“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isaiah vii. 14.)
In our Lessons and Carols last night, we heard a reading from the prophet Isaiah. Generally, we don’t enjoy reading Isaiah. He is a lot like the editorials we get in the newspaper and on the television news shows. Sometimes it seems, the only news we receive is bad news. Isaiah spent a lot of time telling the world how it was ignoring God’s Will. He spent a lot of time telling what terrible things were going to happen as a result. However, just as we sometimes get a glimmer of good news and hope on the network news, Isaiah occasionally delivered good news as well. What we read was one of those examples. Isaiah predicted the birth of Christ in a document prior to 700 B.C. It is a promise that the gloom and desolation predicted for Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah will not continue forever. We read it in remembrance that it was fulfilled by the birth of Jesus, the Christ. It describes four titles to indicate the qualities of the expected King. He will be “Wonderful and Counselor” with the divine attribute of wisdom. He will be “The mighty God” against whom no force can stand. He will be “The Everlasting Father” and provide constant care for His people. He will be “The Prince of Peace” and bring “peace on earth”. This peace is the Peace of God which passes all understanding.
Our text this morning is selected from the seventh chapter of Isaiah and it also predicts the birth of Jesus. “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Immanuel is Hebrew for “God with us”. This title also indicates the qualities of the expected Messiah. As God with us, he will have wisdom and might. He will care for his people and He will bring peace on earth.
When we plead with Immanuel to come and save us, we are not asking for help with bills or chores or overloaded schedules. We are not talking of things of this earth at all. We are asking the Incarnate God to guide us to everlasting life. We are asking God for His peace which we are unable to understand. We think of peace as a cessation of war. The Peace of God refers to the conditions existing in His perfect world. We cannot describe or appreciate the fullness of that peace. We can only take it on faith.
Taking God’s Word, on faith, is what we are doing today. We cannot explain how a virgin bore a child. We cannot understand why God came to earth as a helpless child with virtually no signs of power. We cannot understand why He was killed by those He came to help. We cannot understand how He was resurrected. However, we have a preponderance of evidence that those things did occur. The fact that we cannot explain them does not remove them from our history. Faith is not a matter of rational conclusion based exclusively upon our own experience. Sometimes it is a simple acceptance of “what is”. When Moses asked God’s name, he heard simply, “I AM”. He was not given a detailed description of God’s appearance or his powers. He was simply told, “I AM who I AM”. He was told to accept God as “what is”.
If you have not already been asked, you will hear this question sometime during this season. “Where will you meet Jesus this Christmas?” You may indeed, meet Jesus anyplace this Christmas. His divine presence is truly all around us and available to all. But do not confuse his presence with his purpose. He did not come to bring us what we wish in this world. He came to bring us the peace that comes from eternal hope. That hope revealed in Christ is the greatest gift we can receive and it brings a peace we cannot analyze, reconstruct or even understand. We must simply accept it as “what is”.
Do you remember when your normal reaction to everything was acceptance? We were so innocent then. We simply accepted everything as it came to us. That is one of the attractions of the Christmas season. It is the hope of starting over again with innocence. With the grace of God, there can be a fresh new start for each and every one of us. All we have to do is accept God as simply as we did then. We simply have to accept God as “what is”. We cannot explain how but we know Christ has come and He has returned to His Father. We also know the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God remains with us in the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost.
Because God is with us, we can return to the innocence of our childhood, at least in a spiritual sense. We can reject a sinful past, and begin all over again. This is the reason our Lord came into our world. This is the why of “what is”. This is reason He was made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He came in human form and was crucified so you and I could start fresh again. We cannot change our earthly history, but God can change our spiritual history and remove the baggage that weighs us down. It is the miracle that begins with Christmas and continues through Easter. It is a reality. It is “what is”.
We have a tendency to remember Jesus much as we might a revered ancestor. We admire their qualities and sometimes try to be a little more like them. There is more to the story than that. Consider the collect for this special day. It does not say Jesus came and should be remembered. It asks that we be renewed daily by the Holy Spirit. It asks that we be regenerate and made God’s children by adoption and grace.
We are all born in innocence but with a tendency to human pride. At first we simply accept things as they are. Eventually, we begin to discern “cause and effect” relationships. We learn we can sometimes predict the future based on current clues and what we have seen in the past. By the time we become adults; we have a certain pride in our ability to observe the things around us and anticipate the future. This pride can be dangerous if it is applied to an environment with which we are not familiar. Unfortunately, the only environment with which we are familiar is this physical earth. God is not limited to this physical earth and we must be careful overestimating our ability to discern things in his spiritual existence. In his eyes, we are encumbered by our physical experience and our ignorance of his spiritual existence. It is that encumbrance and ignorance that makes it hard to simply accept “what is”.
We are all drawn to images of Jesus as a babe in the manger. The attraction is our lost sense of innocence. We remember when our lives were not burdened by our past. Jesus was born in innocence just as were we, but He was not burdened by his history as He grew. Instead He took on the burden of our history and He chose to make the ultimate sacrifice to relieve us of that burden. As we view the child in the manger, we remember the loss of our own innocence and we long for a return of the innocence and acceptance of a child.
In this season, we are again given the opportunity to surrender ourselves, and our lives, to the sovereignty of Our Lord. We can give all that we are and all that we have to a new beginning. We exalt Jesus as Lord of lords, King of kings, and God of gods; yet today, we remember His earthly beginnings and the example of his earthly life. This is a season of grace. This day a Savior is born to us and we are reborn in innocence.
Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.
(1 Chronicles xxix. 11.)