Isaiah
7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25
Some
years ago, the Christian Science Monitor published an anonymous piece entitled,
“Oh God, Just Give Me a Sign.” The author had gone through a traumatic period,
and remembered being awake in the night many times, fervently asking God for a
sign, some way to know for sure how to move forward in her life. She then
writes:
As it happened, I did see a sign during all those sleepless nights —
the same one, again and again. It was the enormous Citgo sign — now one of
Boston’s landmarks — blinking its neon red, white and blue lights above Fenway
Park.
Somehow, when I’d look up at all that bright activity going on at two
or three in the morning, after all the noise of the traffic had stilled on my
busy street and no one else in the world seemed to be awake — I’d stop feeling
quite so alone. And once I became quieter and less afraid, I would find a way
to pray to God more intelligently — to ask Him what I should do next, rather
than just tearfully beg Him to give me a sign.
Life
does improve for this person, and she goes on to say: “Every time I see that
Citgo sign, I remember that with God’s help, I made it through that crisis. And
then another. And another after that. The fact that I’ve survived again and
again, each time I’ve prayed for answers, has taught me something.”
I
have often heard people tell me they would like a sign from God when they are
struggling and needing God to give them some comfort or guidance. It’s a pretty
universal desire. Woody Allen spoke for many people when he said, “If only God
would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a
Swiss bank.” So it may surprise us to realize that Ahaz, the king Isaiah
addresses in our first reading, does not want any sign from God. Things are a
mess: he’s a young and inexperienced ruler, being threatened by an alliance of
two other kings, and he’s panicking. He even, horrifically, slaughters his own
son as a burnt offering to try to avert calamity. So the prophet Isaiah
confronts him and says, “Ask the Lord for a sign, any sign! God will give you
what you need!” But Ahaz doesn’t want a sign because he’s afraid and doesn’t
trust in God. And what happens? God gives him a sign anyway: “The young woman is with child and shall bear
a son, and shall name him Immanuel. And
before he’s old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, the
threat you are now facing will disappear.” We don’t know which young woman
Isaiah was referring to: he may have been talking about his own wife and the
child she was about to give birth to. The early church, of course, came to see
these words as a prophecy about Jesus. But in the book of Isaiah, written
centuries before Jesus was born, the point is that God gave Ahaz a sign,
whether he wanted it or not.
In
our Gospel passage, Joseph is also caught up in turmoil: the woman he is
engaged to is pregnant, a source of scandal and shame. Joseph is a good man,
but he’s not going to marry her. He does not ask God for a sign, but here
again, God gives him one anyway: a dream telling him to proceed with his
marriage to Mary because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and will save his people.
What
links that writer looking out at the Citgo sign with Ahaz the king of Judah and
Joseph, the betrothed of Mary, is that God gives each of them a sign, even if
they don’t get it at first, even if they don’t even ask for it . . . because
the God who reveals herself to so many people down through the centuries, who
becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ, who pours out the Holy Spirit on all flesh,
is a God who wants to be known.
But
before I tell you what I think the crucial lesson here is, let me tell you what
I don’t think it is. I don’t think these readings should encourage us to engage
in magical thinking, the kind of thinking that tries to manipulate God or use
God to make decisions for us. You know, something like, “Okay, God. If this
traffic light turns green in less than 10 seconds, I am going to take that as a
sign that you want me to buy a new car.” I think it is safe to say that God
doesn’t work that way. But because God does give so many signs in the Bible,
and because so many people of faith believe God has given them signs, there is
clearly something significant going on here. And to get at that, we need to
remember why it is that God gives signs in the first place. And while the Lord
occasionally gives a sign of judgment in Scripture, the vast majority of the
time, when God gives a sign, God gives it to remove fear. The sign of Immanuel
is given to help Ahaz trust in God and to take away his fear; the dream comes
to Joseph so that he will not be afraid to take Mary as his wife; that writer
looks out at the Citgo sign and sees it as a sign from God because it makes her
feel less afraid.
We
are in a season of expectation. We will soon celebrate the birth of God among
us. And as we do so, I am sure many of us feel unsettled or uncertain or
afraid, for any number of reasons. But we can rightly expect that the One who
became enfleshed in Jesus will find a way to touch us and give us signs that set
us free from fear, signs that will encourage us, literally give us courage, to
move forward in our day or in our life with confidence and the sure knowledge
that God is with us. That could take a very dramatic form and sometimes does,
but in the Bible and certainly in my own life, God often moves through very
ordinary events, like the birth of a baby, a dream, a conversation, looking out
the window and seeing a beautiful sky, having a surge of hope come out of
nowhere while we pour a cup of tea or wait in line at the grocery store. There
is no moment too small for God, who is always moving and always loving. I hope
you’ve had such moments: I think they happen a lot. And if we ever doubt our
experience or wonder whether a particular event was truly revelatory, we need
only ask ourselves one question: Did it lessen our fear? Did it renew our
courage? If so, then we can be confident that God used that moment to give us
the sign that we need.
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