Tuesday 7th December - A virgin shall conceive

07/12/2010 by paul.

Isaiah 7:10-15

Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, “Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test.” And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.

As Isaiah speaks, Jerusalem is under siege from the kings of Israel and Aram. ‘Don’t lose heart because of these two smouldering stubs,’ he says (v.4) – but Ahaz does not find trusting God easy. His response to the threat will be to offer vassalage to Tiglath Pileser, and change the Temple cult to appease him (2 Kings 16). His reluctance to put God to the test is not a doctrinal nicety but a diplomat’s nerves.

Faced with this dithering, God offers a dramatic alarm call indeed. By the time a child soon to be born is of age, he and the nation will be living off milk and honey. But don’t be misled by echoes of the promised land. They will be living off milk and honey, the land’s natural produce, because all the cultivated goods will have been wasted; not by Israel and Aram (they too will be devastated), but by Assyria.

This does not sound like the comforting promise of a Christmas Carol service! The heart of the prophetic word, as so often, is a call to a radical trust in the Lord God, which is set in a dangerous tension with both the political process and a pluralist approach to religion.

This is both uncomfortable and contemporary. What does it mean to be a loyal believer today, and also a loyal citizen of a civil state and in particular of a pluralist one? Where do we stand? What about the suicide bomber, the province that separates itself, the creationist who opposes evolution taught in schools… Are they over the top? Or if we say that, are we being like Ahaz and deserting a simple trust in God? ‘The government will be on his shoulders,’ we read yesterday, but the media pundit asks whether ‘ancient belief systems and modern government can find common ground.’ (David Aaronovitch)

So is the thrill that runs down our spine at the Carol Service when we hear the prophecy of Immanuel just a childish thing that we must put away as we struggle with hard reality?

No – but we have to receive the sign the right way. It is a sign that God is completely committed to our history and fully engaged with it. Yes, there is the comforting promise of a birth. But it is the birth of a child that will grow up – to some purpose. Will we let him?

In response to this question, why not spend time in quiet prayer, not bringing a load of requests to God, but let him tell you the purpose of him sending Jesus to be YOUR friend, YOUR guide, YOUR Saviour.

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