A Child Has Been Born to Us   (Isaiah 9:1-7)

A Sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III

St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church

December 23, 2007

We are now on the brink of Christ’s nativity. And over this season of Advent, our sense of the power of the coming one has been stretched, challenged and recast by the Prophet’s vision of the peaceable kingdom. Throughout Advent, the prophet Isaiah has invited us to imagine the end of the known world and the coming of a new creation. We have heard the prophet Isaiah praise the God who is able to resolve the conflicts of the nations so that one day all the nations shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Isaiah has called us to believe in the peaceable kingdom where the lion shall lay down with the lamb and a little child shall lead them. Isaiah has proclaimed that on the day of the Lord, all of creation will be miraculously transformed as a desert in bloom. And now on this last Sunday of advent, as the reality of the peaceable kingdom begins to dawn more clearly, what is astonishing about this power is that unlike any power we know, this power is confident enough to be vulnerable. And that means confident enough to be vulnerable to us. Let us look more closely at the Isaiah’s vision as it comes to us from chapter 9.  

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Thou hast multiplied the nation, thou hast increased its joy; they rejoice before thee as with joy at the harvest.  For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end”. In these verses Isaiah gives an account of trouble and darkness in the land. You can almost imagine the blood and smoke of a battlefield. And Isaiah entered deliberately upon this scene of desolating power, violence and darkness to offers reasons for a celebration. The God of peace has broken the rod of the oppressor and is destroying all the battle gear of the oppressors. It is likely that Isaiah’s prophetic words have in view a very particular deliverance in the history of Israel.  But the poetry is so comprehensive and compelling that it stirs up the vision of an end to all war and oppression. But this release from military and political danger is not the deepest reason for celebration. The deepest reason comes in the form of a birth announcement: a child has been born unto us. And this birth will somehow initiate a reign of justice and righteousness throughout the earth.  God’s will for justice righteousness and peace is made flesh in the weakest of human creatures. A little baby.  At first glance the birth of a child seems to be completely ordinary occurrence from the human side of things rather than a divine sign. It is not the kind of sign that is perceived by those whose attention is only focused on current affairs in the world, on power politics, on strategic calculations, or cost benefit analysis. But in this helpless child exist all the powerful attributes of god: Wisdom, power, love and truth are brought into the world.   

In this birth, God will be revealed as the one who loves the people and will cause his peaceable kingdom to flourish.

Matthew the gospel writer has seen this sort of power. He has heard Isaiah’s promise that the fullness of power will be revealed in a child and Matthew believes this promise is fulfilled in a young woman named Mary who was a single mother in a society in which such conditions might easily lead to her violent death. She was to depend for her reputation and maybe for her life on the good will of an untested male who knew he was not the father of the child. What sort of power is it that allows itself to be so vulnerable?  A power that is willing to entrust itself to one of the most notoriously unreliable features of human existence- not only the pain and riskiness of human gestation and childbirth, but also vulnerability to the caprice of human nature.  This power is made vulnerable in a world where paranoid tyrants like Herod carry out genocide against children. It is in this kind of world that Christ is born. It is in this kind of world that God’s peaceable kingdom is dawning. The fullness of power that Isaiah prophesied was revealing itself in a vulnerable birth.  Rev. John Buchanan pastor of 4^th Presbyterian in Chicago and editor of the magazine the Christian Century has written.” The original Christmas gift was certainly not what the people wanted or expected. They wanted a powerful king that would rally the troops, drive out the Roman Empire’s occupation forces and reestablish the prominence of the Kingdom of Israel.  That is what a messiah was supposed to do right?  Make things right by defeating god’s enemies and ours. And so when this gift was given, a birth announcement, nobody much noticed. God’s gift of vulnerable love was not what people expected or wanted at that time or now for that matter.” We would prefer a god who makes guarantees, who confirms our own ideas, and who puts down our opponents. We want a God who will make us invulnerable, rather than a God who makes our vulnerability Her Own.

In the middle of my seminary years I did a year long internship as a chaplain to the SC state psychiatric hospital in Columbia SC. It was a very intense year of learning for me, of testing and hard won growth. I was chaplain to a diverse spectrum of psychiatric patients. A typical week in my life was a mix between ministry on the wards with my patients and reflection time with my peer group of fellow chaplains going through classes on psychodynamics and therapeutic principles with our pastoral supervisors.  It was scary going on those wards to get very close to people who were in great pain, and sometimes quite unpredictable. It was a profound stretching time for me. Around Christmas time I was in a conversation with my supervisor Riley Eubank who was a grandfatherly wisdom figure, snow white hair and always smoking a pipe. I don’t remember exactly what provoked this conversation, but I remember saying to him that I really had a problem relating to the Christ child. And he said simply that doesn’t surprise me.  No matter how much I asked him to explain what he meant he would not and just kept puffing on his pipe. And that conversation and the lack of an answer to my question has haunted me ever since. Why he was not surprised that I had difficulty relating to the Christ child? Maybe he saw this 24 year old seminarian was not quite ready to ready to relate to the vulnerability of the Christ child because he was not yet willing to embrace his own vulnerability. Maybe he saw the need of a young seminarian to be in control, wanting to fix any situation and to successfully deliver the right answer. Maybe he saw that I was not ready to understand that the chaplain and the patients had more in common than I wanted to admit.  To this day I wonder what he meant. And I wonder: what is my relationship to the Christ child? I wonder if I am at long last willing to be as vulnerable as god has been vulnerable to us.  We can spend most of our lives trying to escape our essential vulnerability as human beings. And maybe we think we are succeeding in that delusional quest until we have a child. And then we learn what human beings learn whenever they love someone outside themselves. That whatever happens to that child happens to me. And so it is with God: whatever happens to the Beloved Child also happens to God. And that beloved Child is not just the baby lying in the manger. That beloved Child is you and me.

Dietrich Bonheoffer the great theologian and prophet and martyr wrote in his letters and papers from prison in Advent of 1945, “Mighty God is the name of this child. The child in the manger is none other than God. Nothing greater can be said: God became a child. I need to do my best not for me, not so people can see me but for Him. I must use my talents for the child. …If we want to be a part of these events at Advent and Christmas, we cannot simply sit there like a theater audience and enjoy all the lovely pictures. Instead we ourselves will be caught up in the action, this reversal of all things. We must become actors on the stage. …. All who are at the manger lay down all power and honor. All who are at the manger lay down all prestige. All who are at the manger lay down all vanity and arrogance, all self-will. All who take their place among the lowly and let God alone be high. All who see the glory of God in the lowliness of the child in a manger, these are the ones who will truly, truly celebrate Christmas.” I close with these words from John Buchanan. “The gift of a child challenges us in profound ways. No wonder we don’t expect it or want it that much. But the unique revelation of Christmas is that the essence of God’s truth is not what we expect or want – power- but vulnerable love. There is absolute truth in the new born lying in a manger- truth about God, truth about the nature of power, truth about you and me, truth that could transform the world”.