“…Name Him Immanuel”

An Advent sermon based upon Isaiah 7: 10-17

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

The Fourth Sunday of Advent (Cycle A), December 22nd, 2019

It’s almost Christmas.  Are you still a believer? 

Questions about ‘believing’ in Christmas often surface this time of year.  Relationships can be hard.  Life can get dark.   Besides that, many of us aren’t children any more.  The days of wonder and surprise move beyond us too.  It can be difficult for anything to surprise us anymore.  Christmas holidays can even be a drag, a demand, or even  burden that we wait to have lifted.   Do you still believe in Christmas? 

Of course, an answer may come from having ‘children’ or ‘grandchildren’.  Some people regain ‘faith’ in Christmas through them.   For others it may be more difficult.  Even the true meaning—-the ‘reason for the season’ can seem beyond all reason, having little and anything to say to us at all. 

One of the most popular answers ever given about Christmas came in the form of a newspaper editorial many years ago,"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"   Actually the title was a question that evidently stuck a nerve: "Is There a Santa Claus?"   That editorial appeared in the September 21, 1897 edition of The (New York) Sun.   It became part of popular Christmas folklore in the United States and has been the most reprinted newspaper editorial in the entire English language.  But do you know the story behind both the question and the answer?

In 1897, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon, a coroner's assistant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, was asked by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia O'Hanlon (1889–1971), whether Santa Claus really existed. O'Hanlon suggested she write to The Sun, a prominent New York City newspaper at the time, assuring her that "If you see it in The Sun, it's so."

By giving his daughter Virginia instructions to write to the Sun Newspaper,  Dr. O'Hanlon had unknowingly given one of the paper's editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, an opportunity to address the philosophical issues behind it.   This proved to be quite interesting because Mr. Church had been a war correspondent during the American Civil War.  As we all know, it was a time when American’s saw great suffering resulting in a great lack of hope and faith in much of society.

Although the paper ran the editorial in the seventh place on the page, below an image of the newly invented ‘chainless bicycle", it was both noticed and well received by readers.  According to Paul Harvey’s The Rest of the Story, at that time Mr. Church was a hardened cynic and an atheist who had little patience for any kind of superstitious beliefs.  He did not want to write the editorial, and refused to allow his name to be attached to the piece.  But despite this, Mr. church’s response became one of the most reprinted editorials in any newspaper in the English language.

Virginia’s letter was brief:  DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.  Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.  Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’  Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?  VIRGINIA O’HANLON.  115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.

Mr.  Church’s response: 

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished… Is it all real?

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

Isn’t that a letter worth our consideration and contemplation again and again, especially in a world that is becoming skeptical once more, but this time it’s not ‘belief’ in Santa, but it’s an increasingly skepticism about God, faith, church, and even about Jesus Christ and Christmas too.  Should today’s Virginia still believe in the true meaning of Christmas? Should ‘Virginia’ still trust in God?  

In today’s Bible lesson we encounter the King of Judah who was unsure about trusting God.  King Ahaz was having difficulty in believing, like Virginia, and just like we can too.  Belief or trust in Israel’s God has become more challenging in a science-dominated, secular, self-centered, and skeptical age, hasn’t it? 

Virginia wrote to the Newspaper because the older she got, the more she knew about the ‘world’, the harder it is to trust and believe as a child. ‘When I became a man,” the apostle Paul acknowledged, “I put away childish things.”  In our times, belief in God has become one those ‘childish things’.  

ASK FOR A SIGN….

Back in 2010, one of the largest statues of Jesus ever erected, measuring 108 feet from head to toe, was raised in a Polish field near the small town of Zwiebodzin.  The video on Youtube is fascinating to watch as a crane raises first the outstretched arms and then the head is placed on the body.  That statue rivals the vast Christ the Redeemer statue that watches over Rio de Janeiro.  

After it was erected, The New York Times interviewed the Catholic Priest who organized the project who said “I hope this statue will become a remedy for this secularization.”  The Right Rev. Sylwester Zawadzki, continued “I hope it will have a religious mission and not just bring tourists.” The article goes on to say that in Poland, where 90 percent of the people say they are Roman Catholic, actual church attendance has dropped to 40 percent in rural areas and 20 percent in the metro areas.  When the non-church goers are interviewed about why they don’t attend, they say that the church is not relevant to modern times.  They see the church as hypocritical or too involved in politics.  No matter how big the statue is, these folks are not coming back to church any time soon.  A big statue of Jesus in Poland, just like an Ark In Kentucky, might be reassuring and inspiring to the faithful, but it doesn’t reflect what’s happening in the world around us.  The image Jesus in the hearts and minds of people is getting smaller and smaller.

Would a ‘sign’ from God help you keep faith and trust in God?  There are times when we all need some tangible assurance about our faith.  What is a bit shocking about this story from Isaiah is that it was the prophet who offered the King a sign, rather than the other way around.  And Why doesn’t King Ahaz take Isaiah’s offer?  Why is he so hesitant?  Wouldn’t anybody want proof that God can be trusted?

A pastor in New York writes at his blogsite, the blooming cactus, how he once figured out how to get a sign from God.  As a teenager, he was feeling a great deal of uncertainty. So he got out his Bible and thought that he could get an answer or sign from it.  The bible has all the answers, right?  So he got it into his head that he could let his bible fall open.  If it fell open to the New Testament, the answer was “yes” and if it fell open to the Old Testament, the answer was “no.”  He wanted a “yes” answer, so since the Old Testament has twice and many pages, he tried to not stack the deck in his favor.  He pledged to follow whatever answer he got from this test.

He carefully set up his Bible, trying to balance it to give the Holy Spirit a fair shot, like a basketball referee throwing a jump ball up in the air.  He then let the Bible go.  The bible fell sharply on its side – unopened!  He hadn’t counted on that.  At first He got angry, then felt stupid, but finally decided, this was truly a sign.  It was a sign that God trusted him to make some decisions himself.  He realized God has given us a brain for this reason: having to decide is how we grow as a human beings.  We should read the bible, have faith, and learn something too.  We should not use the Bible like a magic hat.  ‘Too many people use the bible like a drunk uses a lamp post, more for support than for illumination’ (W. S. Coffin).  The young pastor realized he needed to ‘put away’ childish ideas like that.

King Ahaz certainly needed answers.  Three Kings were trying to force him to go to war against a growing threat from Assyria, Ahaz didn’t know what to do.  If he fought with them, and they lost the battle, Assyria would crush them all.  If he didn’t join them, they could gang up on him and remove him from his kingly office. 

King Ahaz had consulted astrologers, soothsayers and fortune tellers and tried other religious practices to try to figure out what to do.  He even put an idol of a serpent in the temple and restarted the practice of human sacrifices trying to gain favor other gods.  None of this ever worked.  Ahaz had avoided God’s prophet, because he would seem to agree with what Isaiah was preaching; namely that the king would have govern with justice and righteousness.  This would mean not using government money just to build weapons for war, but using money to help those who were weak and oppressed.  This is why Ahaz didn’t want to ‘ask’ for a sign. If it came true, he would have to do what God commanded. 

Ahaz was right, wasn’t he?  If you trust God, if you seek God, and if you actually make room for the true meaning of Christmas in what you do, God can show up and the true God will ask something from you.  Sometimes, like King Ahaz, God may be calling us ‘give’ ourselves and be part of God’s answer in the world.  

It can be like what happened to the Sunday School class in a church I served years ago.  I shared with them a chance they could have to adopt a hurting family and help them have Christmas.  So, that class had a choice to make: Would Christmas just be about them, and their families, or would they allow God to give them a ‘sign’ that asked something from them? If they would, God might just show up with and in them, in some deeper, caring, and redeeming way. 

And do you know what that Sunday School class did?  They took God up on the offer, and according to their teacher, it was ‘the greatest Christmas party their Sunday School class ever had’.  When they decided to be with God, and do something with God, it was right there that they discovered how God was ‘with’ and ‘in’ them in their own lives and church.

THE VIRGIN WILL CONCEIVE….

This is the ‘sign’ God wanted to give Ahaz, whether he wanted it or not.  Through the prophet Isaiah, God wanted Ahaz to know that God wanted to be ‘with’ him, even he didn’t want to be with God.  Ahaz was the King of Judah in Jerusalem, and he was sitting on David’s throne.  Of course, God wanted to be with him, to encourage him, to spare his throne, the city, the nation, and the king too. 

The ‘sign’ that God was ‘with him’ was that before a young woman could conceive and give birth and that child would know how to choose between right and wrong, the dangers to his kingdom would be gone.  This is how the ‘sign’ read in the original Hebrew, a child born to a young woman during Ahaz’s rule, would be given the name, ‘Emmanuel; God is with us.

About 732 years later, other Jews living in Israel, encountered God’s presence in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  Matthew believed Rabbi Jesus to be the ultimate fulfillment of this old Emmanuel promise.  But Matthew, and Luke too, in quoting the story from Isaiah, used the word ‘virgin’ rather than young woman.  Why did Matthew and Luke do do this?  In would have been just as well, maybe even easier to believe, if they would have stayed with Isaiah’s original word in Hebrew, meaning ‘young woman’ wouldn’t it?  Why did both of these gospels, claim Mary too have been a virgin.  Wouldn’t Christianity be easier to explain and follow, if they had settle for Jesus being a little more like the rest of us? 

Well, the first part of the answer comes through the story Luke tells us, reporting how Mary ‘had not yet known a man’ when  ‘the angel overshadowed her’ and this child was ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit’.  That’s one reason Matthew didn’t use the Hebrew text, Mary’s testimony was different.  Interestingly, in the first Christmas story, in a man’s world, the first believers took a woman’s testimony over a man’s.  That was a miracle in itself.  The second reason Matthew and Luke were quoting the Greek translation of Isaiah.  In the Greek the word could be translated either way.  Why 200 yeas before Jesus, Greek Jews choose to use this word is still a mystery.  The only answer to this is textual mystery is in the Christmas story itself: that in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God gave the most unexpected sign that ‘God is with’ us, both Jew and Greek. 

Do you know why I believe that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, through a woman named Mary, who was at that time a virgin, and all this happened with the seed of a man?  Well, not only has the church preached the virgin’s conception by the Holy Spirit since its beginning, we should also believe in this ‘holy conception’ too. 

But, let me also be very clear, that I don’t believe in the Virgin Birth because I believe this is gynecologically possible.  It has been said to happen in a some rabbits, and it may appear to happen in cloning, but still don’t believe that virgins give birth. It’s not possible to me; but ‘with God all things are possible’.  The reason I believe in Christmas is because of Easter.  It is because God raised Jesus from the dead, and because of the resurrection hope, that I believe Jesus, who was ‘with God’ from the beginning was ‘conceived of the Holy Spirit’ as the ultimate sign of ‘Emmanuel, God with us’.  

This is how I get to Christmas, not simply by trusting in the virgin birth, because Buddha, Vishnu, Zoroaster, and others ancient religious leaders were claimed to be born of virgins too.  No, I only get to Emmanuel, God with us,  through the Christ who died on the cross, who was raised from the dead and now lives in me through the same Holy Spirit who conceived God’s truth in me.  To paraphrase Mr. church, ‘Yes, Virginia, I believe he exists just like I believe generosity and devotion exists’.  In other words, because ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,’  I can now know that God is with me, for me, in me, and can be in you too.  In the life of Jesus, and through Jesus’ life in me, I have a continual sign of ‘Emmanuel’, God with us’.

A TIME AS HAS NEVER BEEN

But of course, this sign of God’s presence can seem to come and go, can’t it?

And this difficulty of discerning God’s saving presence is exactly how Isaiah’s prophecy concludes.   In verse 17, Isaiah returns to the language of desolation and destruction, referring to how  ‘Ephraim (Israel) broke away from Judah…”  The point is that Ahaz had better trust God now, because a very dark and difficult day to trust in God is coming. God’s news is for now, but to ignore it, reject it, or to refuse the God who gives the sign of his presence now, will mean a ‘missed opportunity’ to receive this promise given through this child. 

As Isaiah emphasizes later, ’ For unto us, a child is given…”, which means now! (Isiah 9:6-7).  To ignore or refuse this sign of hope was the opportunity Israel couldn’t afford to miss.  But unfortunately, they did refuse to put their hope in the child, and the same happened in Judah too.  It happened again in Jesus’ day, when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem rejected the form of ’government’ God placed ‘on his shoulders’ when Jesus preached God’s kingdom rule of love.

What’s important is to for us to realize God’s ’sign’ in this child is an opportunity we can’t afford to miss either.  God’s offer of love and grace has come, but refusing God’s presence and promise love still invites darkness, destruction and death.  This why the Bible says, ‘Now is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation’. We only have so much time to get see the sign and get it right. 

Recently, I learned a term used in part of the hurting, inner city black community.  I can’t repeat it all because it’s coarse, street language, but it goes something like, ‘The hate people give to the young will come back to bite us all’.  The point is, you only have a brief time to bless the child, to accept, learn and give love, or hate will grow up to haunt the world in judgment and retribution:  the hate you give and the love you fail to learn to give can come back to bite us all. 

As we began this message, in the question to the Sun Newspaper, a child named Virginia was growing up too.  Someone needed to help Virginia understand the true meaning of Santa, just like we must keep pointing our children and the world to the original meaning of Christmas.  As Isaiah preached even more directly in another place: “Come to the LORD while he is near”, implying that now is the time, because times will come when God seems far away. 

The prophet’s offer of a sign, to bring about trust, belief, faith and hope is the same offer Jesus’s love gives us.  But don’t misunderstand. God’s love is not a blank check to believe what we want.  One of my German language teachers once told me how his father had been in the SS, an officer in Hitler’s army.  My teacher was very young, but remembered his parents closing the curtains, making his home dark in broad daylight, so he couldn’t see Nazi soldiers marching Jews to their death out their window. ‘Those times dark and confusing’, he told me.  We we told we were doing right, when it turned out we were doing great wrong.’  Even ordinary soldiers in Hitler’s army wore belt buckles inscribed with the words “Gott mitt unz.” (God with us).  That’s how dark it can get.  Isaiah spoke of this moral and political darkness too, when people call right wrong, and wrong right.

Ahaz was given a sign from God on God’s terms.  This is still the opportunity of Christmas; it is the not the promise of a child to receive presents, but it’s the sign of this child who will ‘save us from our sins’, if we go beyond seeking our own answers, but answer God’s sign to receive and give God’s love.

Isn’t this the Emmanuel sign we need, even when it’s not the one we always seek?  What is so amazing is that God does come among us, not in anger or wrath, but as a child, so vulnerable that we might receive, rather than reject him.

On this last Sunday of Advent, the Sunday before Christmas, the last verse of “O Come, O Come, Immanuel, points to God’s offer still being made to us, through the birth of God’s Son, as Mary’s child:

O come, dear child of Mary, come,

God’s Word made flesh within our earthly home;

Love stir within the womb of night,

Revenge and hatred put to flight.

Rejoice, rejoice! Take heart and do not fear,

God’s chosen one, Immanuel, draws near.

Now, as God’s offer draws near to us again, who will also draw near to God, and accept the offer of God’s ‘sign’ of love and hope in you?  Now, is the time for you to name Jesus your Emmanuel!  Amen.