I’ve never preached on this Isaiah passage before – it was challenging!
The sermon text is below the sermon video.
Click here for sermon video: https://zionepiscopal.com/Sermon%20Videos/fourth-sunday-of-advent-12-18-2022-neale.html
Sermon preached at Zion Episcopal, Washington, NC; Sunday December 18th 2022
The Reverend Alan Neale; “We’re all of us, looking for the key!”
In a brilliantly composed sermon (gathering the worst habits of all preachers), the British satirist Alan Bennett includes this awful sermon example: “Life is like a tin of sardines… we’re all of us looking for the key!”. It continues in similar mode, but more of that when we celebrate Shrove Tuesday in 2023!
“We’re all of us looking for the key.”
For the Sunday before Christmas, the reading from Isaiah today (chapter 7) is all a little too gloomy. It doesn’t quite connect with our “decorating the halls with boughs of holly”, our forays into virtual and real marketplaces frantically searching for the perfect gift, and our circulating from party to party exuding cheer and Christmas bonhomie.
Of course, if we were undisciplined and lazy Bible readers (oh, never a description for Episcopalians), we would gladly skip to verse 14 with its talk of virginal conceptions and cavort some seven hundred centuries onward to a stable birth in Bethlehem.
But will all due diligence, we stay awhile in Isaiah 7 where there are no shepherds keeping watch, only the enemy encamped at the very gates of Jerusalem; here there are no angelic choirs singing of peace and goodwill, only messengers of warfare and destruction.
But, you know, conflict and stress is what Christmas is about to many – a time of family conflict (where those who have wisely kept separated from eleven months or more, gather as one), a time of parental stress and children’s disappointments. Frankly, forgive me, I think some of the television Christmas advertising and Christmas movies are almost evil in their impact as impossible dreams are imposed upon the poor, the dispossessed, the forgotten and the lonely. No wonder I needlepointed a Christmas belt with “humbug” around it.
But back to Isaiah 7. Around 735BC it was a time of war and fear. Unlikely allies (Israel and Syria) had united against Assyria (who was busy gobbling up countries west and south, seaports of the Mediterranean and the riches of Egypt).
Judah (in one of those sporadic spasms of holiness) had refused to join the alliance and then, surprise surprise, joined with Assyria.
And now, Israel and Syria were at Jerusalem’s doors, while Ahaz is king. In the face of this (7:4) the people are faint, weak of heart, timid and soft.
But now comes the Lord’s remedy: 1. Take heart and take heed. 2. Be realistic about the enemy, they are “nothing but smoldering stumps of firebrands”, or as the Message reads “don’t panic over these two burnt-out cases. They talk big but there’s nothing to them”. Remember FEAR – false evidence appearing real! And 3. Be quiet, be undisturbed (the Hebrew word suggests drop down, sink down… let the deepest parts of your being be reached by the Lord.
The season of Advent reminds us inexorably, inevitably, inescapably that we will hear “of wars and rumors and of wars”. The antidote, the key is 1. Take heart, take heed – it is the Lord. 2. Take stock – be realistic of the challenge and of the provision. And 3. Take time for quiet, deep work of the soul.
In panic, fear, discomfort Ahaz, like all of us, was looking for the key!
He knew the key was not to be found in an alliance with Israel and Syria.
He was invited to find the key within the heart, mind and purposes of God. “Ask a sign”… but he refused.
And, alas and alack, he thought he had found the key in an alliance with Assyria. Oh, Ahaz!
Remember the story of the man walking by a steep cliff edge; accidentally he falls and in his descent, grabs hold of a strong branch. In desperation, though not a religious man, he calls up to the heavens, “Hello, hello. Is there anyone up there. Please help me.” A sonorous voice responds from the clouds, “I am here, my son. Do whatever I tell you and you will be saved.” “Anything, anything…”. The voice responds, “Let go of the branch!”. There is a silence and the man cries out, “Is there anyone else up there.”
All of us are looking for the key, sometimes we neglect the one placed right before us.
Why in heaven’s name did Ahaz not ask for the sign, a really, really big sign as deep as Sheol or high as heaven? He gives some lame excuse (v.12) “Oh, I really don’t want to put the Lord to the test.”
So why? Maybe he was actually already committed (and yet we must learn sometimes to say, oops wrong way…), maybe he embarrassed or maybe he just become inured, accustomed, habituated to going his own way – finding his own key?
The Lord literally explodes all over Ahaz and, I’m sure not in pique or irritation, gives to Ahaz such a sign that it will reverberate through the centuries to Bethlehem, and continue to reverberate through hundreds of centuries until today! What a sign! What a key!
You will know that virgin in Hebrew (almah) means young girl, it does not designate a virgin. And yet, in the wisdom of God, Matthew enlarges the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 to apply to Joseph and his espoused, pregnant though not yet married Mary.
Faced with a pastoral, social, personal dilemma Joseph (like Ahaz) looks for the key and he finds it as he (note this again) 1. Takes heart, and takes heed (to angel messages), 2. He stocks of what is really happening in the mind and will of God and 3. He takes time for quiet, deep work of the soul.
In Isaiah 7 we know not whether “the young girl” is Ahaz’s young wife, Isaiah’s second wife or just some young girl walking past at the time.
But in Matthew 1, we are in no doubt of the young girl’s identity… it is Mary. It is Mary.
It is clear from the rest of our text that God meant this promise for his Eighth Century people first of all. Verses 15 and 16 basically say that before this child goes on solid food, while he is still eating “curds and honey,” the northern alliance will be “laid waste.” And that’s exactly what happened when this sign child was only 2 years old.
But that wasn’t all God had in mind. Indeed, the way Matthew uses this prophecy is very instructive for how we deal with all of God’s promises. Matthew says that the Virgin Birth of Jesus “fulfilled” the word of the prophet. He filled it out, made it full. You never know the full meaning of God’s promises until you see them in the light of Christ, because as Paul put it, “no matter how many promises God has made, they are all ‘Yes’ in Christ.” (II Corinthians 1:20). We often cannot see Christ in the original promise, as Ahaz and even Isaiah surely didn’t here, but God was always pointing ahead to the grand fulfillment in Christ.
In a time of war and fear, God gave his Old Testament people a simple sign to assure them that their God was with them even though the northern coalition seemed invincible. In another time of international turmoil and internal danger, God gave his New Testament people a grand sign to assure them that God was with them, even though Rome seemed almighty. That sign still stands for us today, in a time of war and fear when leaders jockey for power and enemies are at the gates and we don’t know whom to trust. Elizabeth Achtemeier said it well: “the people of faith know that earth’s petty powers will never have the last word. After all, Jesus Christ was born when Caesar Augustus ruled, and Caesar is now dead, but Jesus Christ lives.”
AMEN