Isaiah 7.10-17

Matthew 1:18-25

what’s in a name?

This is a story about two men, a pregnant woman and a child with two names. It is also a story about God comes to them and through them comes to us. Which means this is a sermon about God and our response.

Let’s begin with the first man, Ahaz, the mighty king of Judah, trembling now before the armies of his enemies arrayed against him. God has already spoken to him through the prophet Isaiah: be quiet, do not be afraid, and let your heart not be faint.

It’s a prophetic word that we might all heed in times of great distress. Be quiet, do not be afraid and let not your heart be faint. But Ahaz, the mighty one, did not heed the prophet’s word. So the prophet counters with this advice: call upon God for a sign. Let the sign be a deep as hell and high as heaven. Again Ahaz refuses –this time claiming he dare not put God to the test.

But this is no refusal to put God to the test, by a pious man. This is rather a refusal to of a strong man to trust God’s intervention in the affairs of humanity under duress and in crisis. Ahaz, the mighty one, refuses to risk believing in God, the sovereign one who directs the nations. The proposal before Ahaz is to trust God wholly, letting go of the reigns of power and control, submitting to the possibility of another way out of the crisis facing the nation.

The whole scenario is disturbing. After all, Ahaz is a the mighty leader of a nation under seize. He can’t be expected to look for a sign from God. We worry about leaders who go asking for signs from God. What does God has to do with world affairs anyhow? A lot, as it turns out – and not as one expects.

Ahaz assumes he is in control and therefore piously refuses to put God to the test, by submitting the prophet’s proposal that he ask for a sign. That is the illusion of power. As it turns out, God is not the one being tested. It is Ahaz, the mighty one, who is being put to the test by God. Will he be a man of faith or not?

Yet, even his refusal does not stop God from giving the most unlikely sign of all. A woman shall bear a child whose name shall be Immanuel, which means God with us. Imagine that. To a nation under assault and a leader under siege, God promises neither power nor prestige. God promises to be with His people under the sign of a child whose very names carries the hope of all the nations, God with us. “It is the sort of sign not perceived by those whose attention is fixed on current affairs, on power politics, or strategic decisions.” (james alison. christian century. december 11, 2007)

Ahaz in the first man.

The second is Joseph.

A righteous man whose lifetime of fidelity is reward with what appears to be, at first glance, a moral disaster.

This is the strange world of the Bible where God is always at work doing a new thing in ways we least expect.

God comes to the Ahaz, the unrighteous man and offers a sign. To the righteous man, God appears to be silent in the face of calamity. How then shall this man – Joseph – act faithfully? What risk is required of him. Auden once said of Joseph, “to choose what is right all of one’s days as if it were easy – that is faith.”

Both Ahaz and Joseph found their lives out of their control; they were put to the test.

Shall they act faithfully in the times of silence and deep questioning?

Sometime it is only when we have learned to maintain our hope during God’s silences that we can hear God’s word when it comes to us. This would be Joseph, the righteous man who was ready to do the right thing – protect Mary from dishonor, shield her from dis-grace, and ultimately save her from death by stoning. We know the story well enough to know that Joseph was in a crisis: the young woman he loved was pregnant and he was not the father, worse yet they were not even married. With neither anger nor malice, he would do the right thing. Spare her the pain of shame, ridicule and likely death.

And you may find yourself today where Joseph was when that day dawned. Unable to comprehend what you cannot understand. Yet, at just that moment, Matthew tells us that God gave to Joseph a sign, in a dream no less – the very sign that echoes with the earlier one. God, the Holy One, shall come to be with us. Immanuel.

It is all so stunningly beautiful, so strangely impossible, that we can scarcely take it in. Yet, here it is laid out before us that we might receive the glorious news that God will not abandon us in our sin, nor leave us as orphans. The Holy One – the Creator of the Stars of Night - will descend to save us in the most vulnerable way, a child born of the Spirit.

The angel departs. Joseph awakes and receives what has been given. Period. But consider what has just happened.

‘This pregnant woman is either an adulteress or a virgin blessed by God. What power is it that is prepared to trust that a human will choose the latter, infinitely less plausible interpretation, and then graciously cover over the vulnerability of his bride-to-be and allow the sign to flourish?”

Joseph followed the vision that was given in a dream. This is faith: living into the promise of God with humble obedience.

Two men. One woman. Mary, of course, bears the child of promise and as such carries the great Yes of faith. Like Joseph, she receives what is impossible and like Jospeh she opens her life to voice of God and allows herself to be a vessel of the Holy One. This opening of our lives to God in the very moment when all our powers of control are gone, is the practice of faith.

Yet, as much as we might want to focus on the practice of faith. There is something far more important. Consider again the vulnerability of a God who descends upon a woman in the most delicate human way under the most precarious social circumstances, a single woman in society that could surely put her to death. This is the stunning news that God came to be with us, in just this vulnerable way and no other.

Joseph and Mary both display for us the way of faith, the capacity to receive what is given even when it is impossible. Finally though our hopes rest not upon the faith of Mary and Joseph. We miss the news if we focus our attention in the wrong place.

Our eyes are on the vulnerable one who is now bears another name, Jesus. He is the vulnerable God who dares to come to us in human flesh. This is the name by which we know God’s promise to lead us home, to make us new and bring the song of delight that our heart yearn to know.

Two men, one woman and child who bears two names, Immanuel – God with Us. Jesus. Child of the Spirit. Our Savior clothed in human flesh born of woman.

For those who dare believe: the whole of the Christian faith is found in this one stunning story.