Isaiah 7:10-17
Fourth Sunday of Advent: December 19, 2010
Here’s the simple sermon:
Each week in Advent we have heard one of Isaiah’s visions for what the world will look like when God comes to rule among us. And they are beautiful visions. Swords will be beaten into plowshares, wolves and lambs together without enmity, and waters bursting forth in the wilderness while the blind see and the lame leap for joy. And now this week we have arrived: we have the famous passage where Isaiah says, “a woman is with child and shall bear a son and his name shall be Immanuel.” This is it: this child is the promise that it will all come true. And of course we know this child is Jesus: Immanuel. And so it is: Jesus is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s visions and dreams. As we celebrate Christmas, we believe again that we can see waters in the desert and peace on earth. Jesus is Immanuel – God-with-us – and so all is possible. It is the good news of great joy!
But, I don’t think that simple sermon is quite fair to Isaiah – and truly, in the end, I don’t think it’s fair to us either. You see, this one line – the one we hear in our minds when arrange our nativity sets on the mantle every year – that a woman is with child and shall bear a son and his name will be Immanuel – this line has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. At least, it had nothing to do with Jesus as far as Isaiah was concerned.
Some bible translations feed our insistence on always reading this as being about Jesus and Jesus alone. They say, “a woman will conceive and bear a son.” – using future tense. Some even say, “a virgin shall conceive…”. But that’s not really what the Hebrew says. It says that a woman – not a virgin – is already with child. This is a passage that was – at least at the beginning – firmly planted in a specific historical moment. There was a king, there was a prophet who spoke to the king, and there was a woman – alive at that time – who was with child. Later this passage would be used for more general purposes – purposes outside of that specific situation. But I think it’s good to remind ourselves that it does have its origins in a specific situation, because it helps us understand what later authors and believers were saying when they used it to talk about Jesus.
After all - it’s still Advent – we’re still waiting…Christmas is not here. So I’m going to ask you to reach up, take off your Christian ears, and listen to this passage again. This time, put on your King Ahaz ears. That’s who Isaiah is talking to, so it’s a better pair of ears to start with. Now, even though you probably don’t need it, just in case, I’m going to do a brief reminder of who Ahaz was and what was going on at the time so we can make sure our ears are tuned correctly.
Ahaz was the infamous king of Judah in the 8th century BCE: a king judged to be unequivocally bad by the authors of our scriptures. Now in Ahaz’s defense, this was a pretty rough time to be king of Judah. You didn’t get much time to just sit back in your throne and eat grapes. There were many threats from many directions, and he was faced with difficult decisions. First, he had Assyria...a threat to all in the region. Assyria was strong, well soldiered, and on the move. Then he had Syria and Israel to the north. They were joining forces to try and take Jerusalem. Together, these two countries reasoned, they were strong enough to prevail against the tiny little kingdom of Judah. In short, the people of Judah – with Ahaz as their king – were sitting ducks.
Ahaz had to figure out what to do – and he saw a couple of choices. One, he could throw his hat into the ball game with Syria and Israel – give up land in order to join forces with them against Assyria and hopefully not lose everything. The other choice was to appeal to the king of Assyria, asking for mercy and help against Syria and Israel. Well, appeal is probably too nice a word. It was more like Ahaz could bribe the king with riches and allegiance.
Faced with these two options, Isaiah comes to talk to Ahaz. Isaiah begins by reminding Ahaz that his is a ruler of God’s people and therefore the only one to whom Ahaz should listen for counsel is Yahweh. Just prior to our passage, we hear what the prophet tells Ahaz Yahweh is saying – and basically it’s to choose neither option number 1 nor option number 2. Specifically, Isaiah tells Ahaz: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these threats. Instead, stand firm in your faith to Yahweh.” Isaiah tells him not to capitulate to the north and not to bribe Assyria. Instead, he tells him to have faith – which surely did not feel like a legitimate choice for a head of state at the time. Doing nothing was like inviting any and all would-be conquerors to have their way with Judah.
So Ahaz hears this, and thinks probably what any one of us would think in the same situation: “Thanks for the great advice, buddy, now get out of my way so I can figure out what I’m actually going to do.” And that’s where we pick up the story. That’s where our passage begins, and now with our nicely tuned Ahaz ears, we can listen to it in its original context.
God says to Ahaz, “you don’t believe me? You don’t believe this is a legitimate option – to do nothing except have faith in me? Go ahead, then, ask for a sign. Ask me to give you a sign that what I say is really true and possible.” But Ahaz is not interested in signs. He says he refuses to put God to the test, but in the same way we might say, “Oh, I don’t want to bother you,” to our meddling friend who wants to come and decorate our house for Christmas. Ahaz is not interested in any proof that the right thing to do is nothing.
God sees through Ahaz’s demure response and gets, well, pretty mad. God is determined to show a sign; but this is not a sign in a good, warm, touchy feely sense – at least not as far as Ahaz is concerned. In fact, the strong, negative tone of this passage leading up to this point prepares us for a threatening sign. Read at Christmas time, when we’re surrounded by mangers and Christmas lights, the sign of a woman with child sounds so nice, familiar and comforting. But that is not how it sounded to Ahaz. So, if we’ve still got our Ahaz ears on, it’s not how it should sound to us.
God says I will show you a sign: A woman is with child and shall bear a son and name him Immanuel – and we know Immanuel means God-with-us. God says, here I come and I’m coming in the form of a baby. And if you trust me, turn to me, before that baby grows up, your enemies will disappear. A baby? When God comes we want God to come as strength – as something we can rely on, lean on. But Ahaz is supposed to see God as a baby – vulnerable, weak, dependent on others for care, and then trust that God. That’s the answer? Not when you’re being threatened by other nation states and need to make a decision. Trusting vulnerability and weakness is not compelling.
But, for Isaiah, the prophet with all the beautiful visions of what happens when God is with us, that is the answer. God is found in vulnerability – not the same old efforts and displays of power and strength. No swords, no relying on the power you have over others, no domination of creation for your own purposes. That will not get us everlasting peace, reconciliation with enemies, or streams of life in the desert. Power, domination, cunning strategy: that is the way of Ahaz.
So, that’s what this sounds like with our Ahaz ears. We are reminded that if we only hear this passage and picture families sitting around Christmas trees singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” we have missed the power of this passage in Isaiah. And, we will miss it again when it is used in Matthew to announce the birth of Jesus. This is about God coming into the world and the very difficult decisions that implies for humankind. It forces us to really think about what it means to have faith in God. Ahaz would go on to dismiss this sign – dismiss the God of vulnerability and peace and instead bribe the king of Assyria. And lo and behold, Ahaz would just end up continuing the established systems and cycles of violence and domination, and the people would continue to suffer. Nothing would change: no plows, no wolves and lambs; no streams in the desert.
But of course, we know that while this passage started out about something and someone very specific, it wasn’t long before it was used as a motif in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: The motif of God coming as baby or child. It was a passage – as so many scripture passages were – that went from specific to universal truth about who God is and how God comes to us. Obviously this is not an exclusive image for God – there are many images of how God comes: wind, fire, rock, mother, father. But this time of year we think about what it means that so many of our biblical writers, Jewish and Christian, imagine God coming into the midst of an anxiety-ridden world as a little child.
With the specifics of Ahaz and Isaiah’s world still in mind, now we can ask, “What does Immanuel mean today, in our world?” God brings alternatives to the way things are done, but are they alternatives we want? Vulnerability instead of strength and power. Exalting the weak and caring for the poor instead of veneration of the high and mighty. Choosing implements of peace over weapons of war when faced with real, live threats. Do we really think transformation comes through God-as-baby?
We get so excited about the birth of Jesus, but do we really want to know that God chooses for us the way of vulnerability? Do we really want that sign?
One of my favorite poems is an Advent poem I heard long ago. Sadly, my failed memory has long since been separated from the author or the context in which I heard it. But, I still want to read it for you this morning, because I think it is an example of how the Isaiah passage is retold today:
“When God wants an important thing done in this world, or a wrong righted, God goes about it in a very singular way. God doesn’t release thunderbolts, or stir up earthquakes, God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And puts the idea or purpose into the mother’s heart. And she puts it into the baby’s mind, and then - God waits.
The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies for each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity but is still expecting good will to become Incarnate in each human life.”
Swords into plowshares, wolves and lambs together in peace, waters in the desert: they seem like child-like fantasies. But, Isaiah believes a world of peace and harmony is possible…and there’s nothing magical about it. The path requires choosing to trust a God that does not operate according to the rules of power and domination that govern our world. The path of God is not one we easily choose, yet it is the path of Immanuel…the path of Jesus…the path of God-with-us as vulnerability. This is the path that requires us to respond to threat with openness and love. This is the path that requires us to see our fate as linked to that of the least among us. This is the path that requires trusting that violence and war can never secure peace. This path requires waiting, and patience. But it is the path we choose as those who follow Immanuel – as those who see the sign of a child as the sign of faith and hope. It is the path for those of us who sing, from the depths of our hearts, “O Come, O Come, Immanuel.” Amen.
