Isaiah 7.10-16; Romans 1.1-7; Matthew 1.18-end
God our redeemer, who prepared the Blessed Virgin Mary to be
the mother of your Son: grant that, as she looked for his coming as
our saviour, so we may be ready to greet him when he comes again as
our judge; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the
Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen.
AHAZ and Joseph were both up against the inscrutability of God.
One was a rebellious king who exhausted God, and stood on the brink
of disaster; the other was a righteous man, soon to be married,
whose carpentry business was all the excitement he expected in
life. Both were thrown into turmoil when God came to them.
Ahaz's reign was marked by political and military insecurity. He
had declined to join a military alliance of smaller nations who
were in the way of the Assyrians' march to conquer Egypt. In
retaliation, the other kings threatened to invade Judah. Ahaz and
his people were terrified, as God faced him with a crisis of
trust.
The story of Ahaz's reign has no redeeming moment, only
rebellious disobedience and God's resulting anger: simple cause and
effect, it seems. But Isaiah's account throws a spanner into the
works, because God offered Ahaz the opportunity to ask for a sign,
a down-payment on God's intervention in the situation.
Given the number of times that the people of Israel had been
rebuked for testing God, Ahaz's refusal sounds wise, but it masks a
failure to distinguish between faithful and rebellious testing of
God. His pious answer was a rebellious refusal to risk belief in
God, a refusal to experience the love that God longed to
lavish.
The invitation to Ahaz to ask for a sign was double-edged: he
was invited to test God, to prove God true, but was himself being
tested by God's word (Psalm 105.19). In a mystery novel, clues are
scattered throughout the book. God does that with Ahaz: a clue
here: "Ask me for a sign;" a clue there, "a child's name". But
Ahaz, conditioned by a lifetime of rebelliously ignoring God, could
not or would not seize this moment of grace.
God asked Ahaz to pay attention to children's names; if he could
not hear the subtext of Isaiah's son's name, "A remnant shall
return." God spelled it out more clearly through another child's
name: "God is with us." The king's actions tell us that he did not
believe this, but an unnamed young woman in his troubled kingdom
could, and did.
Ahaz's life was marked by rebellion against God. So, given his
refractory history, why was Ahaz offered a sign of God's presence
and power, while Joseph was not? Joseph was righteous, and it would
have been so easy for the angels, visiting several people in the
Nazareth and Bethlehem area, to put in an appearance to him as
well, and make it all clear from the beginning. Instead, Joseph
faced the dilemma of what to do when his uprightness was rewarded
with seeming disaster.
Being righteous, Joseph tried to piece his jigsaw puzzle
together using the template of what he knew of the law of God and
his compassion for Mary. But God was doing something new, and
Joseph was working with the wrong picture for his jigsaw. God was
putting the finishing touches to a new one.
The God who in last week's Old Testament reading was a highway
engineer, making new ways through the wilderness - a gardener
turning deserts into flower gardens - was now the artist painting a
new perspective of the age-old promise of the Messiah. Joseph had
to catch up with God.
The initial silence of God to Joseph was just as demanding for
him as was the clarity of God's word to Ahaz. God was testing both.
"Are you going to act faithfully? Rebellious Ahaz, can you live
with my clear word? Righteous Joseph, can you live with my
silence?"
Joseph's fidelity reminds us that times of silence or awkward
questions can be the prelude to new works of God in our lives.
Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of God - a time to
pay attention to the clues that God is active; to notice the
meaning of things that we might take for granted; a time to
practise the scales of fidelity that will enable us to play the new
music when God puts it in front of us, when suddenly our night sky
is torn apart by angels singing "Glory to God in the highest and
peace to his people on earth."
Emmanuel, God is with us. Thanks be to God.