Sermon: Immanuel, Jesus
Texts: Isaiah 7:1-10, Matthew 1:18-25
Date: December 19, 2004


You have to peel the Christianity off your eyes and ears to really take in the story we hear in the reading from Isaiah this morning.  When we hear those familiar words, "the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel," our minds leap to identify that woman and that son.  We're like a game-show contestant who doesn't even listen to the whole question before buzzing in triumphantly with the answer, so sure we're right!  The young woman-Mary, the son-Jesus!  Matthew's gospel did that for us by connecting the dots between Isaiah's words and the birth of Jesus.

Disconnect the dots, at least for the time being, because the scene with King Ahaz and the prophet Isaiah is at least as interesting, if not more so, without the overlay of assuming it's about Jesus.  Ahaz is a king in trouble.  He was, frankly, a bad king, as far as we can tell from this distance in history.  He forced his people to worship idols.  He built places where he could sacrifice his own people.  Ahaz cared so little about his people that he let them be overcome by an enemy nation.  He made a deal with the enemy to save his own skin.  The powerful nation of Assyria, to which he turned for short-term security, ultimately bound Ahaz's people to a very deceptive source of supposed salvation: violent power.

God is trying to get Ahaz to wise up by speaking to him through the prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah is trying to convince Ahaz to turn away from political and military machinations and alliances and turn toward trusting in God to get him out of the current bind.  Ahaz is not at all sure trusting in God is going to help.  God is willing to bend over backwards to get Ahaz to a place of trust, which we see when Ahaz is challenged by the Lord to ask for a sign.  "Let it [the sign] be as deep as Sheol [the place of the dead under the earth] or as high as heaven."  The sky's the limit, King. Ask for anything.

This definitely backs Ahaz into a corner.  You can see his problem.  If he names the sign and God  provides it, there will be no way to deny that God can be trusted.  He'll have to abandon his carefully crafted and crafty plans to save himself through cozying up with the neighboring super power.  Trust God to save or trust the tried and true Assyrian army?  Ahaz is leaning toward the conventional salvation delivered by earthly might.  But he doesn't flat out say no to God.  He's wily enough to quote one of God's own rules about not putting God to the test, which is found in Deuteronomy (and referenced by Jesus when we was tempted by Satan in the wilderness).  That way he can pretend to be pious rather than spineless.

That the prophet sees right through this ruse is evident in the irritated response: "Is it to little for you to weary mortals, that you weary God also?"  Does this stop God from sending a sign?  Not for a moment.  It just means that God's going to choose the sign instead of Ahaz.  The sign?  Look, the young woman is with child, and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel (which means God Is With Us).  This young woman is not named.  It could have been Ahaz's wife; the sign could have been their son Hezekiah.  It could have been Isaiah's wife who was pregnant.  It could well have been a pregnant woman who was strolling by when Isaiah was making this declaration-look! A young woman with child!  The prophet goes on to make the point that by the time the child grows up the current threat will have come to naught.  The name is the key to understanding the sign-God is with us.  Every faithful person, even a king under pressure, can trust in the presence and power of God.

The difficulty comes in trusting in a God who wants to send salvation in such a suspicious package.  As Melinda Quivik writes, our human culture tells us that power makes a big bang.  Power has heft, takes up space, requires foot soldiers, costs money.  Power is not apparent (or even believable) in the smacking sounds of a nursing baby.   It takes a real leap of faith to see the possibilities in a run-of-the mill phenomenon like pregnancy.  How could power to save arrive in such a vulnerable package?  Conventional wisdom would surely reject such a sign that God can be trusted to save.  If trusting in God who is being made manifest in a young woman's womb is Plan A, sensible people naturally want to know about Plan B, which hopefully has something to do with a more conventional show of force.  Ahaz was nothing if not sensible.  So he set himself up to miss God's help because of his narrow, too-conventional, completely secular view of how he might be saved. 

   
When we read Matthew, which quotes Isaiah, we see that God is up to old tricks with Mary's pregnancy.  Another young woman, another child, another hard choice to trust God.  Mary has to trust enough to say yes to bearing the baby.  And Joseph, often overlooked, Joseph has a difficult choice to make as well.  Joseph was a righteous man, Matthew tells us.  He observed the Jewish law.  It was important to him to do so. 

The law was clear about what should happen to a woman who was found to be pregnant outside the bonds of marriage.  She could, by law, be stoned.  If Joseph had wanted to make a great big noisy fuss about her pregnancy because his dignity had been wounded by her apparent unfaithfulness, he could as a righteous man have called upon the community to stone her to death.  But he was compassionate as well as righteous, and had resolved to break the engagement quietly without publicly shaming  Mary.  This was another of the socially conventional choices open to him.

Then he has a dream that challenges him to flout both of these conventions and marry her anyway.  To wed Mary would have certainly made him look a fool in that culture in which personal honor was so important.  He has to trust that God has called forth this child to save the people from their sins. He has to trust that God is planning to work through his and Mary's quite ordinary lives to do something extraordinary. 

The difference between Joseph and Ahaz is that Joseph is willing to go with Plan A, trust, where Ahaz was insisting on Plan B, my way.  This is where Joseph's righteousness is highlighted.  We learned together in Bible study this season that righteousness has to do with doing the right thing in the context of specific relationships.  Joseph would certainly have been considered righteous by having her stoned, publicly disgraced, or quietly abandoned; for his time, it would have been righteous behavior in the betrothal relationship.  However, to act rightly, to act in a righteous manner where his relationship with God was concerned, he had one supreme obligation: to trust in God's leadership.  Even if it seemed to contradict the law he believed to have been given by God.  His trust put the capital R in Righteous even though his neighbors probably perceived him as a cuckolded sucker at best.

The pair of baby names mentioned in the readings give the boiled down version of what we are to trust: Immanuel, God is with us; Jesus, the one who saves.   Two babies, coming in under the world's radar with a message that God is still speaking.  Immanuel, God is with us.  Jesus, God saves us. 

The more I dig into this faith we share the more it hits me how much courage it takes to trust and be saved.  We might picture the person crying "Save me!" as a weak person.  But when we ask God to save us, we give God permission to change us.  We are dared to scrap all the Plan B's we have so carefully drawn up in order to follow Plan A, trust.  That's why salvation demands courage. 

Ahaz ultimately lacked the courage to trust and be saved.  He was so afraid to put himself and the nation in God's hands that he was willing to ally himself with fearsome, corrupting power in order to avoid seeing God's plan unfold.  Joseph mustered the courage to be saved even though it went against his lifelong habits of observation of the law and against social convention.  You notice that the angel said to Joseph what angels always say: Do not be afraid.  It's a small miracle every time a human being manages to put fear aside and trust, whatever the circumstance.

Trusting God is not something that happens overnight for most of us.  I think of trust as a daily discipline.  I wouldn't say that every moment brings an opportunity to choose either trust or fear, but they happen along often enough, don't they?  Lately I have been trying to trust in God's will to work reconciliation between humans.  I have a hard time with criticism.  There's a Charlie Brown comic I remember vaguely in which one of the characters has directed a very sarcastic "Bleh" at Charlie Brown.  He speaks about how those "Bleh's" go right to the pit of his stomach and burn there.  I know exactly what he's talking about.  When I have been criticized, I have  such a hard time getting that "Bleh" out of the burning pit of my stomach that I want to avoid the person who put it there.

But I believe in reconciliation.  I really do.  I believe that God's love can overwhelm criticism and fear of rejection and personality conflicts and all that junk.  So I have been working on trusting God to save me from my weak-kneed fear of being in relationship with someone who may not love me.  I think I want to be healed of the "Bleh" ulcers even more than I want to avoid conflict.  Still, it is a struggle to trust that God is with me and offer up this unredeemed corner of my life for salvation.

Is there some area of your life in which you are being called to trust in God's power to save you?  Is there some relationship that needs healing, some fear that needs to be exorcised?  Is there some hope that needs reviving in your life?  Can you bring yourself to trust in the slow, gradual work that goes on under the radar as God brings new life to every soul which is open to seeing the signs?

I do not expect instant results in my spiritual healing even after I've made the difficult move toward trust.  These pregnancies in the scriptures remind us of how God often works in the world.  A seed is planted and new life is called out from the depths of our being.  It takes time to grow.  Even after the new life is born, becoming visible to others around us, there is a maturing process while the new life or new truth or new way of doing thing becomes a larger part of who we are.  Immanuel, God With Us, is conceived with a spark of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus, God Saves Us, grows to become a powerhouse of healing, guidance, and forgiveness just as the baby Jesus became an adult among humans.

Take with you this morning the names of the infants God sent as a sign for us.  Mentally paint them on the soles of your shoes so they'll walk with you out of here and guide your steps.  Immanuel, God Is With Us.  Jesus, God Saves Us.  Trust in the promises.  Walk in faith.