This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 31; Isaiah 7:10–25; 2 Thessalonians 2:13–3:5; Luke 22:14–30

This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6–11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9–10, 13, BCP, p. 93)

I am forgotten like a dead man, out of mind; I am as useless as a broken pot — Psalm 31:12. We all have fears. To wind up on the pile of life’s discards—that’s one of the biggest for me. To find this verse tucked away in the same psalm that gave my Savior such words of confident trust as, “Into your hands I commend my spirit” (Psalm 31:5), is beyond heartening. Hanging there on his cross, Jesus knew better than I what it is to feel forgotten and useless. Hanging there, he redeems every experience of being cast aside like a broken pot, and turns death to life. 

Isaiah today describes one of the saddest, and anticipates one of the gladdest, moments of biblical history. 

The sad. As we saw yesterday, Isaiah has been seeking to move the young king Ahaz to a posture of faith. Ahaz, a direct descendant of King David, is offered the power to preserve the Davidic dynasty. Yahweh says, “Ask a sign….” Ahaz waves the offer off with a statement of dramatic pseudo-piety: “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” In another context, this demurral might reflect genuine faith (e.g., Jesus in the wilderness with the Tempter). But in this case, it is the worst sort of unfaith. It is not the Devil who is being answered dismissively, but Yahweh himself! That is why verses 17 through 25 prophesy unmitigated disaster for the people and land. From this day forward, David’s dynasty becomes a puppet government—puppet to the Assyrians, then to the Babylonians, then to the Persians, then to the Romans. David’s true Son and heir will eventually be born in a small town in a country under Roman occupation. 

The glad. Yet there is a lightning bolt of hope in Isaiah’s words of gloom: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14 English Standard Version). I know full well that a century or so of biblical scholarship has insisted Isaiah’s word ꜥalmâ means simply “young woman,” not that she is a virgin. That push is driven less by textual evidence than by a Western secular prejudice offended by the idea of a Virgin Birth. . In the Old Testament, the word ꜥalmâ normally refers to a female who is marriageable (i.e., virginal) and unmarried (see, for instance, the reference to the prayer of Abraham’s servant, asking for God’s help in his mission to find a suitable wife for Isaac in Genesis 24:43. I commend the illuminating discussion in J. Alec Motyer’s commentary on Isaiah). 

Two hundred years before Christ’s birth, the translators of the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek Septuagint understood the term this way. That is why these Jewish scholars  chose the Greek word parthenos, which more clearly delineates the virginity of a female who is marriageable and unmarried. 

In the context of King Ahaz’s day, Isaiah foresees that there is a specific but unnamed woman (“the virgin”) who will shortly marry, conceive, and, in great faith, name her baby “Immanuel” (meaning “God with us”). By the time this “Immanuel” is  weaned, Yahweh will have dealt with the threat from Israel and Damascus. Beyond that, however, Ahaz’s refusal of trust has also locked in Judah’s eventual devastation and the disenfranchising of the line of David. 

In the larger context, however—visible really only in hindsight—Isaiah provides one of the most elegant “Easter eggs” in all the Bible. One day, an angel would announce to a parthenos whose name we are given (Mary, and who herself is of the line of David) that she will, as the Virgin Mother, bear David’s heir: God’s own Son (Luke 1:26–38). 

God has no discards. The matter that is easy to overlook in today’s passage in Isaiah is the faith of the woman who, in the face of the gloom and destruction that are coming upon God’s people, nonetheless will name her baby “God with us.” In a context of dire judgment, she nonetheless clings to the God who promises to dwell among his people. Hers is a faith worthy of Psalm 31’s, “Into your hands….” 

Similarly, Paul piles extravagant language on people in Thessalonica who are outwardly altogether impressive. This band of recent converts to Christ appear to be largely working class people. “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,” he tells them, urging them to “work quietly and to earn their own living” (2 Thessalonians 3:10b,12). Insignificant people they may be in the eyes of the world, but not to Paul, and not to God. Paul calls them “beloved,” and embraces them as adelphoi (rendered “brothers and sisters” in the NRSV). He says God has chosen them and will sanctify them and give them “the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 3:13–14). I don’t even know where to begin to unpack the richness of that language. All I can do is accept it, and wonder in it. 

Likewise, on the night of his betrayal Jesus takes the most common of elements—bread and wine—and gives them to the most ordinary of people—his disciples. He and they, he says, are participating in an anticipation of a most extraordinary meal. They taste ahead of time the feast of the Kingdom of God. Week after week, this is our privilege too: to find in the least significant of things signs of the greatness and wonder of God. And to find in the least significant of people—one another—signs of the promise of glory. That is our Advent hope. May we all know it in any discouragements, rejections, failures, or attacks that may lie before us. We are not discards, but God’s beloved. 

Be blessed this day,

Reggie Kidd+