The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for December 17, 2006

Texts: Isaiah 7:10-16  Matthew 1:18-25

Title: “Fear No Evil”

              Two bullies down the block are threatening you with a beating if you don’t link up with them in their rift with a third party.  Aware that non-aligned is not an option and that this third party wields a bigger stick than the two other bullies combined, you decide to throw in your lot with the big guy.  While neither the rock nor the hard place is an attractive option, you conclude that one or the other it must be.

              It was the rock or the hard place for Judah’s king Ahaz.  The rock was represented by two bullies to the north, the nations Damascus and Samaria, who leaned on Ahaz to take arms with them against their enemy Assyria.  In time Ahaz sent a team of negotiators to Assyria to make a deal.  It was a distasteful thing to do, but Ahaz saw no other option.

              Our lesson from Isaiah opens with the king’s negotiating team in Assyria.  What the reader does no know as we pick up the story is that God had previously dispatched Isaiah to Ahaz warning him to make no deals with Assyria, or with Damascus or Samaria for that matter.  Ahaz, however, rejected that counsel for he feared the consequences of inaction more than the wrath of Isaiah.  This rebuff at the hands of Ahaz was not, however, something Isaiah was prepared to receive, and he told Ahaz so in no uncertain terms, declaring, “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not at all.”

              Trouble was that when Isaiah said, “stand firm,” Ahaz heard, “do nothing.” Do nothing, friends, was not an option.  Could Ahaz reasonably stand by as the water rose even higher against the levee?  He faced clear and present danger.  Ahaz would have been derelict if he had done nothing.  He wasn’t in a position to call the shots.  He lived at the mercy of three powers either one of which could grind his nose into the dust.  Isaiah said, “stand firm in faith,” but Ahaz heard “do nothing.”

              “Have faith,” we have been told.   “You need to have faith, everything will work out.”  Somewhere along the line of each of us have received that counsel.  Many of us have offered it.  “Have faith, it’s going to work out.”  Words like that are meant to be reassuring.  Ahaz wasn’t reassured, his choice was action.

              “You need to have faith, everything will work out.”  Don’t say that to someone when the stakes are high, and that person feels that he or she can do something on his or her own to alter an outcome.  “Have faith, Dr. Smith can treat you just as well as the specialist in the city.”  “Have faith, bank stocks will continue to appreciate until you’re ready to sell.”  “Have faith, the levees will hold.”  “Have faith.”  Let me tell you folks, when my personal health, the money I invest, and my future in this city are at stake, counsel to sit back and “have faith,” rings pretty hollow. I’m going to look up that specialist, I’m going to track that stock’s performance, and I’m going to keep up to speed on levee repairs.

              “Have faith,” you say.  I say, faith is good---I have faith, but I’m obliged to help myself as well.  Does faith excuse me from any obligation to act?  Most of us, I think, would agree that it doesn’t.  Faith is certainly an important component of life, but what about reason, my capacity to think and act?  When challenged by events in this life do I simply throw up my hands and say “God’s will be done,” or do I bring the counsel of the mind into the domain of the heart?  God’s will?  My will?  Our combined wills?  Who is responsible for this life of mine?  God?  Me?  God and me?

              Face it, it’s impossible to track God’s providence one day to the next.  Did this event happen because God ordained it to be, or was it some action of mine that tipped the balance in this direction or that?  I was faithful, therefore I was promoted.  I worked hard, therefore I was promoted.  In my life, anyway, and probably in yours as well, the consequences of my faithful acts or my unfaithful acts do not really register in discernable ways, at least in the short run.  Such was not the case in our lesson where Isaiah addresses Ahaz, “If you do not stand firm in faith, Ahaz, you shall not stand at all.”

              Ahaz had been told to take no independent action to secure Judah’s future.  Isaiah had made it clear to Ahaz that the future of Judah was in God’s hands.  Ahaz, however, was not at all satisfied that that was the best available option.  After all, who knew his predicament better than he did?  Damascus, Samaria, and Assyria did not exist merely as map coordinates, nations with whom Judah shared common borders.  Those nations represented clear and present danger for Ahaz and every person who lived under his rule.  Ahaz was charged to stand firm in the faith, but he reasoned that he would might stand longer if he helped himself.  Who was in a position to contradict him?  Well, Isaiah was in a position to contradict him.

              Isaiah came on the scene to prove that Judah’s destiny was in God’s hands, yet this was not something Ahaz would accept.  Better to have his hands on the wheel than to yield to someone else.  “Bad mistake, you are making a bad mistake, Ahaz,” Isaiah bluntly declared.  But old Ahaz turned a deaf ear, and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

              I share that male thing about directions.  When I’m behind the wheel I don’t ask.  I don’t need someone to tell me where to go, I will figure it out for myself, even if I burn some time and gas in doing it.  Ahaz knew where he was going, or so he thought.  Isaiah knew better.  “Ahaz, you are lost. Time to get out from behind that wheel.”  No way.  Wasn’t going to happen.  A stubborn man, Ahaz would not yield.  But God wouldn’t yield either.

              God took pains to prove to Ahaz that bad things would result from his stubbornness.  Now bad things were not what God wanted for Ahaz.  God loved him.  But how to get through to him?  Exasperated he sent Isaiah back to Ahaz with a message, “Ask a sign of the Lord your God, let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”  If God through some demonstration of power, some sign, could prove that he was in charge, so be it.  Ahaz would have his sign.  No lamp of faith to guide him, God was prepared to use other means to awaken him to God’s presence in his midst.

              My doubt and your doubt constantly undermine our faith in God.  But suppose God showed his hand in some dramatic way?  What if he sent a prophet into our midst with a can’t fail plan to end the war in Iraq? What if he revealed a grand strategy to end global warming? What if he arranged a winning streak that would carry the Saints to a Super Bowl title?

              God, acting through Isaiah, was prepared to do anything to prove to Ahaz that faith in God was the way to go.  But Ahaz begged off.  “Forget it, I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test.”  The words of Ahaz reeked piety, but it was a false piety, a thin veneer of faith talk to mask his faithlessness.  Ahaz was firmly set in what he was going to do, and he wasn’t going to budge.

              God doesn’t always take into account our readiness to hear when he is ready to speak to us.  Such was the case here.  The state of Ahaz personal faith didn’t matter.  His attitude about signs and demonstrations of God in action didn’t matter.  God was going to act, was going to prove to Ahaz that he was in charge.  It was the future all laid out and tied off with a big bow.  “The young woman is with child and shall bear a son.”  Events were taking shape that would change Ahaz’s life and later the future of Judah.

              Vain Ahaz thought he had all his bases covered.  Work a deal with Assyria and everything will turn out alright.  Wrong.  The payment on Ahaz’ faithlessness was coming due.  The deal with Assyria was flawed and would soon explode in his face, with consequences Ahaz couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

              Ahaz lived in fear, his life and kingdom hanging over a precipice.  Bold in action to preserve his standing among the nations, he lived life constantly looking back over his shoulder.  He lived in an iron triangle, Damascus, Samaria, and Assyria breathing down his neck.  If he didn’t take matters into his own hands, all would be lost, or so he thought.  What Ahaz failed to understand was that he was lost already.

              Faith doesn’t come easily for most of us.  Better to have our hands on the wheel to direct things then to submit and pass the wheel to someone else.  Faith is submissive, and submission doesn’t come easily, particularly when the stakes are high.  Ahaz had a lot to learn in the submission department, and history demonstrates that he learned that lesson the hard way.  Ahaz would live to see all of his ambitious scheming with Assyria come to naught.  Judah fell, and fell hard, the prophesy of Isaiah, “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” was fulfilled with brutal results.

              Fear is a commanding presence in life.  Fear undermined the faith Ahaz might otherwise have brought to his circumstances.  He was left scrambling for some means to save his skin, even as Isaiah repeatedly appealed to him to trust the Lord.  Isaiah pointed Ahaz to the high ground, even gave him a ladder by which to get there, but Ahaz was so focused on what he could do to save himself that he had no time to consider what God might do to save him.  Fear was so dominant that he couldn’t see other options.

              The fear quotient in our land has risen to new heights.  An office of Homeland Security has been created, new protocols for entering public building and airports have been written.  We are reviewing security procedures for our nuclear power plants, our water treatment facilities, and military installations.  Simple prudence dictates that we do all that stuff, but, friends, we dare not be absorbed by those efforts.  We are not in charge.  There are limits to what we can do.  In ignoring that we commit the sin of pride.  You see, God alone is the ultimate source of the security we crave, the peace we yearn for, and it is our faith---our faith---that grounds us in that reality.

              “Faith in God [theologian Douglas John Hall reminds us] is not an easy things If it were the Bible could easily be reduced to one-third its current size.  Faith is a work in progress for all God’s people.  Always has been, always will be.  Faith is not easy, simply because the problems that assail us in this life are not easy.  We deal with difficult personal issues.  We live in a troubled world.  But ultimately there is one reality upon which we can depend in life and in death, and that reality has a name, “Immanuel”---God with us.  “Immanuel”---hope with us.”

              “Immanuel,” the assurance of God’s abiding presence is announced in both our morning’s lessons.  But “Immanuel” is more than merely a name.  “Immanuel” is the assurance the psalmist proclaimed in that most revered of all Psalms [Psalm 23], “Ye, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.”  Immanuel is the assurance that God is with us in the valley when fear makes its most determined assault.  Immanuel is the assurance that God is with us when we have reached the end of the rope and about to let go.

              “We fear no evil” is an audacious claim to make, I know, but it is one fully supportable in light of Jesus and the whole of salvation history that led to his coming.  “We fear no evil.”  Can your faith support such a statement?  “I fear no evil,” may not be the kind of statement you can personally make right now.  That’s alright.  God is no less ready to hear your petition for faith than to commend the faith already in your possession.  God will meet you where you are.  All God asks is that you tell him where you, and trust him, trust him with all the faith to which you can lay claim, trust him that he can and will meet you where you are, trust him that he IS where you are.

              “We fear no evil,” [we fear no evil] for God is with us. AMEN

PRAYER

              O God, eternal in the heavens, yet present with us here and now, our minds are absorbed with the details of Christmas, help us to focus on Jesus, the true source of Christmas joy.  Given a name at birth, “Emmanuel, God with us,” help us to embrace the reality to which that name points.

              Accosted by realities that deny your presence, we struggle with fears, fears that often gain the upper hand.  Yet through faith we see glimpses of that new heaven and new earth which you are even now preparing in our midst.

              Help us, O God, to shape a substantial faith, a faith that is resilient enough to endure setbacks even as your light illumines our lives with greater and greater intensity.  And in our relationships with one another embolden us to speak from faith, to say that which your spirit has given us say.  May the words we speak, but also the testimony of the lives we live, be for the world, the world beginning at our doorstep, an affirmation of “Emmanuel,” God is with us.

              Lord Jesus, our buildings, our budgets, our mission statements, do not represent you to the world the way you would have us represent you to the world.  You wish to be seen as you were seen by the people whom you touched.  A servant, you came to serve, not in some self-aggrandizing way that would win you celebrity, but you came to serve by attending to those the world passed over and rejected.  From a humble bed in a stable you rose to serve the humble, the meek, and the lowly.  To those who had no voice, you gave voice; proclaiming justice for the oppressed, freedom to those enslaved, hope to the forlorn.  Not as king or a high priest, but as a shepherd you freely bestowed your father’s compassionate love and mercy.

              O Christ, we are your church, we have been baptized in your name, but sometimes we forget about you as our energies are directed to raising budgets, creating programs, and attending to our buildings.  Forgive us for maintaining false priorities, O Lord, for making the wrong choices.

              We acknowledge the sins of the church at large, but also this church, particularly this church, and pray that as the year concludes and we begin in earnest to think ahead we may do so with a renewed spirit, a spirit that draws life and refreshment from your Holy Spirit.  Grant us wisdom to draw from your Word that which is there, and not some representation of it that best accommodates our habit of thought and our prejudices. 

Strengthen our commitment to you that we not give of ourselves begrudgingly or resentfully, but joyfully and generously.  Though we deserve your censure for hoarding the gifts you so freely have given us, we ask your patience and forbearance as we rededicate our lives to your ministry.

              Loving God, we pray for our world today, a world stretched in the tension that war creates.  As the clock ticks out the concluding days of this year which has seen so much tragedy and devastation, our hopes are lodged in the peacemakers of the world who strive against considerable odds to broker peace.  We pray, O God, that the ardor of those whom we have chosen to lead will be directed to the issues that really matter, peace, social justice, and human rights.

              O God, father of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the birthplace of our Lord is no longer the tranquil setting the Bible depicts.  Bethlehem is a divided city in a divided land.  We pray for Jew and Palestinian that the hatred and violence their confrontations has spawned may subside and peace may at long last sink roots and grow.

              O God, we pray for families who will gather this holiday season in familiar setting to resume familiar traditions, but absent loved ones or friends separated from us by death, illness, or divorce.  Compassionate father, some feel your absence this season, feel it so acutely that they see no reason to live.  We pray for the depressed and despairing, those fighting inner battles, but also those who have surrendered and lack the stamina to continue their fight.  We pray for those who live with the depressed and the despairing that they may be strengthened for the challenges they face.

              Lord, we are grateful for worship and this time we have together.  Prosper us in our common ministry that day-by-day we acquire new understanding of where your spirit is taking us and what you are equipping us to do.  Bless this household, your church, and strengthen our faith that through faith we may courageously and joyfully undertake your kingdom’s work.  We ask these things in Jesus’ name praying the prayer he taught us…