Dec. 22, 2019                     A Sign                                                            

I would like to talk about all three of our readings from the lectionary this morning. The first of these readings is from Isaiah, and in it King Ahaz is confronted with a difficult situation. He is the king of Judah, and at that time, Judah is at war with Israel and Assyria. Now behind the scenes, Ahaz is negotiating with both Israel and Assyria, promising both that he will be on their side in order to spare Judah. In short, he is playing both sides.

Now instead of that, Isaiah asks Ahaz to trust in God, and allow God to show him a sign, that God will stand by Judah and help them to overcome Judah’s adversaries. And while Ahaz’s pious response, that he will not put God to the test, seems correct, it is really a reflection of his lack of faith in God, and his faith in his own political calculations. Isaiah on the other hand speaks of a sign, the sign of a young woman having a child, and before the child reaches 2 years old, the age at which they can distinguish good and evil, Judah will be delivered from it’s enemies.

In short, without faith in God, Isaiah is saying Ahaz doesn’t know right from wrong.

Our second reading, which we skipped this morning is from the book of Romans, in it Paul is speaking to a Roman Empire in decline. In Rome, they worship the Emperor as the Son of God, and that worship has worked for the powerful elites, the winners in life, but has reduced the majority of the citizens to poverty, the losers in life. To the Romans, Paul proclaims Jesus Christ as the Son of God. A foreigner, who practiced a foreign religion, who was crucified by the roman army for insurrection. In short, a loser.

Our Gospel reading tells the story of a young woman, Mary, who becomes pregnant out of wedlock, and a man, Joseph, who thinks he is doing the righteous thing, by divorcing her quietly, when in fact, God has other plans. The righteous thing in this circumstance ends up being the unrighteous thing in the eyes of humankind. It is to stay with the young woman, Mary, and raise the boy Jesus as his own.

Right and Wrong. Ahab didn’t know it. Winners and Losers. The Romans didn’t see it. Righteous and Unrighteous. Joseph had to be told what God’s righteousness was. Can we tell the difference?

One of my collegues at text study this week suggested that maybe we can’t. Many people, he suggested, see God as All powerful, All knowing, all Controlling. They envision the coming of Jesus on the clouds to defeat the immoral and unrighteous in battle. They believe in the gospel where if we are good enough, pray enough and do enough good to others, we will be blessed with wealth and health and long life. These are the god’s of politics, power, and human righteousness. These are the god’s of winners, and we all hope and pray that they will be our god’s, but for most of us, this just isn’t so.  

But the gospel revealed in Jesus Christ presents another God to us. This is a God born in weakness, this is a God afflicted by our sin, this is a God who knows our trials and troubles, and gives us strength for living. This is a God who gives meaning to our suffering, and offers us redemption. This is a God who asks us to give of ourselves to others, without receiving in return. This is a God who calls us to welcome the outsider, to seek the lost, to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is a God condemned as a blasphemer and crucified as a traitor. This isn’t the God many people pray to,….. but it is the God who meets us in our moments of brokenness, death, and despair, and offer us new life.

So how do we come to know this God. Well this morning, God offers us a sign. A young woman “shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” The sign is a sign of weakness, a sign of our need for God to save us from our sins, a sign of where we can find this God. We can find this God in how we care for the weak, the lost, the suffering, the stranger, the foreigner. We find this God in how we treat the most vulnerable in our society, not in how we honor and glorify the powerful and the winners in life. For both Jews and Christians, in both Isaiah and in Matthew, that is what the sign means. That is what God’s justice and righteousness are all about. When we do that, Emmanuel will be born among us, God will be with us, and that is the Good News of Jesus Christ.