Jim Street

I remember Johnny.

How could I forget him?

For three or four years in elementary school Johnny haunted my very movement.

Johnny was the meanest person I have ever met.  I say that in my late 50s...  Johnny was the meanest person I have ever met.

Johnny had a prison tattoo by the sixth grade.  His older brother gave it to him.

I saw Johnny almost beat one of my classmates to death.

Johnny almost sent me to the ER once because I had the nerve to laugh at him when the wind blew his well-oiled hair.

Johnny was anti-social and greasy.

He struck fear into the heart of every 4th, 5th and 6th grade boy I knew.

You would have thought Johnny and I were best friends...the way I shadowed Johnny.

Fear can do some strange things to you. Fear can make you do some strange things.  

Dr. Freud would have had a field day with me.   He probably would have called it a "reaction formation."   In a reaction formation, which was one of Dr. Freud's classic defenses against anxiety, you do things that are polar opposite to how you really feel: the child porn politician champions laws against child pornography ...the preacher who visits prostitutes rails against adultery...The kid who fears the anti-social bully embraces him.

When Ahaz saw Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah, king of Israel, outside the walls of Jerusalem flanked by their armies and intent on toppling his throne, his heart and the heart of his people "shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind."  (Isaiah 7:2)

God sent the prophet to him to tell him that the Kings Rezin and Pekah did not amount to a sneeze.  He encouraged Ahaz and told him to pay attention, keep quiet, resist fear, keep on keeping on.

God would fight for him.  God would take care of him.

But young Ahaz was afraid and, like I said, fear can make you do some strange things.

He was also hard-headed, stubborn and intent on "doing his own thing."  As the history book tells us, "He did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God...He...made his son pass through fire, according to the abominable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. He sacriced and made offerings on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree." (II Kings 16:3-4)

Ahaz did not follow the way of the Lord from the get-go.  He did some abominable things.  He was ill-prepared to deal with the threats of Rezin and Pekah.

Ahaz turned to "Johnny"...the ruthless warrior king of Assyria, Tiglath-pileser.  He even offered sacrifices in the presence of Tiglath-pileser and gave him the silver and gold from the house of the Lord. (II Kings 16:8ff.) 

In his stubborness, faithlessness and fear, Ahaz rejected the promise of God and sidled up to Satan.

Such "leadership" led to destruction.

When Isaiah came to Ahaz and offered him a sign to confirm the faithfulness of God, Ahaz refused him.  Feigning piety, Ahaz said he did not want to test or trouble the Lord.

And... he did not want to change his well-laid plans.

What irony!

In a fire we grasp at straws.  In the face of threat, we forget the God of our fathers and mothers, make our own plans and sometimes sidle up to Satan.

"If I stand close enough, if I feign friendship, if I become one of them, if I join-'em-because-I-can't-beat''em, if I can't quit shaking any other way...."

We often fall when we take our stand...our stand....our stand

During Advent we hear the promise of a son..a son...A Son...whose name shall be called "God with us."

God with us.

God with us.

God with us.

But in our fear we do not wait. We tremble and make our plans...the best laid plans of mice...

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For resources related to the season of the church year or the Revised Common Lectionary go here.

For a series of questions for personal reflection/small group discussion on the RCL texts for the week go here.

"I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test." (Isaiah 7:12)

The words sound good.  So righteous.  So pious.  So noble.

They belong to Ahaz, the young king of Judah (8th century B.C.)  Ahaz is in the midst of a political storm.  Assyria is a threat to the north.  The kings of Israel (the northern kingdom) and Aram have approached him to join an alliance against Assyria.  If he refuses to join them, they threaten to topple his kingdom and set up a puppet king who will do their bidding.

Isaiah, the prophet, has promised Ahaz that God will shield him from the two "smoking firebrands."  He has assured him that the kingdom will stand if he, Ahaz, resists the temptation to take matters into his own hands and puts his faith in God.

Isaiah even offers the guarantee of a sign: "Ask of the Lord anything you want, Ahaz.  Ask for a sign in the highest heavens or even in the depths of Sheol.  The Lord wants you to know beyond all doubt that He is faithful to you.  All he wants is for you to be faithful to Him."

That's when Ahaz replies that he will not test God in that way, that he will not ask for a sign.

So noble.  So pious.  So righteous. 

The truth is that Ahaz does not want assurances from God.  Ahaz does not want a demonstration of God's faithfulness.  Ahaz does not want to "risk" faith when he has already decided what he will do.

Why place your faith in the unseen God when you can trust your own abilities, your own plans, your own agenda?

Ahaz has already plotted to join the king of Assyria against the kings of Israel and Aram.  (II Kings 16)  Ahaz already knows what he wants and what he will do.

We might think that Ahaz is a fool.  Why any one of us- when given the option of trusting God or trusting ourselves- would trust God...wouldn't we? 

Well...wouldn't we?

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For resources related to the season of the church year or the Revised Common Lectionary go here.

For a series of questions for personal reflection/small group discussion on the RCL texts for the week go here.

I am often put off by some of the Christmas songs because they are so sentimental, so romantic and so not-my- experience.

Sometimes I feel as if I am going to blow if I hear one more song about holiday cheer, faces all aglow, happy shoppers on their way down glistening, snow covered city sidewalks.

I live in the Atlanta area.  The last time we had snow at Christmas was around the time the Magna Carta was being signed.  And as for happy faces all aglow....ha!...I say, "Ha!"

I see harried faces (even hairy faces!), distracted faces and most of them anything but "all aglow." 

I live in the suburbs.  You see tail lights all aglow.  You see strip malls.  You see enough concrete and black top to cover Rhode Island.  You see power cable, telephone lines and litter.

To many Christmas songs I say, "Bah!"

Unless....unless I hear those lyrics not as descriptions of what is but as yearnings of what could be.

Maybe there could be a day- even here in the 'burbs of HOTlanta"- when there is snow on the ground, happy people scurrying here and there with nothing more than a "Merry Christmas" on their breath.

Hearing those songs in that way may just rescue me from my humbuggery.

Reading the Isaiah texts in the Revised Common Lectionary is really what has rescued me from another season of singing, "Bah, bah, bah, bah, baaaah.." instead of "Fa la la la laaaa."

Listen to these words about the coming the Day of Lord...

"He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn more any more." (2:4)

Or read these words and just imagine...

"The wolf shall sleep with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze together, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (11:6-9 NRSV)

I suspect there were those who first heard Isaiah's words with a "bah" and a "humbug."  They read the paper like everyone else; they watched the evening news.  They worked in the sweatshops and traversed the market places.

No more war?  No more studying war?  No more tragedies?  No more "nature red in tooth and claw."

Bah!

All those folks are gone.  However, the words of Isaiah still stand and give their hope.

Isaiah expresses a vision.  However...and this is important...Isaiah's vision is not simply the poetic expression of wishful thinking or overwrought romanticism.  Isaiah is not Mel Torme sitting at a piano in California in the heat of summer writing about "chestnuts roasting on an open fire."

Isaiah speaks to human yearning, yes.

But the word Isaiah speaks, the vision that Isaiah describes is not Isaiah's word and not Isaiah's vision.  His word and vision are not simply the yearnings of one man or the whole people. 

This is the word and the vision of the God who is faithful and who will do what God promises. 

Advent is the time of yearning...ours and God's! 

Advent is the time when we are reminded that our deepest longings, the ones we offer up to heaven, will be met (and then some) by the God who never leaves us nor forsakes us!