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Advent 4, Year A
December 19, 2004
Christ Church, Covington
“But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test”
(Is. 7:12).
Poor King Ahaz! Centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ, his kingdom of
Judah is beset by a formidable alliance, of Aram and the Ephraimites to
the north. His country is tiny, while everyone around him is bigger and
tougher. In the background is mighty Assyria, the real neighborhood bully.
Ahaz is “bobbing and weaving”, making alliances here and military
campaigns there, trying to maneuver so that his kingdom won’t be crushed.
The motivator is fear. The prophecy of Isaiah says that when they learned
about the alliance against them, “the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his
people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind” (Is. 7:2).
Now that’s fear.
In the midst of this diplomatic ferment, God offers Ahaz a sign: the birth
of a son and heir as token that his kingdom and his line will continue. In
other words, have faith. But Ahaz doesn’t want or need a sign. He’s
running scared. A practical man, he’s putting his faith in what he thinks
is more tangible and trustworthy, his own diplomatic and military skill. I
guess Ahaz was a pretty accomplished politician. Don’t bother him with
talk about faith. Poor King Ahaz. All those plans were worthless,
absolutely worthless; disastrous, in fact. By the end, Ahaz’ son was
looking out over the parapet at the Assyrian army, parked at the gates of
Jerusalem. Again, as the prophecy says, “If you do not stand firm in
faith, you shall not stand at all” (Is. 7:8).
That’s where we are on this fourth Sunday of Advent; not, of course, on
the parapet in Jerusalem, but poised on the very edge of something new and
amazing that God is going to do. Can you feel it? By now you should be
feeling it. The sign for us is the same one that Ahaz was to be given, but
spurned. “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and
shall name him Immanuel” (Is. 7:14). We are standing there with Joseph and
with Mary, of whom much is demanded in the way of faith. Joseph at least
is having a hard time believing it all. It must be a family trait:
remember, Joseph is a direct descendant of King Ahaz. He too has his own
plan, well-intentioned and practical, for “solving the problem”. But
Joseph, unlike Ahaz, is in the final moment found faithful, and amazing
things happen. If he had stuck with his plan, he would have closed off new
possibilities, the action of God that was waiting to happen. Thank God he
didn’t.
I sometimes tell people, half-jokingly, that at some critical junctures in
my life, I have forgotten to pray. I tell you this to encourage you, if
faith doesn’t come easily. I don’t know what God does with misplaced
prayers, but I do know that forgetting to pray is another form of
self-reliance, just as useless as the form that afflicted Ahaz. Forgetting
to pray is also a way of closing oneself off from new possibilities,
undreamt of by our feeble imaginations. We need to be open to the new and
amazing thing that God will do.
So what is the new thing that God is waiting to do with you? Being open to
new possibilities, I think, is part of being a human being. If you aren’t
open to this, then you’re missing a part of living. Being open to new
possibilities is also, more importantly, part of being a Christian.
Another way of describing this is “hope”. We either overcome our fear,
like Joseph, or we fail to, like poor King Ahaz. Fear can paralyze us,
close us off to new possibilities, keep us locked in to old, “same as it
ever was”-decisions, made long ago. The result is disaster. We need to
have hope. Hope, which is faith oriented to the future, keeps looking for
the thing that God is going to do, surprising and beyond our own powers as
it may seem to be. Advent is the season of hope, of looking for the still
unrealized action of God in our lives.
So if hopefulness, faith oriented to the future, is a part of being human,
(let me repeat) what is God doing with you? Are you open to God acting in
your life, or are you discounting that possibility and proceeding on in
your own well-worn course? Have you abandoned hope for anything better?
Are you relying on your own hopeless plans? I hope not. I know you are
looking for the new thing that God will do in your life, and will spend
some time thinking about it in this season of hope.
The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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