To Us a Child Is Born - Christmas Eve, Isaiah 9:2-7

Christmas Eve - B
Isaiah 9:2-7
December 24, 2011

To Us a Child Is Born

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

I am tired of politics.

The last few months have been full of it. Political activity goes on all the time, of course. Democrats and Republicans maneuver for advantage. They each try to make the other look bad. They throw up roadblocks in the way of their opponents getting anything done. If one says the the sky is blue the other will reply that anyone can see that it is chartreuse and that the attempt to convince people that the sky is blue will ruin the country. They only say it’s blue because they secretly hate America.

It reminds me of someone who said that the Scots would have become an important European power if they had not been engaged in a constant struggle with their ancient and implacable enemies: the Scots.

The political world would be funnier if there were not real problems needing real solutions. I understand fighting for principles and ideals. But I get impatient with fighting for the sake of winning. I’ve been impatient a lot lately.

Added to that, we are in the final stages of a primary race. Any candidate for President is throwing every dollar they can get their hands on into advertising. Anyone who watches television at all knows it isn’t pretty. Fortunately for us a brief respite is in sight. We only have to last until January 3 and the crowd will move on to New Hampshire and South Carolina. Iowa will be a distant memory for winner and loser alike. In the meantime they’re going at it hammer and tong. My thumb hurts from pressing the mute button.

But tonight we get a break. We leave that world behind and gather in this place of light and warmth and quiet. We take refuge from a world of smoke and mirrors and political noise. We can listen to the old story about the angels and the baby Jesus (isn’t he sweet?) and mystified shepherds. We can sing the familiar hymns of the season and maybe learn a new one. We can renew old acquaintance with long-absent friends who have joined us tonight.

Ready or not, it’s Christmas. The gifts are wrapped (or they aren’t going to get wrapped). The cookies are baked. Our homes are decorated. We’re looking forward to the look on the face of someone we love as we open gifts and they get that special one, the one we put so much care into.

Ah, no politics!

And then we are met with these readings.

The reading from Isaiah comes from the early ministry of the actual Isaiah, the one for whom the book is named, when Ahaz was king of Judah. The Assyrian Empire was having a growth spurt. The little kingdoms of Syria and Israel had decided to join forces to resist Assyria. They had decided to overthrow Ahaz of Judah and install a puppet king who would join their alliance. Ahaz was caught between a rock and a hard place. Realistically, his only choice was to appeal to the king of Assyria for protection, even if it meant becoming his vassal and having to come up with the gold to send to Nineveh as tribute. It was the smart thing to do, even if it came at a high price.

It might have been smart, but Isaiah the prophet saw it as faithless. It betrayed a lack of trust in the power and faithfulness of Yahweh, Judah’s covenant God. Isaiah challenged Ahaz to name a sign, to ask for some event that would show that God was serious about protecting Judah. When Ahaz refused, Isaiah told him that a sign-child would be born as God’s sign to Ahaz. “The young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel,” Isaiah told him.

In our text for tonight we have God’s promise, given through Isaiah, that this child would become a king who would usher in a new golden age for Judah. The threat of the alliance of Syria and Israel, even the threat of Assyria itself, would pass. Judah would be revealed as God’s favored nation and enjoy peace and prosperity. The king who would follow would be described as, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Perhaps that was a little over the top, but prophets are given to exaggeration. It helps create the desired effect. Strip away the fancy language and this amounts to foreign policy advice: regional politics.

The passage from Luke has lots of the stuff we’re looking for: shepherds and angels, Mary and the sweet baby Jesus. But it’s also set against an imperial background. The emperor known officially as Gaius Julius Caesar, the name of his adopted father, but who was born Octavius and known to us as Caesar Augustus, was engaged in consolidating his rule over what he was fashioning into the Roman Empire. As part of his strategy, so the author of Luke tells us, he ordered a count of all the people living inside the empire, so that he could design more efficient ways of taxing the people. Accordingly Jesus’ mother and her fiancé went to Bethlehem because Joseph was descended from King David. This was when Quirinius was the governor of Syria. When Jesus was born angels proclaimed him Messiah, the anointed ruler of God’s people. Emperors, governors, kings and messiahs, foreign policy and tax codes—these texts are relentlessly political.

And here we thought we could get away from politics. And not just politics. We come to Christmas hoping for a break from our cares and anxieties. We want to set aside our worries about our jobs and our family finances. We don’t want to have to worry about an uncle’s poor health or a cousin’s heavy drinking. If we are parents we want our children to stop squabbling. If we are children we want our parents to give us a break. We may even hear ourselves saying, “Just sit there and be happy; it’s Christmas!”

If we don’t say it out loud we may say it to ourselves and wonder why it is that everyone else is happy and enjoying the season and we are not.

We’d like to get away from our messy world for a while. But as our readings have shown us, the messy world that we live in has followed us in the door.

While we’re trying to get away, though, God is moving in the other direction. Jesus wasn’t born to privilege, you know. He wasn’t one of the one percent. He and his parents were subject to the whims of far away rulers whose decrees could send a pregnant woman who deserved to give birth at home among her friends and relatives to a strange town far away to give birth among the horses, donkeys and cattle. It was, of course, better than the crowded common room of the inn where travelers normally slept, but, still, it wasn’t where she wanted to be.

Jesus’ parents were of peasant stock, but they were not even peasants, since they had lost their land somewhere along the line. Joseph was a carpenter, an artisan, which placed them below peasants on the social scale. Jesus’ parents knew anxiety and want. They worried about having enough to eat. They lived with the threat of violence from the Romans.

It was into this messy world that Jesus was born, this world of political intrigue and in-fighting, of financial struggle, of health problems and squabbling siblings. We may long to be away from the mess, but God does not. God embraces it. God has decided to love this messy world until it is mended and whole.

And for proof this, God has given us, like ancient Ahaz, a sign-child, wrapped tightly in blankets and lying in a feed trough, a makeshift cradle. God gave us a sign-child and the angels sang. God gave us a sign-child and he will be called, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.