Sometimes, as Dixon reminded us yesterday, it takes a certain amount of
arrogance to stand up before a congregation week in and week out and proclaim
God’s Gospel to a group of people. I
laughed yesterday at his advice to Holly†, and not just because he dared to
compare her to an untrained dog. It does
take a certain arrogance. It’s hard to
know where to push forward and pull back.
That’s why this endeavor we call preaching has to be done in
prayer. Certainly, I found myself in
that same position of wondering whether I ought to preach on Isaiah this
morning earlier in the week. After all,
everyone knows this passage of Isaiah.
It is the prophesy of the virgin giving birth that the Gospel writers
will use in support of Jesus’ claim to be the God incarnate / Man divine. What more is necessary? Without shirking from the need to boldly
proclaim the Gospel and at risk of causing some of you to feel like I am
preaching down to you, how does one convey effectively the meaning of the
text? How does one take a familiar text
and open it to a modern audience? That
was the gist of Dixon’s admonition to Holly.
One cannot begin to understand the
intricacies of this prophesy without an understanding of Ancient Near East
geopolitics at this time and an understanding of ANE cosmology at this time,
this time during which Isaiah receives the call, has the brand touched to his
lips by the angel, and tells God, “Here I am.
Send me.” Yes, our readings today
pick up not too far from where Dixon preached yesterday. God-incident?
You decide.
Geopolitically, Assyria is on the rise in
the ANE. Egypt’s power has begun to
wane; Persia and Greece are still a few centuries away from their respective
dominations of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean basin. Assyria is the two-ton gorilla that is
striking fear into the hearts and minds of everyone not a citizen. To us, they would be like Russia or
China. To our modern enemies, they would
be like us. They have the best
armies. They have the best
weaponry. They have the most
wealth. And they are ruled by one of my
favorite names in all the ANE histories, Tiglath-Pilezar. Gosh I love that name. As we had more children and ran out of boys’
names, I lobbied Karen hard for that name for David and Joshua. When Karen would not go for that, I lobbied
for one of the cats to get that name.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, right?
The nickname would be Tiggy. It
would stand out. When people asked him
why his parents named him Tiglath-Pilezar, Tiggy could say that his parents
named him for a guy not unlike Alexander the Great. He ruled an empire at its height in world
affairs. See, some of her eye rolls directed
at me are well-earned! But I digress.
Assyria has been flexing its muscles. In fact, as Isaiah has been being called and
accepting that call, some battles have been occurring. A number of smaller kings have banded
together to fight the Assyrians. And
they have lost. That is the position in
which Rezin of Aram and Pekah of Israel find themselves. Remember, the kingdom of Israel has had its
civil war. Shortly after Solomon’s
death, the kingdom has been divided into the northern kingdom and the southern
kingdom, Israel and Judah. So Israel and
Aram, smarting from a recent defeat at the hand of the Assyrians, have banded
together to fight Judah, who declined to support the war effort. Israel and Aram have decided to conquer Judah
“to teach it a lesson” and to recoup some of the tribute and prestige recently
lost.
Judah is worried about these two armies
coming together. Although we do not read
about the initial worry today, Scripture teaches us that the King and people of
Judah were worried about their impending doom.
Isaiah, in fact, is sent by God to Ahaz to tell him to ignore the kings
and armies. They are all bluster and hot
air, and their attack will not overthrow Ahaz.
Ahaz refuses to accept the comfort of the prophet. Instead, he strips the Temple of all its
silver and gold and sends it to Tiglath-Pilezar. He calls himself Tiggy’s son and asks Tiggy
to come and save him from the impending doom.
Perhaps that bit of background might help
you understand why God is wearied by Judah’s pretense at faith and piety. Ahaz may not be willing to put God to the
test, but he sure as heck is not willing to put his trust in God. Ahaz would rather depend on what he knows,
bribery and flattery, to save himself and his kingdom than upon the grace and
strength of the Lord.
To His credit, God does not respond like
you or I likely would. How do we tend to
respond when we offer help and it is refused?
Are we quick to offer to help again, or do we tend to let the one
offered help suffer for their rejection of our aid? Do we treat them as those in need or as
squanderers? God sends Isaiah again to
Ahaz and asks the king to demand a sign of Him?
Now, Ahaz plays the part of the righteous king. “I will not.
I will not put the Lord to the test.”
The way our editors shape the reading, it sounds like Ahaz is a good
king. But we know better. Ahaz has an outward piety, “I will trust in
the Lord,” even though he plots and schemes to save his own skin by sending the
gold and silver of the Temple to Tiggy for protection. No wonder God is wearied by him. No wonder God is wearied by us. How many times do you and I responded with an
outward piety while inwardly distrusting the Lord our God? How many times do we answer “it is in God’s
hand” or “No thanks are necessary, I was just doing what I was supposed to”
when, underneath, we are convinced God needs our help, that God’s plan cannot
work without us? Like ancient Israel,
you and I need circumsized hearts. We
need our inner beings aligned with our outward expressions; otherwise, we are
much like the whitewashed tombs that Jesus criticizes in His ministry.
Two weeks ago, when I stood among you and
preached on Advent, I reminded us that we were called to be a looking back and
looking forward people. All Christians
are called to look back at what Christ has done for us even as we look to the
future He has planned for and promised each one of us, but it really should be
in our spiritual DNA at Church of the Advent.
After all, we claim a “patronal season” rather than a patronal
feast. Another characteristic which
ought to define us as a parish is our incarnation of God’s grace in a world
that is so much like that of the Ancient Israel in our story today.
Earlier, when I asked how you and I would
respond to the duplicity of the king, I heard a few evil laughs. I get it.
My inner monologue had an eviler and louder laugh. How many of us, were we faced with Ahaz
betrayal and duplicity, would maybe send a host of angels to help make sure the
armies defeated Judah? How many of us
might nuke Ahaz for selling our stuff and trusting in Tiggy? How many of us would feel betrayed at our “child”
rejecting us and calling another “father”?
How does God respond in His
weariness? How does God respond in His
justice? How does God respond to the
betrayal? The duplicity? The hurt?
He sends a baby. You and I might
be tempted to throw angels or lightning bolts at the problem, but God sends a
baby! In fact, in this particular story, God has sent two. We do not read it today, but how does God
confirm His prophesy with Isaiah? He
promises a son, Shear-yashub. We do not
speak Hebrew, but we know that Hebrew names in the Bible often have significant
meaning. In this case the name means “A
remnant shall return.” Is Isaiah called
to deliver hard messages? You bet. Are things going to be hunky-dory for all the
people of Judah and Israel in the near future?
Nope. How does Isaiah know that
God has not given up on him or his people?
Because “A remnant shall return.”
Yes, there will be suffering.
Yes, there will be pain. But a
remnant shall return. Every day Isaiah
sees his son, he will remember God’s promise.
When people look at you and me, they, too, should remember God’s
promise, but that is through the second child promised in our passage of Isaiah.
One of God’s instructions to His people
is “your ways are not My ways.” Is that
anywhere more evident than in how God responds to Ahaz and to you and me in
this passage of Isaiah? Is that anywhere
more evident than in the birth of that Baby we will celebrate next week? You have joined me in rueful laughter as we
considered how we would each respond to Ahaz.
But God sends a baby. You and I
are deserving of the same fate we have planned out in our heads for Ahaz, but
to us God sent a baby. The world is
shrouded in darkness and rejects its Creator at every turn; still, God sends a
baby.
As Adventers, you and I are called to that
looking back/looking forward whiplash.
We are called always to be reminded of what God has done for us even as
we look expectantly to the fulfillment of all His promises. We
remember His death. We proclaim His
Resurrection. We await His coming in
glory. That’s the proclamation of
all Christians in the liturgy, but it defines our mission as Adventers. It shapes our spiritual DNA. Hopefully, it reshapes, dare I say
transforms, how you and I incarnate God’s grace in the world around us.
Think of the preposterousness of sending a
baby into the world to fight evil. Who,
but God, would think to do such a thing?
And, yet, consider the significance of sending a baby rather than the
lightning bolt or company of angels or whatever idea you and I had. Babies are cute. Babies are helpless. Babies need time to grow up. In sending a baby, God reminds us that He
came as approachable, as fully human. The
notion would have been even more preposterous in the ANE than in modern America
today. God’s sojourned briefly with
humans in the ANE cosmology. The gods
could not spend much time among humans because our fleshy ickiness rubbed off
on them. We do not speak much of it
around here, but think of the significance of God becoming fully human as a
baby. God was dependent upon a faithful
mother and father to raise the child, to protect the child, to nurture the
child. That child, of course, has all
our experiences. I’m guessing He got a
splinter or three helping dad around the shop.
He probably caught colds and coughs.
He experienced the raging hormones of pre-teen and teenage years. Jesus lived through every stage of human
development. You might dismiss this
focusing exclusively on His divinity, but the Scriptures and the Creeds remind
us that He was fully human. He cried
when Lazarus died. He had compassion on
the people because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He was indignant toward suffering and
injustice and the conflict between the inner hearts and outward expressions of
faith. He experienced everything you and
I experience. He is, in a sense you and
I cannot begin to grasp, empathetic to our condition. And He came to save, not to judge (at least
this time). Unlike the ANE pantheon, He
came to take on the entirety of our experience, to remind each and every one of
us that He created us good, that only our sins separated us from Him! He came to serve, to live a pattern of life
for all His disciples, that we might honor and glorify Him and our Father in
heaven. He is, to use the language of
John from next week, the Word of God become flesh! Shadowy and imperfectly, you and I are now
little incarnations of Him. You and I
are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do those things He has given us to do. Yes, we might say we are the baby that He
sends into the darkness. We are the
compassionate, empowered disciple through whom He fights evil day in and day
out in our lives. It is we who are
called to fight homelessness. It is we
who are called to fight racism. It is we
who are called to fight poverty. It is
we who are called to fight all ism’s that seek to enslave others in
darkness. And we fight that battle as
His little children, trusting He will glorify Himself through our labors and
cause us to shine with that light He has planted in each one of us. We Adventers ought to be particularly attuned
to that aspect of His call on our lives.
We are looking back at what He has done even as we await all that He has
planned for us!
One day the mission will change. One day, He will send His Son in glorious,
apocalyptic majesty as Judge and as Savior.
One day, we will be given rest from all our labors. But this day, a day we call Advent 4, is not
that day. Until He comes again to judge
the living and the dead, you and I are called to model the faith of a little
child, to go forth in His Name to love others into His kingdom, and to remind
the world that He truly has pitched His fleshy tent among us and desires us all
to trust in His unfailing promises rather than to die in our sinful
scheming. We are called, like Isaiah and
countless throngs before us, like all who claim to look forward while looking
back, to remind the world He came as a baby that we might all have the chance
to live forever with Him in glory to the ends of the ages.
Peace,
Brian†
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