertent, that the event of Jesus’s birth is the event which determines history.

Neither Augustus nor Quirinius know anything about God. Who God is and what God wants and what God might do, does not form any part of their thinking. They do what they do for their own reasons. Augustus wants to know how many people their are under his power. He arranges for census so that he can control and tax his empire more effectively. Qurinius has his own role in the Empire’s administration, which at this point is to make sure the count is made in his corner of that Empire. His corner of the Empire happens to include Nazareth and Bethlehem. Neither of them have any thought for the individual lives which their decisions disrupt. They know nothing of Mary and Joseph or anyone like them. They are the kind of people who believe they have the power to make and shape history.

And yet what they determined, the history they shaped for their own reasons, moves Mary and Joseph to exactly the right place at exactly the right time. It is in Bethlehem that the moment arose:

While they were there the time came for her to deliver her child.

Luke isn't the one to draw attention to it, but we know that this is exactly where the Messiah should be born. In spite of themselves Augustus and Quirinius become agents of God’s will. God accomplishes his purpose through them. Whilst men like Emperors and Governor may think they make and shape the world, that it is their decisions and their actions which determine history, the truth is, God is working his purpose out. Time and history belong to God. And he uses them to bring us to himself.

Luke the historian begins by pointing to the place historians look, to the great and the powerful But we know his story has another focus. In an abrupt turn about and a sharp contrast he draws our attention to an ordinary man, Joseph. From a town is so little account that someone could say of it “nothing good came from there”, Nazareth. And he indicates another unimpressive locality, though with symbolic meaning for some: Bethlehem. And he shows us the man’s pregnant fiancee Mary. What we see is that God works his purpose out, but does so, not with the great and powerful, but among the lowest and least. God acts not at the centre but on the margins.

In many ways this year has been unique. What has happened to us and to the world is like nothing that has happen before in living memory. Yet some things have remained unchanged. The assumption has remained that the powerful, particularly those leading governments are those ones who will determine the course of events. It has been assumed that our rulers and only they are in control and only they can lead us out of this and the other crises we are experiencing. And despite all the ways this year has been different, one thing has remained the same. The rich have continued to get richer, even as the majority have been forced to struggle economically. In a broader perspective this year has just looked like that ordinary history which Luke begins by pointing us to. If however we wanted to see God working his purpose out we would have to look in a quite different direction.

Perhaps the most touching scene in the story is one that isn't recalled in the Bible. We fill a gap in the narrative with our imaginations. It is Joseph and Mary’s arrival in Bethlehem where they go from door to door and find there is no room for them in any inn. This places Mary, who is already marginalised, even further to the edge. She is compelled to have her child where the animals feed:

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in strips of cloth and

Which draws our attention to an underlying theme of the whole gospel and of human existence. It forces us to recognise a feature of history as it is conventionally told. There is a lack of space for God. It is a theme that will find its climax at the other end of the story, with the crucifixion. When there is so little room for God that some try to force God out of the world altogether. Yet this is also the central point of the Christmas story. God is making a space for himself amongst us. God is present at the bottom and on the margins. God becomes part of our world and our history. God becomes like us, so that we might become like him.

Amen.

The Birth of Jesus by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

A Sermon for Christmas Eve (24/12/20): Light in Darkness

 

Light in Darkness

Isaiah 9:2b-7

Perhaps our reading should have started a few verses earlier:

They will look to the earth, but will see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be thrust into thick darkness.

This is is the experience of the people of whom Isaiah speaks at the beginning of our reading:

The people who walked in darkness. . .

Those who lived in a land of deep darkness. . .

It does seem entirely appropriate to read these words from Isaiah at this time of year. It makes sense to hear words about gloom and darkness on this night which is one of the longest night of the year. Of course what is for Isaiah a metaphor, for people who live at the latitudes we do is an annual lived experience. Each year we go through a living parable that invites us to reflect on Isaiah’s words. The days become shorter. Today, here, there were just nine and a quarter hours between sunrise and sunset, and many of the hours between are twilight. And that was before the weather conspired to add to the gloom Even at noon at this time of year the Sun is never high in the sky, so the shadows which it casts are always deep and long. If nothing else Isaiah’s words fit our outside experience at this time of year. His metaphor is our reality.

Isaiah is actually addressing the people who live in Zebulun and Naphtali. That is the part of the Promised Land which lies to the north-west of the Sea of Galilee. These were the people who had borne the brunt of the Assyrian invasion which had swept down from the north and the east. Their darkness was of a different order from ours. They are the ones who have felt the weight of the Assyrian yoke across their shoulders. They are the ones who have received the sting of the oppressors rod on their backs. Their darkness was one of oppression, sorrow, pain and loss. 

Though perhaps this year Isaiah’s words are doubly appropriate. They are apt for the time of year. But they are also apt for the whole year which we have just lived through. And maybe “gloomy” is a fitting adjective to describe what this year has been like. It hasn’t been quite the devastation of an invading army. But the Corona Virus certainly has “invaded” our awareness and has wreaked havoc with just about every aspect of our lives. For some the devastation has been like that of war, most especially for those who have lost loved ones. But no aspect of our lives, has been untouched. Everything has be disrupted, at the personal level, among our families and friends, for our neighbours and community, for the nation and for the whole world. We don’t seem to have emerged from gloom for so many months. As this has been happening, once again racial and economic injustices have been brought into focus. I don’t think the virus and the social and political discontent and disturbances we have been witness too this year are unconnected. The virus is in some sense a natural occurrence, just one of those misfortunes that happens to have happened. But it has served to increase and to expose some of the injustice that was already there. We have been living this year in a land, in a world of deep darkness.

 

I said, as began preaching from Isaiah at the end of November, that were in need of an “Isaiah Advent.” Perhaps above all we have needed to hear the hope expressed in the words we have heard from Isaiah tonight. The point of those metaphors of gloom and darkness, and especially when they are related to the shortness of days in the middle of winter, the point of those metaphors is that darkness turns to light. We are already past the mid point of winter, even if winter’s coldest days are yet to arrive. The longest night is behind us. In the last few weeks we may just have begun to sense that we might have turned the corner with the virus. There is a vaccine. Even if there is still restrictions and possibly more to come And as yet there is no end in sight to the suffering, loss and sorrow associated with the virus. And perhaps those voices raised against racial and economic injustice have made themselves heard. Even if there is as yet no conclusive will to resolve the issues that they protest against. Even in the darkness of winter there is reason to hope.

Isaiah though promises something more dramatic. The people he was speaking about at the beginning of the reading:

. . . have seen a great light.

. . . on them a light has shined.

It is the habit of prophets to speak of the future as if it were already present. Isaiah is so confident that God will bring relief to his people he can speak as if it has already happened. For his friends in Zebulun and Naphtali he is able to promise that the war which they have been living through is over. The battlefields around them will be cleared of the debris of conflict.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned for fuel for the fire.

The crisis which they have been living through will come to an end. And when it is over they will be able to look back and see God’s hand in their relief. So too will the crises which we are experiencing pass, and with the eyes of faith we too will see that it is God who has brought us through. The source of Isaiah’s confidence and hope solidifies around a single image: the birth of a child. The arrival of children in the world is always reason for hope. But Isaiah has a particular child in mind. Earlier, when he was offering hope to people far to the south of Zebulun and Naphtali, he spoke of a child. When he was reassurance to King Ahaz in Jerusalem that this same crisis would pass he had said:

The young woman is with child and will bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

Isaiah’s hope has become more confident and more immediate, he now says:

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.

The hope of God’s people crystallises around this child. This is the Messiah. The one in whom all of God’s promises are fulfilled. The one who will establish God’s reign on earth for God’s people He is a king in the line of David. He is one whose rule will be focused justice and righteousness. He is the one who will bring about everlasting peace for all people of goodwill. No wonder we want to hear these words now. In the darkest days of the year we want to hear the brightest hope of all. Of course we read these words on this night of all nights, because it is the conviction of Christians that these hopes find their fulfilment in the child born in Bethlehem, Jesus. Jesus whose own ministry and mission begin in that same land of Zebulun and Naphtali, is the one who bears those exulted title and brings the hope of God’s people to reality. Jesus is:

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Because he is we too can speak of the future we hope for, a future without pandemic, a future without the kinds of restrictions we have experienced in these recent months. We can speak of a future in which there will be both racial and economic justice. There will be liberty and equality for all We can speak of this future as if it were already present, because God has already acted. The Kingdom of God is already here in Jesus Christ. These things will be so, because, as Isaiah puts it:

The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will do this.

Perhaps Christmas this year won’t be quite the celebration we have had in the past, and would like to share now. Few of us will be able to gather in Church, and even those of us he do will not be able to do quite what we would most like to do. Still we will not be able to hold our loved ones a close as we’d like and share our our joy with them as much as we long to. Around us still there is to much sorrow and loss, sickness and anxiety. And still there are victims of economic and racial injustice. But God promises that these thing will end. And then there will be a great celebration. Like children tearing off the wrapping paper on Christmas morning

as joy at the harvest,

as people exult when dividing plunder.

Because this celebration is certain in the future, Our hope is so real that we can speak of it as if it had already come about, Even in the face of what we have gone through and still must go through, We can celebrate now! Happy Christmas!

Amen.

Light in Darkness by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (20/12/20): And Will Call His Name Immanuel

 And Will Call His Name Immanuel 

Isaiah 7:10-17

As so often happens, Judah is in the midst of a crisis. The place where God’s people live is not only a land which has been promised to them, it is also a cross roads. Trade routes to the north and south, to east and west meet here. So the land which has been promised to God’s people is also a strategic objective for all the great powers around them. God deliberately chose the smallest and the least or all the nations to be his people. And God gave them this land. And as such, living where they lived, they were vulnerable. 

Their king, Ahaz is standing at the end of the aqueduct that carries vital water into the otherwise dry city of Jerusalem. He is in the most strategically important location close to the city. From there Ahaz is contemplating the current situation, when Isaiah approaches him and announces: 

Look the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel. . . before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. 

Isaiah is doing what people would normally expect a prophet to do. He is foretelling the future. He is acting as a kind of soothsayer for the king of Judah in Jerusalem. We have quite rightly grown to understand that what prophets do is far more than predict the future. The words of prophets we known are far more “forth-telling” than they are “foretelling”. They speak the truth about God, and as such their words always have an everlasting quality about them. But on this occasion Isaiah has a quite specific message for King Ahaz, that is applicable to the immediate situation which he and God’s people living in Judah find themselves in. Isaiah brings to Ahaz a word from God, a promise, that current crisis will pass. 

 

Judah is under pressure. It is being squeezed by a much more powerful kingdom that is some distance away, and being squeezed by its immediate neighbours’ reaction to that kingdom. To the east Assyria is on the rise. It is becoming a great empire. It is swallowing up the smaller kingdoms around it. Now Assyria is looking for unrestricted access to the Mediterranean, to Egypt to the south-west and Asia Minor to the north-west and to the profitable trade routes that run through those places. Judah’s location once again is making it vulnerable to the ambitions of its larger and more powerful neighbours. Assyria has become an immediate threat to the kingdoms of Aram-Damascus, Ephraim (which is what Isaiah calls the other half of God’s people, Israel) and to Judah itself. To answer this threat the kings of Damascus and Israel have formed an alliance against Assyria which they want Judah to join. Ahaz does not want Judah to join in an alliance with its long-time rivals Damascus and Israel. As a result of Judah’s refusal, King Rezin of Damascus and King Pekah of Israel are preparing to attack Judah. As they are preparing to that, the Philistines see their opportunity and Edom breaks free from Judah’s rule So Judah is about to be attacked from three sides: by Israel from the north, Damascus from the east and Edom from the south This story is not perhaps one we know in particular. But its outline is familiar enough. This is history and politics, playing out in exactly the way they always have and always seem to do.

Isaiah speaks into the specifics of this geopolitical situation. His message here feels strange to us. He is doing what we have learned to avoid thinking prophets do. He is foretelling the immediate future. He as acting as a royal advisor. He is being the king’s soothsayer. He is making Ahaz a hopeful offer from God which is intended to guide the king’s policy in the current moment.

At the heart of this prophecy, and as we shall see later, the reason why our attention falls on it now, is the sign which God offers as guarantee of what is being promised. Isaiah offers the king a specific sign from God: 

Look the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.  

There is a you woman, who is evidently known to both Isaiah and the king. She is possibly the wife or perhaps the daughter of either of them. Whoever this young woman is, she is already pregnant. She will have a son. And she will give him the name: Immanuel. 

The names that are given to children in the Bible often carry great significance. This name means literally: “God with us”:“Im” with, so “immanu” with us; “El” God. Isaiah reminds the king that God is with “us”, that is with Judah and Jerusalem. The sign and especially the child’s name are intended as a reminder of God’s special care for his own chosen people. And he offers God’s promise. By the time this child is eating solid food the current threat against the kingdom will be lifted. In a very precise time-frame the threat against Judah’s independence from Israel, Damascus and Edom will have ceased. The young woman is already expecting, so that must be less than nine months. Add the time it takes a baby to be weaned, so another six to nine months. What Isaiah is saying is that in less than 18 months the challenge which is currently facing Judah and its king will be gone. This is prophecy at its most specific and most particular At which point we might be asking ourselves what does this mean to us. What interest should we have in 2,500 year old geopolitical manoeuvring. Why would we read this. And why would we read this on the last Sunday before Christmas

Of course prophecy, even when it is this specific, retains a permanent relevance. The prophet speaks the truth. And in particular the prophet speaks the truth about God. When the king is first offered a sign from God by Isaiah he declines the offer. He says:

I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test. 

This at first sight seems like the appropriate response. The king knows Deuteronomy and he knows it says there: 

Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. (Dt. 6:16)   

But it is not piety which leads the king to reject the sign which Isaiah. He rejects what God is offering because he thinks he has his own solution. He is intending to answer the threat from Israel and Damascus and Edom be seeking an alliance with the rising power in the region: Assyria. Ahaz is choosing to fight fire with fire. The king is aiming to play along with Assyria’s ambitions and hopes to gain something over his immediate neighbours whilst avoiding the full force of the threat which Assyria itself presents. This is very much politics as usual. And it doesn’t need us to be geniuses at political strategy to see that this is a risky path to to take. Fighting fire in the end almost always produces a bigger fire. What is stop Assyria having accepted Judah’s help against Israel and Damascus, simply swallowing Judah up as well. But this is the path which the king is determined to take. And so he refuses the sign from God. But he is given the sign anyway:

Then he [Isaiah] retorted: "Listen, house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of mortals? Will you also try the patience of my God? therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. 

And it is here that we arrive at a truth about God which gives Isaiah’s prophecy lasting significance. It is not the actions of the king which will determine the destiny of God’s people. As Fred Pratt Green’s hymn still puts it: “It is God who holds the nations in the hollow of his hand.” (Singing the Faith 705) Isaiah articulates to Ahaz a faith which we still hold. That the ultimate destiny of history is determined by God. Human freedom, which Ahaz exercises here by choosing his own policy for Judah, human freedom is exercised within the setting of the work of God. The hope which Isaiah expresses to Ahaz, is the same hope which Christians continue to hold, both for themselves and also for the world as a whole. It is the same hope which Paul expresses when he says: 

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God. (Romans 8:28)

So that whilst this is a very specific message, addressed to the particulars of a moment in Judah’s history, it is prophecy. And as prophecy it speaks the truth about God, and says something about the everlasting character of God.

                      

And yet, none of this is why we would read these words on this Sunday. And I suspect few if any of us were aware of the political machinations that lie behind Isaiah’s words when we first read them. When we read of the sign which Isaiah promise we hear something quite different. 

Isaiah is the New Testament’s favourite book from the Hebrew scriptures. As the first Christians explored and tried to understand what they were experiencing with Jesus, the place they turned most often was to Isaiah. And the first Christians had a distinctive way of reading the Bible and prophecy that marked them out as different from everyone else who was reading the Bible at the time. They used what has been called a “fulfilment reading”. When they thought about Jesus, they looked for the places where who Jesus is and what Jesus does has already been spoken of as characteristic of God in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the prophets and the psalms.  In a way they were taking what Isaiah and the others said to be a prediction that finds its truest fulfilment in Jesus. When the first Christians thought about Jesus they remembered these words from Isaiah: 

A young woman is with child and shall bear a son. 

It is said: Anyone who thinks history repeats itself isn’t paying attention to the details History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme. The promise which was made to Ahaz in the specifics of the time he was living through re-emerges in the birth of Jesus. Above all the first Christians recognise, and we still acknowledge that Jesus lives into the name which God promised Ahaz: Immanuel. Jesus is God with us. Which of course is why we might choose to read Isaiah’s prediction of ancient global politics on the last Sunday before Christmas. But just as the specifics of the prediction made to Ahaz say something generally true about the nature of God. So taking that prediction and applying to the larger action which God is taking in Jesus tells us something about the particulars of how God acts. In contrast to the young woman who was evidently known Ahaz and Isaiah, but whose name we do not know, we do know who this  prophecy speaks of when we are thinking about Jesus. These words apply to Mary. She is the one who has conceived and who bears a son. As it happens he is given a different name, though still one which is profoundly meaningful: Jesus. Literally: “He saves!” Yet the older title, Immanuel, is equally applicable to Mary’s son. Looking into Isaiah’s words what the first Christians saw, and we still see, is God taking the initiative and God acting at the immediate and most personal level. God moves towards the human race. It is God who acts to save us. But God does so in the intimately human setting of the birth of a child. An occasion that in almost all circumstances brings hope, even when those circumstances are as desperate as displacement and squalor like the birth of a child in a stable far from home.

I have already had reason to quote Martin Luther King Jr. once this Advent, when he said: “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” God is working his purpose out, on the grandest scale. God works on the scale of history and nations and global politics. But God is not remote, like the rulers and politicians who appear to be in control of those things. All our destinies are ultimately in God’s hands.  But God is not an abstract principal. God is not a general trend. God’s activity, his being with us, is particular and it is immediate And God’s action is at the most human and personal scale. God is present in the birth of a child and the care his mother gives him. And God is is present in a million small and particular instances like that. Each of them in the own small way bending the arc of history towards justice. The two parts of God’s being with us in, both the global and the personal, occur together in one instance: Jesus who was born, Immanuel, to a young woman. Jesus who is Saviour of all the world. God is with us!

Amen.

And Will Call His Name Immanuel by Christopher Wood-Archer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0