Idols and Immanuel: Performing the Prophet

For Isaiah, in the context of twenty-three verses of Chapter 7, from which we tear seven (10-16) for the fourth Sunday in Advent (A) the problem is idolatry, and the consequence is ruin. The people will be reduced to eating curds and honey while their land is swarmed, as if by flies, by a foreign army. And in the midst of that ruin, a child will be born. His name, the promise of his birth, Immanuel – “God-is-with-us”.  In the midst of great devastation, God's great "nevertheless". Immanuel!

The context in which Isaiah gives this testimony is a struggle for Jerusalem (described in 2 Kings 16), first in an attack on Jerusalem by the alliance of Israel and Syria, then in a new alliance between Judah (King Ahaz) and Assyria (King Tiglathpile). Judah becomes, in many ways, Assyria's client state. Ahaz sends gold and silver from the temple as a “present” to Tiglathpile, and reorganizes the temple to feature altars that follow the pagan designs of Damascus. As usual, there's trouble in the temple. 

Trouble in the temple, a king who is the client of a powerful foreign master, a prophet in the wilderness decrying king and temple and anticipating desolation, and the promise that in the desolation, Immanuel, “God-is-with-us. This is the historic narrative of Judah that Matthew chooses as a framework for his witness to the approaching birth of Jesus. Jesus’ birth, he says, fulfills “what had been spoken by the prophet”. 

We are, I think, inclined to hear this as a matter of prediction (an inclination that can lead, and has led, to a corrosive distortion of continuing Jewish faith and life as somehow having “rejected” Jesus).  That inclination is, I believe, encouraged by the appearance of this Sunday's decontextualized scrap of Isaiah and its pairing with Matthew's testimony, similarly narrowed from its context.

The word fulfill means something like “perform”, or “fill up”. I wonder if we might think of Matthew as setting the ancient story “on stage” as an interpretive lens for Jesus birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection. Is Matthew's account of the life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus “filling up” the narrative vessel of: 

        1) trouble in the temple, 
        2) an alliance of necessity with a powerful foreign master, 
        3) a prophet in the wilderness decrying king and temple, 
        4) the anticipation of desolation in Jerusalem, and 
        5) the promise of Immanuel! in the midst of desolation? 

Might this be Matthew inviting us to notice “Here we are again”? Is he hearing and reporting the Spirit's  breathing across the reed of Hebrew Scripture, performing a fresh and decisive witness of an ancient testimony? 

Might this be Matthew telling us not just how the story begins, but also how to read or hear the story, what to look or listen for? 

How might we understand trouble in the temple and the pragmatic consideration of dealing with a powerful foreign master as a framework for receiving this story? 

How does a prophet’s anticipation of desolation and promise of Immanuel! help us hear the Spirit’s fresh performance of ancient testimony? Might this fresh witness be not just how the story begins, but also where it’s heading?  In its light:

 What might we make of the slaughter of the Innocents, of John’s witness and subsequent                 imprisonment and execution? 

How might we understand the relentless antipathy of religious authorities towards Jesus’ public ministry of purpose and proclamation, of healing and teaching? 

How might the temple, the powerful foreign master, and the prophet perform Isaiah’s witness in the last week in Jerusalem? 

And how might we receive Matthew’s testimony as Easter rises out of the desolation of Good Friday? I wonder if might we hear the Spirit’s breath across the ancient witness as the promise of Immanuel!,  of "God-is-with-us!", in the midst of the daily desolation of this age?  

Immanuel!

For Advent 4, Year A

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