Advent Love

When I was growing up, there was one LP we played more than any other at Christmas time. It was an album called “Season’s Greetings” by Perry Como. We played that record so much it crackled, simulating the sound of a cozy fire on the hearth on a winter’s day.

The first song on that record was entitled “Home for the Holidays”. Many of you probably remember the words….

Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays
‘Cause no matter how far away you roam
When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze
For the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home!

I think those words summarize what most of us want most for Christmas—to be home for the holidays, to have family and friends with us. That’s what gives us a sense of real warmth in the midst of the chill of winter.

We have already heard a Scripture this morning that contains perhaps the most important, the most cheering word in all of the Bible—Immanuel, God with us. Immanuel is the one word that gives us hope, that fills us with love, that provides a sense of warmth in the midst of an otherwise chilly world.

Allow me to set that word in context by reading to you from the rest of Isaiah 7. Listen for God’s word to you….

In the days of Ahaz son of Jotham son of Uzziah, king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel went up to attack Jerusalem, but could not mount an attack against it. ² When the house of David heard that Aram had allied itself with Ephraim, the heart of Ahaz^[a] and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

³ Then the Lord said to Isaiah, Go out to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub,^[b] at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller’s Field, ⁴ and say to him, Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, because of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah. ⁵ Because Aram—with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah—has plotted evil against you, saying, ⁶ Let us go up against Judah and cut off Jerusalem^[c] and conquer it for ourselves and make the son of Tabeel king in it; ⁷ therefore thus says the Lord God:

It shall not stand,
    and it shall not come to pass.
⁸ For the head of Aram is Damascus,
    and the head of Damascus is Rezin.

(Within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered, no longer a people.)

⁹ The head of Ephraim is Samaria,
    and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah.
If you do not stand firm in faith,
    you shall not stand at all.

¹⁰ Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, ¹¹ Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. ¹² But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. ¹³ Then Isaiah^[d] said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? ¹⁴ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman^[e] is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.^[f] 15 He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. ¹⁶ For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. ¹⁷ The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria.” (Isaiah 7:1-17)

So in this story we have Ahaz, King of Judah, shaking in his boots, because the King of Aram and the King of Israel have formed an alliance and are trying to attack Jerusalem. However, the Lord sends the prophet Isaiah to encourage Ahaz not to fear King Rezin and King Pekah because their attempts to destroy Jerusalem will come to nothing.

Now the Lord knows that Ahaz has his doubts about this. So the Lord instructs Isaiah to tell Ahaz to ask for a sign—to ask for proof that God will do what he says he is going to do. But Ahaz refuses to ask for a sign. Then the Lord gives Ahaz a sign anyway. The sign is that a young woman, possibly Isaiah’s wife, will bear a son who will be called Immanuel, God with us. The Lord assures Ahaz that before this child is old enough to tell the difference between good and evil, the land of Israel and the land of Aram will be deserted. This prophecy was fulfilled in 732 BC when the boy, Immanuel, was about two years old.

Now what, you may well ask, does all of this have to do with Christmas?

The answer is that Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14 in his Gospel. Allow me to read to you from Matthew 1:18-25….

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah^[i] took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. ²⁰ But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “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. ²¹ She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²² All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

²³ “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
    and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” ²⁴ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, ²⁵ but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son;^[j] and he named him Jesus.

Did Matthew not know that Isaiah 7:14 had been fulfilled hundreds of years before? Presumably he did know that. So what is going on here? Did Matthew invent the story of the virgin birth “in order to cook up pseudo-‘events’ that just happen to ‘fit’ or ‘fulfil’ prophecy?”

Tom Wright answers that question this way:

Matthew is of course very concerned, not least in these early chapters, with all sorts of prophetic fulfilments; but if that were the origin of the story, how might we explain Luke’s account [of the virgin birth], where Isaiah 7 is not mentioned? Or the sneer about Jesus’ illegitimacy in John 8:41? It looks, rather, as though things worked the other way round: Matthew, faced with a deeply puzzling story about Jesus, found a biblical text that might shed some light upon it.[1]

At any rate, the virgin conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary was just a means to an end. The virgin birth is really the smaller of two miracles we remember at Christmas. The larger miracle was that of God becoming a man. We call that miracle: the Incarnation.

C. S. Lewis describes that Grand Miracle in this way:

In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders. Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour too.[2]

And what does all of this have to do with the Advent theme of Love? John’s Gospel makes the connection for us. It is John’s Gospel that is most explicit about the Incarnation:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

And John records the words of Jesus explaining that all of this happened because of God the Father’s love for us.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, the expression of the Father’s love. As we will sing, in just a few moments, in the words of one of the Church’s most ancient hymns: Jesus is “of the Father’s love begotten, ere the worlds began to be.”

Because of that Incarnation, I can assure each one of you this morning: “God loves you!” No matter your past, no matter your present, no matter your future: God loves you and forgives you of all your sin in Christ. God is with you, God is with me, now and for all eternity. Amen.

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[1] Wright, N.T., Twelve Months of Sundays, Reflections on Bible Readings Year A, London: SPCK, 2001, pp. 8-9.

[2] Lewis, C. S., Miracles, New York: Macmillan, 1978, pp. 111-112.