Emmanuel

Isaiah 7:10-16,Romans 1:1-7,Matthew 1:18-25,Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."

 In this passage from Isaiah God offers King Ahaz a sign of his presence.  Ahaz who has been acting contrary to the law of love in his kingdom, quotes Torah hoping that he shows that he IS obedient to God.  Then Isaiah proclaims the sign of God anyway.  “A young woman shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel.”  In the Hebrew the word used is the word for young woman.  It is generally understood as the wife of Ahaz and the son born will be Hezekiah who will be a great reforming king.   

But during the second century before Christ, a translation of Hebrew Scripture into Greek translated ‘young woman’ into the word for virgin.  It was this version that Matthew used when he quoted Hebrew Scripture in his Gospel.  In fact, all four gospel writers use this Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture—it was the Old Testament for the early Greek speaking Christians.  It was only as the early church began to pull away from Judaism that the idea of a physical virgin became a theological necessity to Christianity.

The importance of this passage is NOT the virgin birth of Jesus.  It is the place of sign in the lives of the faithful.  What is a sign?  What are we to make of it?  How do signs

help us know of the presence of God?  I am not saying that the virgin birth did not take place—I am saying that perhaps we as church have put too much emphasis on the wrong syl-LA-ble.

King Ahaz did not want a sign from God because he didn’t want to have God messing with how he was governing Judah.  But God gave him a sign that it would be his son who would lead Judah and that Ahaz wasn’t long for this world.

Matthew, looking back on the story in Isaiah saw the sign of God as the sign of Jesus’.  It helped him recognize Jesus as the Messiah.  That is what signs do.  They help us to see the Divine in our rather mundane lives.  Signs of God are all about us.  And what is a symbol for some is totally missed by others.  For the ancients who did not have to compete with modern light pollution saw signs in the skies. It made them take note of their lives in relationship to the universe, in relationship to that which is beyond us, in relationship to the Holy.  Signs of God give us hope.

For Matthew, the sign was that a woman would give birth to a child who would be called “God with us.”  The idea of god-with-us was common speak for those in the first century Roman Empire where Caesar was the incarnate of Jupiter.  But Matthew knew

it wasn’t Jupiter who was directing things.  Matthew used the idiom of his day to show that God, the Holy One of Israel was still with the dispersed people of Israel and Judah.  He saw that it was the young child born to Mary that signed God’s presence to the world.  

Matthew was being quite radical and subversive.  He was claiming that this man, Jesus, whom the Romans had executed, was the one would whose memory would liberate the people. He was saying that Jesus was better than Caesar.  This son of Israel would be the one who would bring the downfall of those who oppressed others.  Jesus was a sign of newness, of hope, of holiness in the face of economic, spiritual and physical subjugation.

Signs of God’s presence have always been thus.  They have always been marks of something that has given humanity the power to overcome the difficulties that face them.  In my experience it has been the sacraments that have renewed me over and over—signs of God’s presence in my life.  Whether it has been in the water of Baptism, the bread and wine of Christ within me, the proclamation of God’s hope by a couple committing their lives to one another, the confirmation of one’s baptism before the community of faith, the embrace of ordination to proclaim Christ’s gospel, the confidence of forgiveness in absolution, or the recognition of God’s power in the oil of healing.  God makes God’s presence known. There are so many signs of God-with-us. 

I don’t worry about whether Mary was a Virgin or not. It isn’t that important. I do not need a supernatural conception to know that God uses the mundane and ordinary to sign for us that God is present to us at every moment.  This does not diminish my love for Mary who has had to carry for the Church the feminine aspects of the Divine for centuries when the Church was dominated by a type of patriarchy that was not of God. 

I do not have to look to the stars for guidance, I merely need to raise my eyes to my brother and sister sitting next to me in the pews to find the impetus to live a life worth of the calling of my Baptism.  It is the men, women and children that I meet in the mall that are the Emmanuels of my life.  It is the neighbor who doesn’t speak my language that provides me with a glimpse of the holy.  It is the one that I want to call a ‘jerk’ that reminds me that God-with-us is not always the ones that make me comfortable.  It is that Emmanuel that makes me stop and really see the sign of hope that God holds out to me and to the whole world.
 

All too often I just get tired of all the signs of God’s hope around me.  Like Ahaz I would like ‘not to put God to the test’, I would like NOT to know that that particular person who hurts me is precisely the person who is the sign of divine presence.  But in that sign is hope.  God has incredible faith in us to go beyond all that separates us to bring about healing, goodness, and community. 

The signs of God always proclaim that there is a way.  The signs of God are always a way through darkness.  The signs of God are always a way to know the presence of peace, embrace and wholeness.   

God does not fix us.  God doesn’t change us.  God does not point the way for us to go.  But there are always signs, always images of hope for us to follow.  The Virgin did conceive and did bear a son and we still call him God with us.  We still know his presence.  We still call him Emmanuel.  AMEN

Hope: Advent in the midst of the Funk

Advent has become rather disjointed for me this year.  And I would suggest that it may be for all of us because of the weather and the closings of last week. And I also have a case of the Funky Februaries and it is only December--NO FAIR!   But today’s lessons bring me back to the season.  

First we hear one of those wonderful prophetic oracles from Isaiah that heralds newness, repair, return and rest.  It is a wonderful oracle and helps us focus on the hope that is held up to us in preparation to receive the Christ Child:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,

    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,

    and rejoice with joy and singing.

The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,

    the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.

They shall see the glory of the LORD,

    the majesty of our God....

The First part of the book of Isaiah is a series of oracles in response to a time when the people have have been oppressed

by their own sinfulness.  Isaiah is most likely writing this in 7^th century before Christ when the Kingdom of Israel (the northern portion of the Divided Kingdom) was being conquered by the Assyrians and the southern Kingdom of Judah was being threatened.  The whole faith of what we know as Judaism was being threatened with extinction.  The first 34 chapters are a series of oracles or visions of what is going to happen to the Promised Land because the people of God have failed to follow the Covenant between God and humanity, that is Mosaic Law.

Just before this passage, Isaiah in Chapter 34 says: 

For the LORD is enraged against all the nations, and furious against all their host, he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter.

Their slain shall be cast out, and the stench of their corpses shall rise; the mountains shall flow with their blood.

All the host of heaven shall rot away, and the skies roll up like a scroll. All their host shall fall, as leaves fall from the vine, like leaves falling from the fig tree.

For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; behold, it descends for judgment upon Edom, upon the people I have doomed.

Pretty grisly stuff.  But then,  out of the blue, comes Chapter 35 which we have today.  There is no preparation for it.  There are no verses of change; no preparation for this song of hope and reparation.

  The notes in my study edition of the Bible tell me that this chapter was most likely written by 2^nd Isaiah some 100 years later and was copied into this passage.  However, recent

scholars are not quite willing to say that.  By all rights this passage which is so comforting and so proclaiming of hope shouldn’t be in this part of the Book of Isaiah.  It sounds like Isaiah, but from an era much later.  What’s going on?

Such juxtapositions happen often in the prophets.  Most of the time we ignore them, but like in music, the silences are as important as the notes.  And this is one of those cases.   When things jump out at me in Scripture, I try to listen to them because they are often hold things that God wants me to see.  

For 34 chapters Isaiah has ranted and raved at the people of both Israel and Judah for their failure to follow the Law of Moses—not just the laws but the spirit of love and community that Mosaic Law engendered among the People of God.  And then out of the blue comes this Chapter 35 that is an oracle of hope.  It is out of character.  It doesn’t quite fit.  It doesn’t belong here.  And yet…and yet….

Faith engenders hope even in the midst of despair.  No matter how the law serves to give structure to our lives, the love relationship with God engenders hope.  We cannot claim to have a relationship with the Holy One of Israel and be hopeless.  I think that that is the reason that this chapter is the final oracle in this part of Isaiah.  It seems to belong to something else, but I would like to suggest that perhaps Chapter 35 is a call to go beyond the Law, go beyond the structures of our lives and step into the spiritual world.  Perhaps Chapter 35 is just one of those anomalies of life that says that hope is the outgrowth of those who are willing enough to really trust God’s love.

Hope is why we can surrender to the love of God.  Hope is the desire to know something

better than what we know—to be something better than we are.  In our relationship with God we come to trust in a future that says life can be better and we can be better even in the midst of gloom, ice, fatigue, depression, sickness, and perhaps disobedience.  When we allow ourselves to surrender to the God that is within us, we can not only be better, but our world can be a better place too.  Because that hope is based in love—the love that the Creator has in us and we have for the Creator.

While I was working on this sermon, a friend texted me that her supervisor was being especially irritating that day.  I suggested that she find some peace with in her herself and try to be exceptionally helpful to her boss.  She said she was trying to be accommodating.  I wrote back:  “Try loving, it may be scary but it will be redeeming.” That is the nature of love—in the face of ennui, in the face of anger, or irritation, or defeat—love redeems. 

Hope is rooted in our ability to love.  In my own life when anxiety overwhelms me or anger overcomes me, I find that I am also so tired of trying to hang on to those emotions that I lose focus on the love that is incarnated in Christ Jesus for me.  It isn’t because I am not loved.  It isn’t because I am not worthy.  It is because I have become afraid to love with the kind of

abandon that Christ has offered me in his life, death and resurrection.  Hope for us is to act with an expansive love that is willing to face the fears of life.  It is the willingness to open ourselves even in our fear or frustration or our anxiety to God's Oneness that creates in us the peace we long for—the holiness of balance and wholeness. 

 

And perhaps this is the message that Advent holds for us today.  In the midst of a cold winter, in the midst of anxiety, in the midst of all the things that tear at what it means to be God’s own, Advent conveys that God still holds out to us a kind of hope that

goes past the basic anticipation of waiting for Christmas.  Advent reaches out to us, and it says that despite what has happened, love conquers it.  And love is the only remedy.  No matter what kind of things that dog our lives, love is the only thing that will prepare us for the living of the Christ-life that we are baptized into.

The passage from the Epistle of James counsels patience—the patience of the farmer.  I am reminded of the elder nuns when I was a novice who counseled to never pray for patience because I would always get opportunities to practice it!!  But sometimes the words of Scripture don’t quite say the same in translation.  The word 'to wait for', in most Romance languages including Latin is the same word for anticipation and hope.  Now, I know that waiting for the bus is quite different from waiting for a beloved to come.  So when we read this passage the 'anticipation' that we are invited to is

more than for the cats at my feet when they hear the electric can opener or waiting for the bus.  It is both 'waiting for' and 'hoping in' while at the same time standing in the confidence that God is working out our joy in the meantime. 

I don’t know about you, the court decision early in the summer really took the wind out of my sails.  I came here to Ft. Worth to retire but also to help the diocese return to the community of the Episcopal Church. When we got the decision from the Supreme Court I figured out somebody out there had been praying for PATIENCE!  

But the kind of patience that James speaks is not just sitting with our hands folded in our laps.  Patience is the quiet dependence upon the love of God being worked out in the

un-anxious work of love.  It says that we are willing to live, to stand and to love, knowing that God is in charge.  I do not need to know what God’s purpose is.  I do not have to live into some Divine Plan.  I must just be faithful to the love that God gives birth in me to give to others.  

If there is anything that I have learned over the past 30 years of ordained ministry is that faith has nothing to do with doing things RIGHT.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t try to do things properly, but it means that my salvation – my 'rightness' with the Holy One is not

dependent upon anything I do. My continued desire to open myself to God’s love and letting it flow through me is enough.  I cannot claim that my vocation is holier than anyone else.  I cannot claim that I can do anything to better my life or anyone’s if I am not grounded in the love with which Christ first loved me.  And the hope that love creates in me allows me to stand in the anticipation that it is that love that makes this season, and all seasons.  It is that love that grows that this day celebrates.

In the Gospel reading, John, who is in prison asks Jesus if he the one that is promised.  And Jesus doesn’t answer directly.  He merely says  "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the

blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  The love of God are seen when such things happen:  When the souls are healed... When the children can play without fear, when the poor can receive the respect of the wealthy, when we can live in peace and loving, free from anxiety, THAT is when the kingdom comes.  It is then that we are living out what it means to be God's own.  

The message that Jesus sends back to John Baptist is the same one that we proclaim right here.  Can we proclaim that Gospel? Can this congregation claim that Gospel?  This is the question of Advent.  It is the question I have to ask myself and perhaps you need to ask of yourselves.  How can you love the people of Aledo?   Advent isn’t just waiting with hands neatly folded.  Advent is about loving.  Faith is about loving.  Hope is about loving. 

My hope for you is that you may dig down in your faith and brush off the love that is there

and allow that stump of Jesse’s love to grow.  Let the hope of this day remind you that sometimes our faith gets rusty with anxiety, or dashed dreams.  But the call of Advent refreshes us.  It is a season of hope that doesn’t seem to belong here.  It is a season that allows us to wait actively by loving.  It is a season that reminds us of the great hope God is and has in us to live out the life of God's love in new and totally new ways.  It is a season that says, ” So be it.”  AMEN

I had a dream...or was it the liverwurst?

Last night or early this morning, I had a dream that was the most engaging dream of the Church I have ever had.  It had bits and pieces of real events but mostly it was built around a future event that I hope to attend sometime next year.

I have to admit I have been relatively depressed of late.  It is a combination of some situational angst and the season of darkness that is upon us.  Being imprisoned by ice sheets doesn’t help either.

As in all dreams, it had disconnected bits of symbolic content.  It was very colorful and the colors depicted meaning.  So bear with me as I try to describe this even that even at this moment remains palpable and hope-giving yet incredibly mysterious and mystifying.

I find myself at a workshop/retreat.  There are not many in my particular group at the beginning.  There are some people I know—not real, but ones from previous dreams.  My group is supposedly for those who have failed to accomplish something.  I was not especially thrilled about being there but I thought I needed to be.  The people were all from my denomination—not my specific church or diocese. 

There is another group meeting at the same time:  A group I identified as Jewish.  They meet

separately from my group but we are aware that they are worshiping and eating at the same time.

As my group began working on the tasks we were given in our workshop we were silent in our tasks. We were to design worship with no words.  (How un-Episcopalian!) 

 Finally, I sat down at table and began to push some colored jelly-beans into a design.  Others came to the table with me and helped push the jelly-beans around in the center of the table.  Fairly soon I noticed that the color of our clothes matched the jellies we were touching.  Some wore yellow, others a pale greens, pinks,   Across the room the Jewish group was wearing deep purples and blues. 

blues—pastels.

I wanted to attend their worship.  The music that was coming from their group was deep and sonorous.  I felt cradled by it and   What I remember is that it was more like some archaic Orthodox Christian worship than modern Jewish, but it attracted me to a deep communion with the Holy.  

embraced by the ancient meanings of their liturgy.

Those in my group wanted to step around this kind of worship to something livelier.  I held up my hands to signal, no.  We needed to include this ancient understanding into our worship otherwise we would not touch that deeply resonating song of something so Beyond and so ancient.  So we invited the Jewish group to join our worship—or to at least combine our worship. 

 There was a desire by the rabbi to exclude anything that was Christian, but slowly both Jewish and  Slowly a dance began.  It wasn’t the Hava Nagila but a slow line dance in which everyone, young   The pastel Episcopalians began to intertwine with the deep purple and blue clad.  The worship of all that was holy was in each step, each eye contact of the dancers.  The lightly held hands held aloft became the orans of the mass.  The table we danced around became both altar and Ark.  But it was the dance that was the communion, the worship, the liturgy of wonder and praise.  

and old, could participate.

 Slowly the retreatants merged with others.  Denominations merged. Different faiths joined.  The dance was no longer in a confined place but in the streets and fields of the world.  Still no words were spoken. 

The color of our clothes denoted the gifts we had been given to dance the dance.  Yellow denoted joy.  Green was for those who had the ability to create.  I am not sure what light blues denoted, but pinks were the sign of grace.  There was a desire by some to provide a single white garment for the dance.  No, I motioned.  The dance is more beautiful with the various colors.  But I made it known that purple had to be at the bottom of each white robe.  It was our tie to the ancient and connected us with a future.

As I woke, I knew I had touched something in me that once had been broken but was now healed.  I asked the Holy One to remember it well enough to write it down.  There were other bits and pieces to this bubble in my sleep that would take too much to explain—and probably would make no sense to anyone but me.  That is the nature of dreams.  I don’t care to analyze it because I don’t think dreams are to be analyzed.  They are the way we work out unconsciously  that which is winding us up in our waking moments.   But I awoke more hopeful than I have been about the Church recently.  

I am more peaceful about the old Church dying now.  I am not afraid of losing her.  The dance of faith will continue.  And the more that we hang on to the jots and tittles of how we have always done it, or the rules and regulations will mean that we will not learn the dance steps to experience the Holy One.  Yes, we need to cling to that which gives meaning, but not the exclusionary efforts that all faiths, all denominations cling to in order to define themselves.  

I guess it wasn’t the liverwurst…after all.