We’ve come to the final Sunday of Advent. All four candles of the Advent wreath are lit; we are on the threshold of Christmas. We have been preparing our hearts through prayer, good works, music, decorations. Signs. Signs that God is close. Christmas is near.
In our first reading, King Ahaz was given a sign. A sign that God was near.
For King Ahaz was facing a dilemma: a dreadful one. On one hand, His enemies in northern Israel were attempting to coerce him to join them in a coalition—a collation against the Assyrian superpower. The assyrians were sweeping through the region, conquering everyone with whom they came in contact. And so King the Arameans and the King of Northern Israel thought they’d band together and get Ahaz to join them.
On the other hand, Ahaz has a bit of political cunning. He knows, there’s no way this coalition is going to stand against the Assyrian superpower. So he he’s being tempted to bow down and worship the gods of the Assyrians.
What is he to do? He’s facing this Giant—Assyria. Reminding us of his great great great grandfather David, who also faced a Giant—named Goliath. Well, the God sends his prophet, Isaiah, to the king. And Isaiah tells Ahaz to have faith in God, like David facing Goliath. God is your protector. And Isaiah, knowing that, Ahaz’s faith is sort of weak at moment says, you want to know God is with you, ask for a sign, any sign, as high as the heavens and deep as the netherworld, a sign that will show you that God is with you. And Ahaz, in a moment of false piety, says, oh no, I couldn’t possibly do that.
And Isaiah says, fine, God will give you this sign, a sign that you couldn’t come up with on your own: “The virgin will conceive and bear a son and she shall call him Emmanuel.
It is impossible to say exactly what the fulfillment of this prophecy meant to King Ahaz. Who was the virgin in his day whose child was to signal that God was with him and his people? We do not know who she was. And sadly, chose not to believe.
Ahaz trusted not in the power of God, but in the power of man. He entered into a protection treaty with Assyria, which on the one hand guaranteed him security and saved his country from destruction, but on the other hand demanded a price: the worship of the protecting power’s national gods. Idolatry. And after Ahaz had concluded the treaty with Assyria, despite Isaiah’s warnings, an altar was built for the worship of the Assyrian gods in the very Temple of Jerusalem. This violated the covenant with God. And it wouldn’t be long before Jerusalem was conquered by Babylon a few decades later.
The Church gives us this powerful passage—a virgin will conceive and bear a son. We like Ahaz are being urged by God to trust him. Will you heed the warnings of the prophets and turn away from sin. Will you heed the invitation of the prophet to trust in God and his promises? Will you stand firm in the face of worldly pressures or bow to earthly gods?
Sadly we see swaths of people abandoning faith, when faith is needed now more than ever. We are seeing the political consequences of faithlessness play out in our very day. Pagan idols bring us neither protection nor joy.
Ahaz chose not to believe. So God gave all of humanity the same choice as Ahaz. That the virgin of Ahaz’s day was neither named nor identified points to the fact that the promise reached far beyond the historical moment of King Ahaz. It was a promise that reached far beyond that hour, and continued to shine for Israel as a star of hope pointing to an unknown future.
And even though Jesus is not actually named Emmanuel, Jesus “IS Emmanuel, as the entire history of the Gospel demonstrates. He is true man and at the same time God, God’s true Son, with us.”
“The virginal conception of Jesus is a divine work that surpasses all human understanding and possibility.” This is precisely what Ahaz resisted. He was not open to mystery, he was not open to faith, or the divine work that surpasses understanding and possibility.
God invites all of humanity to trust in the sign. The sign of signs. Will you trust? Two weeks ago, I reflected on how If you were to pick up the bible, and turn to nearly any page of the holy book, God is inviting humanity to trust Him. Sometimes the bible gives us models of trust, and then sometimes we see the consequences of what happens when we don’t trust God.
Adam and Eve are told to trust God. He would feed them, he would take care of them. Don’t eat of the forbidden tree, just trust me. And we know how that worked out.
Abraham, is called our father in faith, He trusted God to leave his homeland and follow the path that God was showing to Him. Proverbs says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Isaiah speaks of his own trust in God when he says in chapter 28: “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” Jeremiah, the grumpier prophet says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord.”
The Lord Jesus in the Gospels teach us to trust when he says: “do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
Over and over, the injunction to trust God, to trust in his promises, and over and over in Scripture illustrations of the blessings that come in trusting in God, the tragic consequences when we don’t.
King Ahaz failed to trust in God. And that had tragic consequences for the nation which he ruled. Even though Isaiah pointed out signs that God was with him, he chose not to trust. And, it’s easy to condemn Ahaz, but this is a sin of which we’re all guilty.
Catechism 397 explains the first sin and every sin, as a failure to trust God. It says, “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.”
And so Advent is needed. We need Advent to help us renew our trust in the promises of God and to resist the inroads the enemy has made in our lives and to repent of our failures to trust.
But then consider, that the sign of the Virgin conceiving and giving birth becomes the very model of trust for us. The Virgin is the perfect example of the "obedience of faith" mentioned by Paul in the second reading.
Lumen Gentium says, “the Blessed Virgin stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from Him.” Failure to trust was the origin of sin, but the exercise of trust became the origin of salvation.
“To celebrate Advent means: to become Marian, said Pope Benedict XVI, “to enter into that communion with Mary’s ‘Yes,’ which, ever anew, is room for God’s birth, for the ‘fullness of time,’” In the final Advent days ahead, renew your trust that the Savior is indeed born of the virgin, point out his saving birth for all to see, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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