Readings: Isaiah 7.10–16; Psalm 80.1–8, 18–20; Romans 1.1–7; Matthew 1.18–end.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So, here we are.
It’s the Sunday before Christmas.
In just four days’ time it will be
Christmas Day.
We’ve had Christmas music on the radio
for at least four or five weeks;
people putting flashing lights and decorations
outside their houses
since at least the middle of November;
Christmas trees galore.
And the shops, oh the shops …
some of them have been playing Christmas music
since the middle of October!
They’re desperately trying
to get us to part with our money,
or to organise festive parties
and consume more food and alcohol.
But here at All Saints things are
a little … bit … calmer.
Here, it is – mostly – still Advent,
with Advent hymns, and Advent liturgy,
with Advent vestments – Advent purple.
True, we have Christmas greenery around,
and a tree over there,
but the lights are still switched off!
And at home too, our Christmas tree
has only just gone up, on Thursday.
It’s not that I’m a killjoy,
I’m not the grinch
and honestly I do try hard
not to moan too much
about other people starting Christmas so early –
well, I try really hard not to moan in public anyway.
But for me,
Advent has always been important
and I love the rituals and liturgies and hymns of Advent.
But now as we come to the last week,
the last few days of Advent,
the pace quickens
as Christmas comes more closely into view.
So in today’s readings,
we heard Isaiah’s prophecy,
a prophecy of a child,
a child who would be called Immanuel.
Now Isaiah was speaking
hundreds of years before the time of Jesus
when there was still a Jewish kingdom
centred on Jerusalem and ruled over
by the descendants of King David.
In Isaiah’s time
that kingdom was under severe threat
from its neighbours
and with the benefit of hindsight
we know it was going to be destroyed
soon after these words were first heard.
But Isaiah prophesies that there is still
hope.
Isaiah prophesies to king Ahaz,
the successor of King David,
that before a child who is still in the womb
is old enough to choose between right and wrong,
the kings of Damascus and Samaria will fall,
and the threat to Jerusalem will fall with it.
Isaiah gives this unborn child the name ‘Immanuel’,
– God with us –
a sign of hope in the future
and trust in the divine will.
And later generations
would come to see this prophecy
as a promise in times of trouble.
That one day a boy would be born
who would restore the line of King David
and restore God’s laws.
Well, that was today’s Old Testament reading.
And a couple of weeks ago,
on Advent 2,
we heard another of Isaiah’s prophecies.
In that one he prophesies
that a shoot would come from the root of Jesse.
Who was Jesse?
Well, Jesse was the father of David,
the shepherd boy who defeated Goliath
and became the great king of Israel.
Isaiah prophesies
that the line of Jesse will be great again,
and that on this new shoot from Jesse’s root
“The spirit of the Lord shall rest.”
And there are quite a few other places in Isaiah,
and elsewhere in the Old Testament –
verses and prophecies
that Christians came to see
as pointers to Jesus.
Some of them are clear,
and others are picturesque or even pretty cryptic.
But several of these verses
are picked up in a hymn we sang earlier this morning.
Perhaps you’ve already spotted some of them
as I’ve been talking:
Of course, I’m talking about
that hauntingly beautiful Advent carol
“O come, O come, Emmanuel”.
You see, all these verses of the hymn
are addressed to Jesus
to the coming Jesus.
He is the one that the hymn acclaims:
as Wisdom;
as Adonaï – Lord;
as sprung from the root or lineage of Jesse;
and so on.
And it’s particularly appropriate
to sing that hymn in this last week of Advent.
Why?
Well, the hymn derives
from an ancient custom at Evening Prayer.
Every evening we say
the Magnificat, Mary’s Song.
And, rather like at this service we sing
Alleluia to acclaim the gospel reading,
so the Magnificat at Evensong also has an acclamation –
or antiphon as it’s called.
And in the seven days before Christmas
it is these seven verses that are used as that acclamation,
one each evening.
(Though if you are paying close attention
you’ll have noticed that we sang
a version of the hymn with only five verses this morning.
But that’s another story.)
Either way, this last week before Christmas
is just the right time to sing the hymn.
So what, you may be thinking?
Good question – so what?
Well, let’s turn for a moment to today’s gospel reading.
It’s from Matthew’s account of the life of Jesus.
And Matthew quotes
those verses from Isaiah about Emmanuel
that we also heard today.
Look, Matthew explicitly says to us; look,
Isaiah made this prophecy hundreds of years earlier,
and that prophecy is fulfilled … in the birth of Jesus.
It is Jesus who is really this Emmanuel.
And one of the things about Matthew’s account
is that he tells the story of Jesus’s birth
from the point of view of Joseph.
We are more used, perhaps,
to hearing the story from Mary’s perspective –
how the angel Gabriel appeared
and told her she would have a baby
and how she visited her kinswoman Elizabeth
who was also expecting a baby
and so on.
But that’s not what we have here.
Matthew carefully tells us
– in the verses just before today’s gospel reading –
that Joseph is descended from King David.
In fact he gives us quite a long list
of how Abraham’s line leads to David
and the kings of Judah that followed,
and then after the end of the kingdom
the line leads to Joseph,
and so to Jesus.
Joseph, Matthew tells us,
is the heir of King David.
And therefore, Matthew implies,
Jesus too is the heir of King David.
All those prophecies in Isaiah and elsewhere
about the restoration of David’s line
– all those verses in O come, O come, Emmanuel –
Matthew wants his hearers, wants us, to conclude
that they can be seen as references
–prophecies –
to Jesus.
Matthew sees Isaiah’s prophecy
and makes a parallel with Jesus’s birth,
seeing it – like Isaiah –
as a sign of hope and trust in God.
And to us,
the name Immanuel signifies even more.
It tells us …
that God is with us.
That God, the creator of the universe,
lives among us,
lives a human life,
a humble human life,
born to an ordinary family,
in an undistinguished place.
The God that we worship
is not some remote cosmic being,
nor a fickle pleasure-seeking divinity
(such as contemporary Greeks and Romans believed in).
No,
this is a God who puts off
all his divine attributes and status
to live within the limits of a human life
and … a human death.
Just like us.
In the birth and life of Jesus
the human and the divine mingle
in a way that poetry and theology
are better at describing than science.
And in just a few days we shall be,
as it were,
witnesses once again to this mingling,
this incarnation,
as we celebrate the birth of that baby
and ponder its meaning in our hearts.
O come, O come Emmanuel!