A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Linda M. Maloney

Isaiah 7:10-17
Psalm 24
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-15

To all God's beloved in Little Falls, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Would you ask God for a sign? If you really stood at a crossroads, a testing time in your life, can you, would you ask God for a sign? Or is that just something they did in Bible times, definitely out of date in the third millennium?

Ahaz wouldn't do it. He's very pious about his refusal, too: "I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test." Very pious. It says in the book of Deuteronomy (6:16): "Do not put the Lord your God to the test," and Jesus quotes that to the tempter in Matt 4:7. But I don't think Ahaz's motives are pure. He's in a desperate situation, besieged by an alliance of foreign kings, and what he wants to do is ally himself with one of the Great Powers, Assyria in this case, making Judah a protectorate of that empire and thus saving it from its immediate foes (but at what a cost!). He's afraid the sign might not be favorable to his plans. Besides - and here's the main problem - he'd rather do it himself, get the kingdom out of the jam his way and take the credit for it: no guts, no glory.

So Isaiah says "all right, you'll get a sign anyway, and here it is: a baby." Say what? He had just said that Ahaz could ask for a sign "as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven." A baby? Come on. And what's all this about eating curds and honey, and refusing the evil and choosing the good? (Yogurt and honey, yum yum, sounds good!) What that seems to mean, though, is that by the time this child is six or seven years old the land will be so devastated by war that the planting of crops will have ceased; the people will be driven back into their previous state as nomadic herders and will sustain themselves with the milk of their flocks and whatever wild products they can gather.

And so it came to be. But all that was - if you read on - a sign of hope. Keep going through chapters 8 and 9 of Isaiah and see what it says about signs,and where they come from, and how they are to be sought, till you come to that outburst of joy over this puny baby: "For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isa 9:6) - and on and on.

Next, we turn to the gospel and there we meet Joseph, who is also in trouble - very personal trouble because he has to figure out how to get rid of his apparently unfaithful fiance, as the Law requires him to do, but not get her killed in the process. Joseph gets a message from an angel (because all the prophets are gone) and he immediately recognizes this as a sign from God. The name given the child is different (Jesus instead of Immanuel), but the pattern is the same. Matthew gives us the Bible reference, in case we don't get it, but Joseph understands right away, and obeys.

The name Jesus is itself a sign: it is Yeshua in Aramaic, or Yehoshua in Hebrew, the same name as that of Joshua who led the people into the promised land. It means "Yahweh saves," or more literally "Yahweh makes room." God gives us elbow room - that's what salvation is - space in which to grow and become who we are. Without "space" we are like root-bound plants that wither and die. Jesus is the space in which we can bloom. Jesus is the space within which we can ask for and receive the sign of God's favor.

Jesus is the answer to the question posed by the medieval monk Angelius Silesius: "What does it profit me if Gabriel hails the Virgin unless he brings to me the very selfsame tidings?" It is always tempting at this season to fall into what Krister Stendahl calls "playing ancient Bible-land." We treat Christmas as a "let's pretend" time when we travel back in time 2000 years and make-believe that baby Jesus is being born in the stable at Bethlehem. But when we do that we relegate that event firmly to the past and block it off from any real meaning for us today. God cannot make room for us, each of us and all of us, in 1998 and beyond, God cannot give signs for us within that space, unless we receive the tidings of the angel as our very own: "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you!" Truly our God is with us, among us, one of us, making room in our place and our time for the unfolding of our lives, the lives of all of us, called to be saints.

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