“Your King is Coming” (Matthew 21:1-11)

The ancient world out of which our Scriptures arose was a succession of mighty empires that swept across the Middle East. There had been the Egyptian Empire (1560-1069 bc), followed by the Assyrian Empire (1300-612 bc), after which came the Persian Empire (550-330 bc). But by far the greatest of them all was the Macedonian Empire (338-136 bc). This vast domain covered a swath of land occupying over five million square kilometers. It stretched from modern-day Greece eastwards through what are now Bulgaria and Romania, Turkey and Armenia, Iraq and Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, southwards through Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel, and across northern Africa through Egypt and Libya to the fringes of the Sahara Desert. It would not be exceeded in area even by the mighty Roman empire at its peak five centuries later. And all of this was the doing of one man: Alexander the Great, unquestionably one of the mightiest conquerors in all of history.

Now come to the city of Jerusalem in the year 331 bc. A message has arrived that Alexander himself would be paying a visit. To understand what this meant, you need to know that Jerusalem had refused to ally with Alexander as his armies battled against the Persian empire. So when they were brought the news that Alexander himself was coming to their city, its leading citizens began to spin into a frenzy, fearing the worst. They were certainly in no position to defend themselves, so they went to extravagant lengths to try to wow him and head off disaster.

Four centuries later the story was still being told. Here is what Jewish historian Josephus would write of that visit:

Jaddus the high priest, when he heard [the news of Alexander’s planned visit], was in an agony, and under terror, as not knowing how he should meet the Macedonians, since the king was displeased at his foregoing disobedience. He therefore ordained that the people should make supplications, and should join with him in offering sacrifice to God, whom he besought to protect that nation, and to deliver them from the perils that were coming upon them. Whereupon God warned him in a dream … that he should take courage, and adorn the city, and open the gates; that the rest should appear in white garments, but that he and the priests should meet the king in the habits proper to their order…

Josephus continues:

Alexander was not far from the city [when Jaddus the high priest] went out in procession, with the priests and the multitude of the citizens… When Alexander saw the multitude at a distance, in white garments, while the priests stood clothed with fine linen, and the high priest in purple and scarlet clothing, with his mitre on his head … he approached by himself … and saluted the high priest. The Jews also did all together, with one voice, salute Alexander, and encompass him about…

Just try to picture the scene in all its grandeur: Standing at the gate, the high priest and his entourage robed in their finest ceremonial attire. Behind them stretches a numberless crowd all clothed in white. Even for a great conqueror such as Alexander it must have been an impressive sight.

Applauded

Now let’s move ahead three and a half centuries. Jerusalem is bustling with pilgrims from every corner of the known world, all preparing for the feast of Passover. It is likely that its population of less than 100,000 swelled to twice that amount on those occasions, so you can just imagine the chaos: narrow streets swarming with pilgrims, and having to elbow and jostle your way even to make the least progress to get anywhere.

At this point Jesus and the disciples are just outside the city proper, standing on the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives rises about three hundred feet above Jerusalem itself (about twice the height of Citadel Hill) so you can imagine the panoramic view they had of the city across the Kidron Valley. It was from there that Jesus gave instructions to two of his followers to bring him a donkey with her colt. And so, as the next scene unfolds, you can picture Jesus riding slowly down the hill towards the city gate.

Perhaps some people had already seen him coming from across the valley and begun to tell others. Soon what started out as a quiet entry into the city became a royal procession, as onlookers began to spread their cloaks along the dusty road, while others took branches they had cut from the trees and laid them on the ground. All the while people were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

It is amazing, even without social media like Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, how widely and rapidly news could travel in the ancient world. Maybe there were some who had heard of Jesus’ miracles along their way to the Passover festival. Perhaps others had even witnessed them themselves—the healing of ten lepers, the restoring of sight to a blind man, the astonishing change of heart to Zacchaeus the tax collector… Perhaps still others had heard his arresting parables about the lost sheep, or the prodigal son, or the rich man and the beggar Lazarus, or the Pharisee and the tax collector… And, while this would have aroused the animosity of some, there would have been more than a few who had found themselves being irresistibly attracted to this remarkable man.

Added to that was the fact that there was a widespread expectation of a coming Messiah. Peter and the other disciples had long arrived at the firm conclusion that this was indeed who Jesus was. And by this time there were others who were beginning to ask themselves the question if this Jesus might not himself be the long promised Saviour-King (John 7:40-41).

So it is that we are confronted with the narrow streets of Jerusalem crowded with people cheering with Hosannas and waving their branches of palm. Excitement filled the air. The sense of anticipation was palpable. As we look back upon the scene, I wonder if this ought not to be our model, not just for Palm Sunday, but for every Sunday as we gather to celebrate the King of kings. It is a tragedy when worship becomes a routine for us—or even worse for some, a chore.

In my Anglican tradition, early in the service the worship leader would greet the congregation with the exhortation, “Praise ye the Lord!”. To which the congregation would reply, “The Lord’s name be praised!” Being Anglo-Saxons, that response was often rather muted, dare I say half-hearted? But let’s all stand up and imagine for a moment that we are on one of the streets of Jerusalem and Jesus is passing by…

Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!

Abandoned

But we move on now to another location, once again a short distance outside the walls of Jerusalem—but this time not the picturesque Mount of Olives, rather what was known as the Place of the Skull, Golgotha, the execution ground. It is five days later. Gone is the excitement of Palm Sunday. The cheers of “Hosanna!” are not even a faint echo anymore. Only days later they had given way to angry calls of “Crucify him!” Now even those shouts have faded into the eerie quietness of Calvary. Gone are the crowds, their places taken by a small cohort of Roman guards, a few of the religious officials and the occasional passerby. Not far away a few women and a teenage boy stand in grief-stricken silence.

For the Romans crucifixion was a favourite means of punishment, combining both sadistic, drawn-out torture and execution, and standing as a public warning to any who dared to join in opposition against the imperial régime. A hundred years before Jesus’ crucifixion, after a lengthy slaves’ revolt, six thousand crosses had lined the Appian Way.

In the end, though, it would not be the waving palms and the shouts of “Hosanna!” that would endure. No, it would be the cross of Calvary and the parched cry that continues to echo down the centuries: “Father, forgive them…”

A generation later a former persecutor of Jesus’ followers would write, “[Some] demand signs and [others] seek wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called … Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:22-24) And again, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14)

“There is … no Christianity without the cross,” wrote Bible teacher and author John Stott. “If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.”[1]

Every time we look at the cross, [he wrote elsewhere] Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.[2]

And I would want to add, it is there, at the cross, that we also discover that you and I, flawed and wayward sinners though we be, are of infinite worth to our Father God.

Acclaimed

Which brings us to a third scene—and it is another palm procession, not on the dusty streets inside the gates of Jerusalem, but on the streets of gold in the holy city of God. It comes to us in the Book of Revelation:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing round the throne and round the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.”

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

“Therefore they are before the throne of God,
     and serve him day and night in his temple;
     and he who sits on the throne
              will shelter them with his presence.
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
     the sun shall not strike them,
     nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
     and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

 (Revelation 7:15-17)

It is a remarkable scene, that stretches beyond the limits even of the wildest imagination. It sends chills down my spine every time I read it. It reveals to us that the celebration of that first Palm Sunday and our celebration today are but a preview, a rehearsal if you will, of the surpassing joy that awaits us, when we put our trust in Christ and in what he has won for us by his death on the cross.

Today, on this Palm Sunday, we look ahead not only to the events of Good Friday and Easter. We look beyond them to when you and I will gather with countless myriads of God’s people from every continent and century to rejoice before the throne of our crucified, risen, ascended and glorified Saviour. But that can happen only as we can speak with the Apostle Paul of the Saviour “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Those words are reflected so beautifully in the song,

It was for me he cried, for me he died,
For me he shed his blood upon a tree.
It was for me he came, for me his shame;
For me, oh praise his name, it was for me.[3]

And so let me ask: Have you stood at the foot of the cross? Have you looked up at the one hanging there and recognized that it was for you he suffered and bled and died—that it was your sins, your guilt, your death he took upon himself there?

Let’s take a moment to pray in silence, and use the opportunity to offer ourselves to Jesus, our glorious King, who is worthy of all praise, and who gave himself once and for all for you and for me and for our salvation on the cross…

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[1]     The Cross of Christ, 68

[2]     The Message of Galatians, 179

[3]     Dave Bolling, “It was for me”

“If Stones Could Shout” (Luke 19:28-40)

For the next few moments I want you to try to imagine what it must have been like to be among those who stood on the streets of Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. (I’ll even let you close your eyes if you like, as long as you promise not to go to sleep!)

The city would have been bustling with people, as worshippers from all over Palestine and many from considerably farther afield—from as far away as the distant corners of the vast Roman Empire—had begun to gather in preparation for the annual Passover celebration.

For centuries there had been a tradition that, as they made their way towards the holy city, travellers would recite what are known as the Psalms of Ascents, the fifteen psalms beginning with Psalm 120. Many of those psalms remain familiar to us today, as they have become entrenched in our Christian worship: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go the house of the Lord.’” “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved…” “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream…” “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain…”

So it was that there was literally music in the air as Jesus and his followers made their way towards Jerusalem. Our Bible reading this morning opens with them looking across at the city from the top of the slope that separates it from the Mount of Olives—and I find myself hearing the distant echoes of those psalms being sung in the background.

As they made their way along the twisting road that led down into the valley and then up towards the city, Jesus knew what awaited him there. Indeed, he had been warning his followers about it for some months: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” (Luke 19:31-33)

The Disciples

In fact, Jesus had warned them on at least three separate occasions what was going to happen to him. However, the disciples, really hadn’t paid very much attention at the time. Plus, I suspect that by this time they were so caught up in the excitement of the coming Passover celebration that those words of foreboding had faded almost entirely from their minds. They would have had no idea of the darkness that was to engulf them over the coming days.

It was in that context that Jesus came to them with a request: “Go into the village ahead of you. There on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say this: ‘The Lord has need of it.’”

The instructions seem strange to me—almost like something out of a James Bond movie. However, the disciples seemed to think nothing of it and went on their way unquestioningly, following Jesus’ directions to the letter. And as it turned out, everything was exactly as he had told them. Little did they know that they were embarking on a trajectory that would lead to treachery, betrayal, torture and execution.

Now they were happy to obey Jesus and to carry out his instructions. But in a few days’ time they would see this same Jesus, whom they had come to love and adore, roughly arrested, unjustly tried, brutally tortured, and nailed to a cross to die a slow, agonizing death. And they would find themselves cowering behind locked doors in fear for their lives. Piece by piece, everything that they had come to believe in and to hold dear over the previous three years would be turned on its head.

The Multitude

The next scene takes us to the gates of Jerusalem. Located atop Mount Zion and surrounded by thick stone walls, the city would have made an impressive site, especially for those who came from the towns and villages of the countryside.

I am reminded of one of my visits to New York City. I was with a friend and we were walking through the streets of Manhattan, when a stranger came up to us and said, “You’re visitors here, aren’t you?” When we asked him what gave us away, he replied, “It’s because you’re looking up, not ahead.” All our attention had been riveted on the enormous skyscrapers that towered above us, to the point where we weren’t paying any attention to where we were going!

I can imagine a similar dynamic taking place with many of the pilgrims from the tiny hamlets of Palestine—among them Jesus’ disciples. There were the more than a quarter of a million of them jostling along through its narrow streets. And everything about the city would have prompted oohs and ahs.

At the centre of it all was the magnificent Temple occupying thirty-six acres of land. Its fifty-foot-high gates flanked by enormous columns, its gold glistening in the hot Near Eastern sun, it would have been an impressive sight even to modern eyes. Already more than forty-six years in the making, it would not be fully completed for another four decades.

Now add to that the excitement and anticipation over the coming celebration of Passover. Then into this scene there enters a strange sight—a man riding on a donkey, with other men going before him and spreading their cloaks along his path as though he were a king or some kind of royalty. This leads to what seems to have been a spontaneous outburst of excitement, as some join in and spread their garments on the road, while still others cut down palm branches and lay them along the cobblestones. Meanwhile, all of this is accompanied by joyful shouts of “Hosanna!” and “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Of course, we all know that within the space of a few short days the jubilant cheers of the multitude would turn to shouts of “Crucify!” Among them there might even have been some of those who passed by him as he hung naked on the cross, who jeered at him and mocked him with the words, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself…”

The Stones

Then there were the religious authorities, who would have none of this spontaneous celebration. “Teacher,” they snapped, “rebuke your disciples.” To which Jesus replied, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

My suspicion is that the stones that Jesus was referring to may have been the enormous megaliths that formed the base of the Temple. Some of them weighed as much as five hundred tonnes. You may recall that on a previous visit to Jerusalem one of Jesus’ disciples had drawn attention to them. “Look,” he said (and I can imagine the wonderment in his voice). “What massive stones! And what enormous buildings!” (Mark 13:1)

Now let me ask: Can you think of anything more inanimate than a stone—particularly a stone of that magnitude? Yet Jesus says, “If [the human voices] were silent, the very stones would cry out.” What did he mean? Was he just being poetic? Was he using exaggeration to get his point across?

Maybe. But I think there was more. And my reason is this: It is because at the cross everything would change—and I mean everything. It was not just a matter of closing the gap that separates you and me from God on account of our sin. What was happening on the cross would radically affect the whole created order in its entirety—even the rocks! For it was on the cross that Jesus would defeat once and for ever the cosmic powers of sin and evil and death—all that is wrong and sinful and out of step with God’s will in the universe.

We get a glimpse of what was happening in Matthew’s remarkable account of what took place in Jerusalem at the moment when Jesus gave up his spirit:

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matthew 27:51-53)

So it is that when we get to the Book of Revelation, we find the aged John peering through his astonished eyes not just to catch a dream of things made better, but to be captured by a vision of the whole of creation transformed. What he gazed upon was a new heaven and a new earth. “For,” he says, “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” (Revelation 21:1)

The apostle Paul expressed the same kind of understanding in his letter to the Romans, when he wrote:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:18-23)

So as we move through this Holy Week towards the observance of Good Friday and Easter, if I leave you with anything, I want to leave you with a cosmic vision of what was taking place as our Lord and his disciples made their way into the holy city.

When Jesus was to utter those words from the cross, “It is finished,” he was not just saying that his life was coming to an end. He was doing away once and for all with sin and evil and death. He was ushering in a whole new creation, made perfect in accordance with the will and pleasure of his Father.

In the words of the apostle Paul, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:19-20)

When New Testament scholar N.T. Wright wrote his book about the meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion six years ago, he chose the dramatic title The Day the Revolution Began. In his conclusion to this massive 400-page-plus study, he wrote this (and please forgive me for quoting it at length!):

With all this we lift up our eyes and realize that [we] have been so concerned with getting to heaven, with sin as the problem blocking the way, … that [we have] forgotten that the gospels give us [the atonement] not as a neat little system, but as a powerful, many-sided, richly revelatory narrative in which we are invited to find ourselves, or rather to lose ourselves and to be found again on the other side. We have gone wading in the shallow and stagnant waters of medieval questions and answers … when only a few yards away is the vast and dangerous ocean of the gospel story, inviting us to plunge in and let the waves of dark glory wash over us, wash us through and through, and land us on the shores of God’s new creation.[1]

The obedience of the disciples would quickly turn to fear. The shouts of “Hosanna!” that rang through the streets of Jerusalem would soon be no more than an echo. But the day is coming when even the stones will not be silent, but will resound with the joyful chorus of all the redeemed:

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honour and glory and blessing!
(Revelation 5:12)

Let’s be sure that you and I are part of the crowd!

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[1]       The Day the Revolution Began, 415-416

“A Christmas Triptych” (John 1:14)

I understand that the triptych began as a specifically Christian form of art. Instead of a single canvas, three panels are used to portray a particular truth or incident. In that sense, triptychs offer a fuller, you might even say three-dimensional, perspective of what they portray. Perhaps for this reason the Bible gives us not one but three accounts of Jesus’ coming into the world: one each in the gospels of St Matthew, St Luke and St John. Each of them has a slightly different story to tell, recounted from a different perspective. I believe it is only when you have heard all three, looked at all three panels so to speak, that you can come to a full understanding of the Christmas story.

Unfortunately, at the Christmas services we usually have time only to read one, to look at a single panel. But for the next few moments I want us to fold out the triptych and to look at all three.

Luke: A picture of Mary

We begin with St Luke, whose account of the first Christmas is perhaps the most familiar. It is Luke who tells us of the angel coming to Mary and announcing to her that she will bear a son. It is Luke who tells us of the long trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It is Luke who tells us about the shepherds and the angelic choir.

It has long been observed that Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth is written from the perspective of the Virgin Mary. Mary was probably a young girl in her early teens, barely a woman at all, when she became betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter. Betrothal was the stage that preceded marriage. It lasted for a full year and was something considerably more serious than modern-day engagement. For one thing, it was every bit as binding as marriage and could only be broken by a formal act of divorce.

It was in this betrothal period, then, that Mary received a strange visitor—an angel sent from God. Now we mustn’t necessarily think of an angel as some winged being robed in dazzling white, as artists so often portray them. The word both in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New simply means a messenger. So we have no reason to think that the room where Mary sat was necessarily flooded with blinding light. It may have been just an ordinary meeting. What was extraordinary was not the messenger as much as the message that Mary received: that without having engaged in sexual relations with any man (not least her fiancé Joseph) Mary was to become pregnant and give birth to a child. Even more astounding was that that child would be the Son of God.

Mary’s initial reaction was bewilderment. How could any of this be possible? She lived in an era centuries before the development of modern embryology but she knew as well as you or I do that virgins do not get pregnant. Perhaps it was the angel’s final words that convinced her: “Nothing is impossible with God.” And we all know Mary’s response: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And the rest, we might say, is history.

Matthew: A picture of Joseph

We turn now from Luke’s gospel to Matthew’s. Luke wrote his account of Jesus’ birth from the perspective of Mary but Matthew tells the Christmas story from the eyes of Joseph. And of course it is from Matthew as well that we learn about the visit of the wise men, of King Herod’s uncontrollable jealousy, and of Mary and Joseph’s being forced to escape to Egypt with their newborn son. But back to Joseph.

Somehow word had reached him that Mary was pregnant. Could it have been through Mary’s relatives Elizabeth and Zechariah? Could it have been through the village grapevine? I like to think that Mary herself might have told him what had happened. Whatever route it took, Joseph had learned of Mary’s condition and this threw him into a moral dilemma. What was he to do? One option was to call off the betrothal. But he would have to find a way of doing it quietly, behind the scenes, or else Mary could end up being publicly accused of adultery. And on that topic the Scriptures were clear: “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10). Perhaps images conjured up in Joseph’s mind similar to what we read of the woman who was brought to Jesus after being caught in adultery.

It was as Joseph was tossing all of this back and forth in his mind that he too received a visit from an angel—in his case not in person, but in a dream, but the message was the same. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” This was all that Joseph needed. He awoke from sleep determined to take Mary as his bride and to suffer the consequences of people always talking (but never to him) about the questionable provenance of her child.

John: A picture of God

Turn on a few pages now to John’s gospel. If Luke wrote from Mary’s outlook and Matthew from Joseph’s, whose perspective does John represent? The answer, I believe, is God’s. We hear nothing from John about the maid in Nazareth or of the carpenter who was her husband-to-be. Instead, John points us upward to gaze into the vastness of the cosmos and to look back, if we can, to the very beginning of time.

As John tells it, the story of Jesus does not begin with an angel coming to a virgin or with a carpenter waking from a dream. No, it begins deep within the very heart of God. What happened that first Christmas morning had somehow, mysteriously, been a part of God’s plan of creation, part of his very being as Love, right from the beginning, before ever the first word was spoken and there was light.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

So there you have a triptych: three pictures of the coming of Jesus from three different perspectives. But what is it that unites these three pictures, that gives them unity? The answer, I believe, is faith. We have the faith of Mary, who not knowing what the future might hold, trusted God enough to take that next step after which nothing could ever be the same again and say to the angel, “Here I am… Let it be to me according to your word.” There was Joseph, who was also willing to trust God to bring him and Mary through the shame and the gossip, the sideways glances and whispered murmurs that would forever be a part of their life in the village of Nazareth.

I am grateful to Nancy Clauss for posting on Facebook a recent op-ed article about faith by New York Times columnist David Brooks. I found it tremendously helpful and challenging. He describes the main business of faith as

… living attentively every day. The faithful are trying to live in ways their creator loves. They are trying to turn moments of spontaneous consciousness into an ethos of strict conscience. They are using effervescent sensations of holiness to inspire concrete habits, moral practices and practical ways of living well.

Marx thought that religion was the opiate of the masses, but [Rabbi Joseph] Soloveitchik argues that, on the contrary, this business of living out a faith is complex and arduous: “The pangs of searching and groping, the tortures of spiritual crises and exhausting treks of the soul purify and sanctify man, cleanse his thoughts, and purge them of the husks of superficiality and the dross of vulgarity. Out of these torments there emerges a new understanding of the world, a powerful spiritual enthusiasm that shakes the very foundations of man’s existence.”

Insecure believers sometimes cling to a rigid and simplistic faith. But confident believers are willing to face their dry spells, doubts, and evolution. Faith as practiced by such people is change. It is restless, growing. It’s not right and wrong that changes, but their spiritual state and their daily practice. As the longings grow richer, life does, too. As [Yale professor and poet Christian] Wiman notes, “To be truly alive is to feel one’s ultimate existence within one’s daily existence.”[1]

The Letter to the Hebrews puts it more succinctly: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” This was the case with Mary and with Joseph. They had come to see their lives, indeed life itself, within the context of the transcendent, always loving purposes of God. Not that there were not doubts, problems, conflicts—but their faith in God would always sustain them through them.

We’ve thought about Mary and Joseph, but what about the middle panel of our triptych? What about God? Perhaps I am teetering on the brink of heresy, but I believe that at Christmas our God himself also showed faith—faith to become a tiny cluster of cells within a woman’s uterus, faith to be a helpless infant in his mother’s arms, faith to think that one man in a far-off corner of an empire could change the world, faith to undergo his own death… And that same God comes to you and to me today and invites us on that same adventure of faith, to follow the one who teaches, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:35).

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[1]     David Brooks, “The Subtle Sensations of Faith”, New York Times, 23 December 2014, p. A27. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/opinion/david-brooks-the-subtle-sensations-of-faith.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

“An Unexpected Fulfillment” (Isaiah 7:10-16)

King Ahaz paced nervously back and forth across the floor of his royal palace in Jerusalem, to the point where the carpet was becoming threadbare. It looked as though he was headed for the worst day of his reign, which had been disastrous from the start. With each passing year his tiny kingdom of Judah had become smaller, gnawed and chipped away by enemies on every side. Even the nation of Israel, their ancestral kith and kin, had been among the aggressors. In a single battle against Israel he had suffered the loss of 120,000 soldiers, with a further 200,000 women and children dragged away into captivity. Among those lost in battle had been his own son, the commander of the palace guard and the prime minister.

In addition there were the Arameans, centered in Damascus, once the dominant power in the region and still a force to be reckoned with—not to mention the Edomites, and also the Philistines, who had taken village after village, so that now the little nation of Judah was reduced to a fraction of what it once had been. Things had reached the point where Ahaz did not know where to turn.

Tragically, the one direction Ahaz never did turn was to the Lord. Quite the opposite: with each successive disaster he became increasingly faithless. At one point he began offering sacrifices to the gods of the Arameans. “After all,” he reasoned, “if they helped the kings of Aram, perhaps they will help me also.” Yet the situation only got worse—and even this did not turn Ahaz to the Lord. Instead, he confiscated the sacred vessels of the Temple and had them destroyed. Then he ordered the doors of the Temple itself to be locked up. At the same time he had shrines to false gods erected throughout the towns and villages that still remained to him as well as in every corner of Jerusalem, right under the shadow of the Temple.

The cause of the current crisis was that Aram and Israel, his two of his most powerful adversaries, had joined forces and put Jerusalem under siege. Up until this point the city had appeared to be unassailable. Surrounded by steep hills and a seemingly impregnable city wall, Ahab had thought himself safe. Now the specter of defeat loomed large, as it never had before. The prospect of utter ruin, of losing everything, was more than a possibility: it was virtually inevitable. In the verses just prior to the passage we have read this morning, Isaiah writes that when they heard the news of the alliance, “the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind” (Isaiah 7:2).

Isaiah

Enter the prophet Isaiah, who brings a challenging message of encouragement: “Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands… Thus says the Lord God: ‘It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass… If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all.’ ”

As though these prophetic words were not enough, Ahaz would not believe what Isaiah said; and it is at this point that we arrive at the beginning of this morning’s Old Testament reading. As the passage opens we find the Lord giving a further word to Ahaz to confirm that what Isaiah had told him was true. Whether it was through Isaiah or by some other means we do not know, but the word was this: “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be in the depths of hell or in the heights of heaven.” Eugene Peterson in The Message renders this, “Ask anything. Be extravagant. Ask for the moon!”

Now Ahaz’ response is intriguing. On the surface it seems very pious. After all, the Bible warns us that we are not to put the Lord to the test. You may recall how some of the scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus to give them a sign. His reply was curt: “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign.” Yet on the other hand God again and again graciously offers his people signs to confirm their faith in him and in his promises. Think of Gideon and the fleece, for example. Centuries later God would give a sign to shepherds in the hills outside Bethlehem that the Messiah had been born: they would find him wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

Ahaz was so fixed in his opinion, however, that he refused to ask for a sign (“Don’t confuse me with the facts”)—and all under the guise of a false piety. Instead of turning to the Lord for help, he turned instead to an alliance with the powerful empire of Assyria. This was simply one in a series of flagrant acts of disobedience towards the Lord, which had included not only encouraging the worship of false gods throughout the nation, but even placing an altar to an Assyrian god within the Temple.

To this Isaiah gives his telling response: A young woman will give birth to a son and she will be inspired to call him Immanuel, “God is with us”. The reason for this was that Judah’s two enemies, Aram and Israel, were busy defending themselves against Assyria and the nation was enjoying a period of tranquility. However, Judah’s days of peace and prosperity were no more than a temporary respite. The time would come when Jerusalem would fall, its king and citizens forced into vassalage.

Who exactly this child was Isaiah does not reveal to us. Was he a royal prince to be born into the house of Ahaz? There are some who think so—that it may have been Hezekiah, the pious and just king who succeeded Ahaz. The Bible speaks of him in glowing terms: “He did what was right in the sight of the Lord just as his ancestor David had done. He trusted in the Lord the God of Israel; so that there was no one like him among all the kings of Judah after him, or among those who were before him” (2 Kings 18:3,5).

On the other hand, some ask, may Isaiah have been prophesying about a child who was to be born into his own family? This theory also has its proponents, particularly since Isaiah describes the birth of his son in the very next chapter. Still others suggest that the young woman of verse 14 was not an individual at all but a metaphor for the whole nation of Judah. Elsewhere we find Amos speaking of “the virgin Israel” (5:2) and Isaiah himself addressing the city of Jerusalem as “virgin daughter Zion” (37:22). In the final outcome, I am not sure that I find any of these arguments convincing. My own sense is that the wisest course may be to leave the identity of Isaiah’s Immanuel shrouded in mystery.

Matthew

Now fast forward ahead nearly eight hundred years. A man named Matthew sets out to write an account of Jesus for the Jewish-Christian community of which he was a member. For some reason, as he muses about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth, this passage from the prophet Isaiah keeps popping into his mind: “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Immanuel.” Could it be, Matthew asks himself, that in the amazing story of Jesus’ coming into the world, here was the true fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy? It was not in the political machinations of Ahaz, who sought security through military alliances and worldly power. No, it was in a helpless child, born to a working-class couple far from their home, that was to be found the true Immanuel, God with us, God come to us in human flesh!

Again and again that had been the experience of Matthew and the other disciples—as they had first set eyes on Jesus at the bank of the Jordan and heard John cry out, “Look! The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”; as they had mended their nets on the lakeside and Jesus had come to them with the irresistible invitation, “Come, follow me”; as they had struggled to keep their little boat afloat amid a violent storm on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus had stood up and commanded, “Peace! Be still”; as they had stood breathless at the top of a mountain and seen Jesus transfigured before them in the presence of Moses and Elijah; as they looked back on a seven-mile walk with a stranger from Jerusalem to Emmaus and asked, “Did not our hearts burn within us?”… As they looked back on these and countless other incidents, they recognized that they had been in the presence of Immanuel, God with us.

Today

I do not believe it is a coincidence that Matthew concludes his gospel with these same words: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). This is the good news that the whole world longs to hear: that on this tiny speck at the edge of a galaxy which is itself only a speck in the vastness of the universe, God is with us. In a world that with each passing day seems to be spinning more and more out of control, God is with us.

Professor Mark Buchanan points to another obscure passage in the Old Testament prophets, this time in Zechariah. It pictures people coming from all over the world to Jerusalem to seek the blessing of the Lord. “In those days,” Zechariah declares, “ten men from nations of every language will take hold of a Jew, grasping his garment and saying, ‘Let us go with you…’ ” And what is their reason for behaving in such a manner? “We have heard that God is with you” (Zechariah 8:20-23).

Good News [Buchanan writes] the gospel is for all nations. It embraces and welcomes all languages—Urdu speakers and Inuit and Norwegians and remote tribes tucked in the folds of Burmese mountain jungles. It’s for the homeless under the bridges of Los Angeles, the untouchables in the streets of Calcutta, the drug addicted in sweaty apartments not far from where you live. It’s for rich people who live atop hills and poor people who live in ditches. It’s for the old man in his lonely room, and the teenage girl struggling to find her identity, the single mom wondering where the next meal’s coming from. It’s for the discouraged dentist, the confused mill-worker, the weary postman. It’s for everyone, everywhere.[1]

God with us.

This is the dream of every church [writes Buchanan again] for God’s life among us to be so obvious, so fragrant, so magnetic, so contagious, that all peoples clamor for the privilege of joining. Rather than us grabbing hold of people, people grab hold of us. Rather than us telling anyone, “God is with us,” they tell one another that.

As we celebrate Emmanuel, God-with-us, this Christmas, may Isaiah’s words be fulfilled in us once again. May they inspire us to be a community where the Lord is truly present—not only in our worship, but in our meetings and decisions, in our homes and in our relationships—and not only on Sunday or on Christmas but every day.

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[1]     http://markbuchanan.net/when-god-dwells-in-our-midst/