Based on Isaiah 7:10-16, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25
I’m wondering this morning if you love God? If you love God with a Hallmark Christmas movie kind of love – the kind that’s never really tested by the harsh realities of life? Perhaps you love God with a love that keeps God at arm’s length, never speaking with God unless something really difficult is going on in your life. I know that some of you love God with the kind of love that is capable of bearing all things, hoping all things, believing all things, and enduring all things as Paul wrote to the Corinthians. The kind of love for God and neighbor which has been repeatedly tested. I know for a fact that some have come to the point where we’ve asked ourselves if we can love God with fidelity given the trials that our relationship with God and others has or is experiencing.
Those of us who claim to love God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, have often had that love tested throughout our lives – as do the three men in our scripture readings today. The first man’s love we will consider is that of King Ahaz of Judah. Three neighboring kings are allied against him and he is terrified. God comes to him and reminds him that God is with him against these mere mortals – he is to not be afraid, but to ask God for relief from his enemies. Ahaz chooses to not put God to the test – that is, Ahaz chooses to not love and trust in the power of God.
Paul, on the other hand, has been through the wringer on behalf of his love for God. At first, Paul as Saul was a zealous defender of the Mosaic law – imprisoning and stoning some followers of Jesus. After Jesus came to him, Paul became a zealous lover of Jesus, who took that love across the Mediterranean basin, in spite of death threats, a shipwreck and many other hardships. Paul said “yes” to God in a moment of cataclysmic change and continued to love God with strength and fidelity the rest of his life.
Finally, there’s Joseph, engaged to young Mary who now is showing signs of infidelity to him. He is blindsided by this apparent betrayal by his betrothed, and yet, he doesn’t seek the sentence that is prescribed by the Law (stoning her to death), he believes he will quietly “divorce her” and move on with his life. An angelic visit convinces him to remain in loving relationship with God and Mary and to name the boy “Jesus” because his love will save his people.
Episcopal Priest, Rosalind Brown, provides some insight on each of these three men and how they lived out their love for God. Rev. Brown notes that: “…Ahaz, Paul and Joseph were three men up against the inscrutability of God…These were three men whose lives were thrown into turmoil when God came to them.
Ahaz's story, as told in Kings and Chronicles, has no moment of potential redemption…But Isaiah's account throws a wrench into the works: God offers Ahaz the opportunity to ask for a sign - a down payment on God's intervention in the situation. Ahaz's refusal sounds wise, given the number of times the people of Israel have already been rebuked for testing God, but it masks a failure to distinguish between faithful and rebellious testing of God. Faithful testing is prepared to act on the outcome, whereas Ahaz's pious answer is a refusal to risk belief in God, a refusal to experience the love God longs to lavish on the king.
The invitation to Ahaz is actually double-edged; he thinks he is being invited to test God, to prove God true, but he himself is being tested by God's word (Ps. 105:19). So, God asks Ahaz to pay attention to the names of children and sets up a contrast between Ahaz's lack of faith and the woman's great faith in naming her child ‘Emmanuel.’ If Ahaz cannot hear the subtext of Isaiah's son's name, ‘A remnant shall return,’ God will spell it out more clearly: ‘God is with us.’ The king's actions tell us he does not believe this, but a young woman can and does. In a good mystery novel, clues are scattered throughout the book…That is what God is doing with Ahaz. A clue here, ‘ask me for a sign’; a clue there, ‘a child's name.’ But Ahaz, conditioned by a lifetime of ignoring God, cannot or will not seize this moment of [God’s] grace.
Ahaz's whole life has been based on the assumption that God won't come to him. So, given his refractory history, why is Ahaz offered a sign of God's presence and power while righteous Joseph is not? It would seem to be so easy for the angels, already working overtime in the Nazareth and Bethlehem area, to put in an appearance to Joseph and make it all clear from the beginning. It would spare him, as well as Mary and her parents, a lot of agony. Instead, God leaves Joseph with the dilemma of what to do when a lifetime of fidelity to God is suddenly rewarded with seeming disaster. And, to make matters worse, God appears to be silent…
Being a righteous man, Joseph tries to put the pieces of his jigsaw puzzle together using the template of the law of God and his own compassion for Mary. But he is working with the wrong picture, because God is at this very minute putting the finishing touches on a new one. The God who last week was a highway engineer making new ways through the wilderness, a gardener turning deserts into flower gardens, is now the artist painting a new perspective of the age-old promise of the Messiah. Hope in God cannot stand still, because - as Isaiah reminds us elsewhere - we hope in a God who is constantly doing a new thing.
The initial silence of God to Joseph was just as demanding for him as the clarity of God's words was for Ahaz. In both situations God was testing the men: Are you going to [love and] act faithfully? Does your [love and] hope in God hold fast in the face of chaos and confusion in your life? Ahaz, can you live [and love] with the clear word of God? Righteous Joseph, can you live [and love] with the silence of God?
Paul brings it all together. Once intransigent on God's behalf, Paul knows himself to be a [loving] servant of Jesus Christ and writes of the obedience of faith. That was Joseph's response too. Faith knows in whom it has believed, and orders life accordingly, despite unanswered questions. In contrast to Paul and Joseph, Ahaz's knowledge of himself as king precludes knowing himself as God's [lovingly] obedient servant….”
The question before each of these men of the Bible is the same that I asked you in the beginning of this reflection, “do you love God?” What would you do when you are surrounded by seemingly intractable problems – would you lean into your own strength and wisdom like King Ahaz, or would you lean into your love of God, trusting that God will fulfill God’s promises and make a way? The Apostle Paul shows us a very different way to respond to God’s love taking over his life. Paul chose to love God and to trust him through thick and thin and to lovingly follow God to his death at the hands of the Roman Emperor.
Rev. Brown instructs us that, “…Joseph's fidelity should remind us that often the times of silence or awkward questions are the prelude to new works of God in our lives. Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of God, a time to pay attention to the clues that God is active, a time to practice the scales of fidelity that will enable us to play the new music when God puts it in front of us. Sometimes it is only those who have learned to maintain their [loving] hope during God's silences who can be trusted with hearing God's word spoken to their situation; only those who have been tested by God's word can embrace without hesitation the unanticipated presence of God….”
Only those who learn to open themselves to God’s grace – God’s freely given gift of unconditional love – will discover the love that fueled Joseph, Paul, Jesus and countless faithful people across two millennia. This is the love that God reveals to us at Christmas and it is ours to find and embrace. The love that was so deep and so pure that it manifested itself as a human baby in a manger in Bethlehem – a love that has never left the world behind, no matter how often we love God like Ahaz. God’s love is always true and available – a love that is waiting for you, right here and right now. A love that is waiting for you to find and live it. Thanks be to God for the enduring gift of love! Amen!