Isaiah 7:10-16
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25
St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI
+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit.
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, in a far off land, there lived a young
king named Ahaz. He was a young man who
only came to the throne at the age of twenty.
He was king over a small, but a proud little kingdom called Judah, but
was sandwiched between two mighty empires: Assyria and Egypt.
Assyria was a mighty and terrifying empire. Though its cities were grand and the largest
in the ancient world, and its culture was exquisite, many of its artistic works
are among the most spectacular in antiquity; to be on its bad side meant
unfortunate things. Enemies were killed
in gruesome ways, women and children taken into slavery, and conquered people
were scattered to the corners of their empire.
And though Egypt was certainly powerful enough to rival them, they were
far away, and were slowly loosing the ability to challenge Assyria. Indeed, they would eventually be conquered by
Assyria in the future. For Judah, and
other small kingdoms caught between the two, to survive meant having to side
with one of these empires.
Well, our young king was placed into a difficult
situation. Two other smaller kingdoms,
Israel and Aram, which is located in modern-day Damascus, attempted to force
Judah into a coalition to defend against Assyria, as they believed that they
were stronger together. Their request to
have Judah join them was accompanied with an invasion and an assault on
Jerusalem, just for good measure. Ahaz,
fearing for his kingdom, sought to find ways to save himself. He sought ways to make Judah great, as it had
once been under David and Solomon.
There was a man in Ahaz’s court named was Isaiah. He was one
of the king’s distant relatives as they were both descended from royalty. Ahaz found him a bit odd, but others called
him a prophet. He rambled off some
prophecy about a child who will eat cheese and honey, and that God will save
Judah from the invaders. But what use is
this for Judah? Judah was a tiny land,
and it was clearly being besieged on all sides.
Over in Assyria, they had many mighty and powerful gods. Ashur, the patron deity of Assyria had a
whole city built in his honour. Marduk,
a deity second to Ashur in significance, had a spectacular golden statue in
Babylon that granted kingship to those who took his hand. All that the God of Judah had was a small
golden box in Jerusalem in a small little temple.
So Ahaz decided to meet with the King of Assyria,
Tiglath-Pileser III. Isaiah said not to,
but why not? Assyria is strong, Assyria
is mighty, and Assyria is great, and so it is only logical to try and be with
that greatness and hope it comes off onto you.
Tiglath-Pileser was a king of kings, a god to his people. He could get things done, people feared him,
and so better to be his friend. And so,
Ahaz became a vassal to him.
And it worked, Assyria eventually conquered Aram and
Israel. And Judah was safe. All it cost Ahaz was some money, and to
worship the gods of Assyria. The money,
though a substantial amount of silver, could be afforded. As for the Assyrian gods, well why not. If they helped to make Assyria great, maybe
they will make Judah great. People will
keep worshipping the ancestral God of Israel and Judah, the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, but worshipping more gods means you have covered all your
bases. Besides, one little Ashera Pole,
one graven image in the court never hurt anybody, right?
Time passes, Tiglath-Pilesar would come and go, and Ahaz
would come and go. About a century passes,
and with all things made by people, Assyria eventually faded away and a new
empire, Babylon, was on the rise. Well,
Judah was a friend of Assyria, and now Assyria is gone, and those who were
friends with Assyria do not look so good in the eyes of Babylon, especially
since Babylon was once a conquered nation of Assyria. And now, Judah had no close neighbours except
Babylon, as Israel and Aram were destroyed, the cost of vassalage to Assyria
reduced the treasury of Judah to the point that the kingdom could not support
its people, the cost of Egypt’s friendship for protection against Babylon was
higher, and the cost of keeping Babylon from invading even higher.
The last king of Judah, Zedekiah, never listened to the
prophet of his era, Jeremiah. He
continued to worship gods other than the God of Judah, hoping for their
protection, and according to the Bible even offered up human sacrifices to
appease them. In the end, after a
desperate political gamble, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon did away with Judah,
destroyed the Temple of God, took the people into exile, stole the Ark of the
Covenant, and did horrible things to King Zedekiah and his family. Judah was no more.
Many generations pass, empires rise and fall, and we turn to
a distant descendent of Ahaz named Joseph.
Though Joseph is descended from royalty, he is far from it; he is a
carpenter. He lives not in the
independent Kingdom of Judah, but in a client state of Rome called Judea, or in
Nazareth in Galilee according to the Gospel of Luke, but we do not need to
split hairs over the details. Rome
itself had a leader, Octavius, who was taking titles like consul, tribune,
First Citizen, pontifex maximus, Imperator, and Augustus Caesar. And Augustus Caesar promised to make the
Roman Republic great again. But these
matters were of little consequence to Joseph.
He had a business to manage, and a marriage to look to.
Joseph however discovers that his bride-to-be is
pregnant. He did not maker her pregnant,
and so to him, there must have been some other sordid affair. According to the Law of Moses, he could
publically shame her, and the Book of Deuteronomy allows for him to put her to
death. But no, Joseph decides to be one
of the good guys, he decides to let her save some face, and just quietly
divorce her, even though she and her child will still be pariahs, it is a
practical option, and it is better than nothing, right?
In his dreams, the an angel tells him, “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.” All this was to fulfill the words of Isaiah “the
virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel.” Who knows quite what happened in Joseph’s
mind: how aware was he of his decent from Ahaz, how familiar was he with
Isaiah’s prophecy, and how does he connect Emmanuel-God is with us, to
Jesus-God Saves? But somewhere in his
heart and his mind, he decided to not do what society expected of him, he
decided to not do the pragmatic thing, and he decided to accept what God was
calling for rather than what would be best for him. He did what polite society would call
scandalous, and took a pregnant woman into his house to co-habitate with him,
and together they would raise her child even though he was not expected to, or
obligated to do so. He, unlike Ahaz,
trusted in God, and took Mary in when all of society would have rejected her.
He was no longer a nice guy in the eyes of society; he did
what was right though. Unlike Ahaz, he
did not trust in the powers and expectations of the world to make his situation
better for him. He did not choose
pragmatism in the face of trial or opposition to avoid making he scene. He chose love, and that is what we must do
always.
When we face the demands of society to conform to do that
which is evil we must choose to follow God.
Sometimes, it is not enough to be a nice person. Niceness gives us pretence of civility, when
in reality it is cowardly. We must
follow Joseph’s example, and sometimes make the hard choices that no one
expects from us because they are the right choices. We must be willing to accept the person in
need who is in danger of marginalization from our society; we must accept God’s
love for those people. God loves and
blesses the outcasts, and so we must accept the outcasts into our hearts and
our lives. When society tells us to do
evil, even if it seems pragmatic, or safe, we must resist and do the right
thing. Sometimes the person in need is
someone close to us, sometimes they are a person who is homeless in the park
across the way, sometimes they are a Syrian refugee, sometimes they are Muslim,
sometimes they are a person of colour, or a member of the LGBTQ community,
sometimes it is a woman who society is likely to reject based on their own
beliefs about morality. We must follow
Joseph’s example and let the person in, because when we let that person in, we
let God, Emmanuel in. That is a
Christmas miracle.
Amen.
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