What Exhausts Even God

Dr. James Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

December 19, 2004

Text: Isaiah 7:10-14

I am amazed at how the basic dilemmas of life seem to be repeated, generation after generation, in nation after nation. There is a typically human story behind the passage we read today.

The king of Judah, a fellow by the name of Ahaz, was facing a political threat. The northern kingdom, called Ephraim had joined forces with Syria in order to rebel against their being dominated by Assyria . Ephraim and Syria wanted a military alliance with Judah and were threatening to overthrow King Ahaz if he did not join them.

Ahaz was worried about staying in power and worried about the security of his nation. His way of solving the problem was to try to seek an alliance with Assyria . Now this was about like Israel of today, trying to deal with the Palestinians and Syrians by forming an alliance with Iraq when it was ruled by Sadam Husain. Power politics frequently makes strange bedfellows.

Isaiah confronted King Ahaz and begged him not to do get involved with Assyria . It is not what God intended for Judah . “Just ask for a sign,” the Lord had said to Ahaz. “ I will show you that uniting with Assyria is not the way to go.” Isaiah tried to tell Ahaz that it was just a matter of time until the alliance between Ephraim and Syria would fall apart. “Do not panic.” Isaiah was telling Ahaz, “Be steady and calm, trusting God.”

But Ahaz was worried and afraid. He had already decided that the way to deal with the problem was to have an alliance with Assyria in order to counter balance the alliance between Ephraim and Syria . So when God said to Ahaz, “Just ask for a sign. I will show you, joining with Assyria is not the way to go,” Ahaz responded saying: “I will not put the Lord to the test.” Now, on the surface this can sound very pious. But the truth of the matter is Ahaz was really telling God he was not interested in what God had to say.

This is not to say Ahaz was a secular man. Ahaz was very religious. He was so religious that in one crisis he even offered his son as a burned sacrifice. But his religion was a religion of trying to use God, trying to manipulate God, trying to control God. Ahaz was not interested in knowing what God wanted. What interested Ahaz was using religion to get God to do what Ahaz wanted.

This is why Isaiah said to Ahaz “It's bad enough that you make people tired with your “religiousity” and timid hypocrisies, but now you are even making God weary.” God gets tired of our phony faith and pretended piety.

Ahaz was not interested in a sign from God. What he wanted was an alliance with Assyria . And so, Ahaz used a pious answer (“It's not right to test God”) to avoid having to deal with with what God wanted. In order to maintain the illusion he wanted to believe, Ahaz closed himself off from the truth God was trying to give him.

Most of us can understand Ahaz. Who of us has rejected the truth in order to hang on to what we want to believe or to avoid facing an unpleasant reality?

It is relatively common for members of a family to deny the very problem that is at the core of the family's dysfunction. Families will twist them selves into all sorts of pretzels denying the reality of behavior that needs to change. For example, some families avoid facing the truth about the alcohol problems of a parent or an adolescent. Some families live in denial of the abusive behavior of a spouse, parent or child. Some ignore the reality of credit card debt and live with the stress for a while by postponing consequences jumping from card offer to card offer. Even in our business, we will sometimes resist facing the truth about the real cause of problems.

We humans can be a stubborn lot, especially, when we do not want to be bothered by the truth. We have a tendency to keep trying to solve problems using methods that have never worked in the crazy expectation that if we will just keep doing what we have done, somehow what has never worked will somehow bring different results and life will be the way we want. It's crazy; but it is also very human.

We do not want to face bad news. We do not want to change what is familiar, regardless of how ineffective or even destructive familiar ways are. But what is familiar is familiar, and all too often we will choose the familiar rather than risk change that moves us into unfamiliar territory. This is what King Ahaz was doing.

Now what does all this have to do with Advent and Christmas? We have a tendency of trying to make the message of Christmas be what we want it to be, rather than being open to what it really is. We want to see Christmas as a time when God gives us just what we want -- the birth a magic working messiah who will make sure we and our families are healthy, wealthy and happy. We even change the Christmas song the angels sang to the shepherds. We prefer the mistranslation of the King James Bible and that says the angels sang: “peace on earth good will to men,” whereas, according the Luke the actual lyrics of the angel song was something closer to: “peace upon earth among those who do God's will.”

There is a tendency to want the gift of Christmas to be the gift we want rather than the gift God has given. The coming of Christ is the coming of one who offers us light for our darkness. But that light is the light of truth -- the truth that exposes, among other things, all within us and around us that needs changing. The coming of Christ does not come blessing what is as much as the Christ comes to enable us to move toward what God intends to be. The coming of Christ is less like a Santa coming showering us with the gifts we have asked for and more like the notice of a divine draft broad, summoning us to pick up our crosses and follow him.

Christ is the light of the world, but the purpose of the Christmas light is not to decorate life but to illumine life. To live in the light of Christmas not only enables us to see the grace of God being born in our midst, the light of Christmas illumines our lives, and exposes what in our living needs changing. All too often in my life, I have responded to the reality of Christmas much like Ahaz did to God's message to him. All too often, I want Christmas to be what I want it to be, and I shut myself off from what Christmas really is Like Ahaz, I try to camouflage my response with all sorts of pious Christmas decoration.

We can pretend Christmas is what we want it to be. But Christmas is what Christmas is, and often the truth of Christmas comes among us as something of a surprise. But when it does comes, however it comes, it is like the coming of light into the darkness enabling us to see as never before the gift of God's grace, and also the claims of God's grace on our living.

God, help us to trust you so completely, we can let go of our preconceived notions of what Christmas is and allow the truth in Christmas to invade our lives and shape our living. Amen.

Pastoral prayer:
God, as we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, we come you in prayer, asking for peace -- peace between nations and peace between groups within nations, peace that is more than the absence of fighting. We pray for peace that has its source in you, the peace that brings such healing and wholeness injustice is brought to an end and the nations work together to feed all who are hungry.

We also pray for peace in our relationships. You know how we have wounded one another. Heal our wounds. Rescue us from bitterness and the desires to strike back. Teach us how to work toward reconciliation. Replace our efforts to get even with one another with efforts to do what is best for one another.

And God, we also need peace within ourselves. You know the turmoil in our minds and heart; you know the fears and worries that cause us to toss and turn in the dark hours of night. Show us how to allow you to take over our lives so that even in the midst of our problems we are able to experience that peace described in the Bible.

As we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, we pray for peace; enable us to give ourselves to him so that we will live as the was teaching us to live when he taught us to pray: “Our Father ....”