Love

Isaiah 7,  Matthew 1

December 21, 2025 

Advent 4 – Love

 

Our last theme of Advent is Love.

Obviously, we’re talking about God’s love and

we’re talking us sharing God’s love in the world.

But what is that?

 

Love is an overused word in our culture.

We say it for anything.

“I love those shoes, I love that color,

I love tacos, I love football.”

 

We know there’s love between two people,

which may be close, but we know

sometimes is not love at all, but lust or dependence.

We know the love that parents have for their children.

Which is closer, but it’s still not God’s love.

 

We talk about God’s love a lot. But it’s kind of nebulous.

Some people have turned it around

to say that God loves through inflicting pain and suffering

to teach lessons which I just don’t think is true.

But some people think that sharing God’s love is

just being happy about everything and never having

a negative word to say about anything.

But I think God’s love is not that simple.

Love is hard. And the readings today don’t help too much.

 

I admit I didn’t remember much about this king Ahaz

that’s mentioned in the Isaiah text.

It’s used often enough during Advent,

because a passage from it is quoted in

Matthew’s Christmas gospel, which I just read now.

So you think I would know more about it.

But guess I’ve been passing it over every year

as one of those mysterious things from the Old Testament.

But really, you can just look those things up and read it. 

 

I think I just kind of assumed that king Ahaz was a good and

faithful king who was asking God for a sign.

I mean he says he wasn’t going to “put God to the test”,

which sounds like a good and faithful thing to say.

Jesus says that in Luke when he’s tempted by the devil,

right, so King Ahaz has got to be good, right?

 

Wrong. King Ahaz was not a good king.

He was actually an awful king.

Ahaz started ruling when he was just 20

and he was every bad stereotype of a 20 year old

king that you could think of.

 

At the time of this chapter in Isaiah,

Ahaz was worried about the Northern Kingdom of Israel

joining forces with Damascus and defeating him.

So he allied himself with the Assyrians to maintain his power.

 

The Assyrians were basically the terrible neighboring

empire that was constantly wreaking havoc over the Israelites.

Ahaz was hoping that together they would defeat the Northern kingdom

God was not pleased.

 

In 2 Kings it says that on a diplomatic visit to Assyria,

Ahaz saw an altar in a pagan temple that he liked

and he had the same altar built in the temple in Jerusalem

and he sacrificed on it and made the priests sacrifice on it

and then he took the original worship vessels out of the temple

and he gifted them to the king of Assyria.

God was not pleased.

 

And in this passage in Isaiah,

God is talking to King Ahaz through Isaiah, the royal prophet.

Ahaz is going up to the pool of Siloam to check on the water supply.

Isaiah begs Ahaz to trust God.

Isaiah tells Ahaz to just ask for a sign and God will give it to him.

But Ahaz has no interest in listening to God.

He gives that lame, “I won’t put God to the test” line

as an excuse not to listen.

He would rather put his faith in the Assyrians.

God was not pleased.

 

And Isaiah can’t take it anymore, he says to Ahaz:

“It’s bad enough that you have tired the people

with your hypocrisies, now you’re tiring God.

Well, God’s going to give you a sign anyway

even though you’re not asking for it, here it is:

A young woman will give birth to a son,

and she will name him Emmanuel, God is with us.

And before he’s old enough to know between good and bad.

the two kingdoms that you’re afraid of, will collapse.

 

This is not said in a calm, comforting,

Christmas-like way as I always assumed.

The stage direction would say, “Angry. raised voice.”

maybe a little aggressive pointing on Isaiah’s part.

There, that will be the sign, you dope.

 

Then Isaiah goes on to say that although the

Northern kingdom and Damascus would fall,

The Assyrian kingdom, the kingdom that Ahaz

put his faith and trust in to save him,

would eventually come and destroy Judah.

King Ahaz would just have the privilege of

being the last to see it all go down.

Deliverance and justice.

Not God’s vengeance, just a repercussion

of putting all his trust in a corrupt empire.

 

Not really that Christmassy scene of love at all.

Sometimes I regret doing the research.

 

So, my question is, why would Matthew choose this verse?

Why did he choose this verse in Isaiah to talk about the  birth of Jesus?

Matthew and all the Jews he was talking to undoubtedly

knew the whole story of Ahaz.

They knew what he had done

and how he had lead the Israelites to their destruction.

Maybe it was solely because of the words “young woman”,

which could be interpreted as a virgin,

giving birth to a child.

but I think there was more to it.

 

Matthew and Joseph and Mary were also living in a time when

Israel was under Roman occupation.

Their leader, King Herod, is another king

who is an arrogant bully,

who sells out his own people and their faith

to the Roman occupiers to maintain his power.

 

He is also sleeping with the enemy.

He has no interest in hearing about God’s signs.

He has no interest in learning about God’s ways.

He has put his faith and trust into earthly things.

And this all leads to the destruction of their country.

Again,  God was not pleased.

 

A corrupt and selfish leader,

A kingdom who’s lost its way.

A once faithful people who don’t want

any sign or help from God.

 

But God’s giving a sign anyway.

 

There will be a child and he will be born

to a young woman and he will be called

Emmanuel, God with us.

 

And does this sign from 3000 years ago

have anything to say to us today?

I think so.

 

Emmanuel. God is with us.

God longs to be with us.

God longs to know us and to be a part of us.

In spite of our stupid, greedy leaders,

in spite of our stubbornness,

in spite of our disinterest in God’s ways and plans.

in spite of the deals we make with the devil.

In spite of our religious leaders giving their souls

and their parishioners souls for false ideology.

in spite of selling our real treasures for a moment’s comfort.

In spite of the way we resort to violence at any perceived

insult or grievance.

In spite of the way we treat the poor, the hungry, the outcast.

In spite of all we have said and thought and done

and all we have failed to say, and think, and do.

Even though God may not be pleased.

God is still longing to be with us.

 

God is still reaching out through the cosmos

to be part of our lives, and give us endless signs

of God’s presence with us.

God has given us God’s only son.

God has given us God’s very self

to live with us.

 

God has come to be with us,

to share in our joys and pains,

to show us a new way of comfort and justice,

to become one with us.

To live with us

and die for us.

 

And that is love.

Advent 3 - Joy

 Isaiah 35 December 15, 2019 Advent 3 – Joy

 

Are you happy? Do you feel joy?

We ask this question of ourselves and others a lot.

We take our emotional temperature often.

 

I don’t know that this would have been a question in Isaiah’s time.
It probably would have seemed foreign to everyone.
People were joyful at times, of course, and they expressed joy.

It shows up in scripture often.
But the idea of contemplating joy and pursuing joy

feels more like a modern construct.
Maybe just of the 21st century.

 

My educated guess is they were more pragmatic about things.
The questions would have been:
Are you dead? Are you starving? Are you in pain?
If not, then great—you have joy.
Kind of sounds like my grandmother, actually.

 

But now, joy seems to be a bit of an obsession,

at least for many middle-class American people.
Once we have a place to live

and our basic needs met, then we want to know:
Do I feel joy? How can I get more joy?

 

People have joy workshops, retreats, classes.

One gives a certificate in joy.

Which means that you’re certified joyful.

 

And we often find ourselves looking for joy in things.

Cars and houses and possessions.

Sears once had a Christmas campaign

called Real Joy Guaranteed.
There’s so much wrong with that,

I’m not sure where to begin.

 

A few years ago Marie Kondo, was the rage,

she was the decluttering expert, so she found joy in not having things.

She told us to look at every object we own and ask,
“Does this spark joy?”
If not, she says, get rid of it.
I don’t know if a box of Band-Aids sparks joy,

but I still think I should keep it around.

 

There was a study showing that a lot of

young adults struggle with depression and anxiety

because their parents created an environment

too comfortable, too manufactured.

They were so focused on curating their children’s joy,

that the children never learned how to experience

joy on their own without someone doing it for them.

 

We want to pursue joy, achieve it, certify it, purchase it.
We want to give it to our children.
We want joy in our homes, our families, our churches, our worship.
We’d like to experience it all the time.
We want to own joy.

 

But I’m not sure that’s how it works.

This week in Advent, our focus is joy.
It’s called Gaudete Sunday – which is Latin for Rejoice.
It has been the theme for the third Sunday in Advent

since at least the ninth century.

Yet historically, joy hasn’t been what Christianity was known for.

We’ve been known more for seriousness,

stoicism, guilt, and solemnity.
One of my former members told me

that as a young woman, her pastor scolded her

for smiling as she walked back from communion.

 

Today some people still wonder,
Can we laugh in church?
Is it okay to be joyful in God’s presence?

Should we be more serious for God.

 

And then there are other branches of

Christianity where the only acceptable emotion

is joy—where you have to feel blessed all the time.

 

Joy becomes a requirement,

and any negative emotion like sadness

or sorrow or depression, or anger

is seen as a lack of faith.

Christian joy becomes a commodity.

 

So many ideas about joy.
And none of them seem to hit the real mark.

 

In my first congregation, I visited a member

who had been in the hospital

for weeks after a spinal injury.

She hadn’t walked since that time.

When I first saw here,

She was pretty depressed and hopeless and angry

which I completely understood.

 

Then the next time I saw her, she was changed.

She said that week during physical therapy,

she managed to stand—just for a moment—

supported on both sides.

When she told me about it, her face lit up.

“It was only three seconds,” she said,

“but I felt like I was flying.”

 

Three seconds wasn’t much,
But to her, those three seconds were pure joy.

the kind that can only be understood

when you’ve known pain, fear, helplessness.
That joy was not born not from ease,

and not from constantly pursuing joy

or even from self-care. It was found in endurance.

That joy is probably more what Isaiah was talking about.

 

Isaiah tells the people:

The desert will bloom.
The dry land will gush with water.
Weak hands will grow strong.
Blind eyes will open, deaf ears will hear,
and those who cannot walk will run and leap.

 

This is joy, but it is joy that comes through suffering.

The water is amazing

because it falls on dry ground.
The crocuses are beautiful

because they bloom in a wasteland.

Seeing and hearing are miracles,

only if you have been unable to see or hear.
Walking is ordinary until the time you

wondered if you might never walk again.

 

The joy that comes from God

is not something we can pursue.
Not something we can buy or learn.
Not something we can manufacture

for ourselves or our children.
It is the joy that rises from

what is broken, what hurts, what feels lost.

 

Part of the lessons of Christ and of Easter is that

real joy comes through suffering.

Something that so many people

want to avoid completely.

 

Now no one should pursue suffering,

But as Christians, when it does happen,

we can see our own suffering as

and opportunity for God to work in us.

 

And we are also called to not

shy away from the suffering of others.

If you aren’t suffering yourself

then suffer with someone else.
Compassion produces joy.
Generosity produces joy.
Solidarity produces joy.

 

So yes—in Christ there is joy.
But the joy Christ gives is not a mood.
It is not a personality trait.
It is not a demand placed on you during the holidays.
It is not a decoration you have to hang on your heart.

It is a promise.

 

A promise that the desert places

in our lives are not wasted places.
A promise that dry seasons

will not stay dry forever.

A promise that God can take the very things

that break us and turn them into

places of surprising, impossible life.

 

And here is another deeper thing:
Joy is not the opposite of sorrow.
Joy is what God grows in the soil of sorrow.
Joy is the first light breaking into the long night.
Joy is what happens when God enters

the world and refuses to leave us alone in the dark.

 That’s why , even at the darkest time,

Isaiah can see crocuses

blooming where no flower should bloom.
That’s why the weak become strong,
and the blind see,
and the lame leap,
and the fearful find courage again.
Because God has entered the story.

 

So if you are not feeling joy right now—
if you’re weary, worried, stretched thin, or grieving—
hear this good news:

Christ does not wait for you to feel joyful before he comes.

He comes to you in the desert.
He walks with you through it.
And he will not stop until joy blooms again.

 This is the promise of Advent:

that even now, even here,
God is preparing a way in the wilderness,
a holy road where sorrow will not have the last word.

 So take heart. Hold on.

Stay awake and watch.

 Because the one who brings joy out of sorrow,

life out of death,
and flowers out of barren ground
is already on the way.

Advent 2 Peace

 Isaiah 11:1-10 Advent 2 – Peace December 7, 2025

 

When we say peace, we can mean a couple of things.

Peace can be an inner feeling, a calm

a sense of well-being and comfort.

You can feel  peace in the middle of chaos,

when things are going terribly.

People have often told me that during times of great

upheaval and illness and uncertainty, that’s when

they have felt a sense of peace and known it was God’s presence.

 

But peace is also the absence of conflict.

Either on a personal level or on a community

or national level.

Basically, a lack of war.

 

The bible uses peace in both of these ways.

And it’s sometimes difficult to know which one

the passage is talking about.

Many times it seems like our inner peace

proceeds from peace in the home or in the world.

And many times it seems like peace in the

world proceeds from our inner peace.

Which comes first, peace or peace?

 

Many of us have experienced inner peace.

It may come and go for us, but a lot of us know the feeling.

But in our lifetime, this world and our country

has never been at peace that is a lack of war for very long.

 

Since 1776, in the 249 years since this

country was founded, the US has had,

technically, only  had 21 years of actual peace.

The other 228 years we have been

engaged in some sort of military conflict.

The longest stretch of peace for the United States,

was after World War I and during the depression.

But when we think about that time in history, it does not seem peaceful.

There might have been a lack of direct military activity on our part,

but everything else seemed to be in upheaval.

 

 There were awful things happening in Europe,

And fascist regimes were a constant threat for the US.

And ironically we remember this all today on the anniversary of the

Attack on Pearl Harbor which led us into World War 2.

But maybe it’s not ironic, because almost every day is a day

of some military significance.

 

For almost all of its existence, this country has been

involved in one war or another.

And it’s the same for much of the rest of the world.

Even though we are all, as a whole, doing much better

than any time in its entire history, our nations still have a

tendency towards violence when it comes to disagreements.

Whether it’s drone strikes, or bombings, armed interventions,

or encouraging and funding other countries to carry them out.

 

And because of that, whether we know it or not, we have always been

at a heightened state of alert and worry

about current or potential violent conflict.

Even more so if you have a loved one who is

in the area of conflict or in the military.

 

And I think it’s safe to say that that heightened state

of alert and anxiety has contributed to the tension and anxiety

inside our country – in the rampant gun violence, mass shootings,

and even the polarization in our politics and threat of violence.

 

When we are always on the lookout for an enemy,

then anyone foreign to us can seem like an enemy.

We have learned to be fearful of anything different.

And fear often leads to aggression.

 

Our lack of inner peace has lead to a lack of outer peace.

And our lack of outer peace has lead to a lack of inner peace.

Peace and peace go hand in hand.

 

During Isaiah’s time and for the whole of its history,

Israel was in an even worse situation of constant war.

Israel itself was not itself a very powerful nation,

not a super-power like the United States by any means.

 

Actually, it was rather insignificant globally.

But, geographically, Israel was between super-powers.

It was on the path to get to one place from another.

So it was always stuck between nations

that seemed to be in constant struggles for power:

Assyria, Canaan, Hittite, Babylonia, Egypt, Persia

So someone was always beating up on Israel to get to someone else.

 

So, Israel was in a state of war more than it was at peace too,

the scriptures certainly reflect that.

And no doubt that affected their personal relationships

and the state of their homes and communities too.

Their state of alert was very high, and

they experienced this violence first-hand –

it wasn’t seen on TV or heard of in some far off place.

It was in their own backyards and their front yards.

 

They knew as well how difficult outer peace

was to achieve too.

Each side has to want it at the same time,

the other entities have to be willing participants.

And peace takes a great deal of vulnerability,

It takes admitting  wrong, hearing the other parties admission,

accepting those admissions, and promising to change.

In other words, confession, repentance and forgiveness.

There is a lot of risk in even beginning the process of peace.

 

And a lot can go wrong when there is distrust,

and language differences, and a tradition of hatred.

This is true of global wars and wars in neighborhoods and families too.

 

And if we think of our own country and times,

Even if we don’t have a reason for war,

there is so much of our lives and our economy

that is built around war and militarism.

 

There are millions of jobs, so much income in weapons,

industries and companies that are built around war.

So many people have built careers around war,

many people find personal fulfillment and a sense of

belonging in their job in the military.

 

Military spending in the US in 2024 was $820 billion dollars

An enormous amount of money.

Many people have a financial investment

in staying at war or near war.

If we had an extended time of peace,

that would mean dismantling much of this infrastructure

and it would cause a great upheaval in many lives.

There is a lot working against outer peace.

It’s actually easier to stay at war.

Frankly, it’s kind of an addiction.

 

It seems like a great knot that can’t be un-tied

and true peace, inner and outer, seems like an impossibility.

I’m sure that peace for Israel seemed impossible

in Isaiah’s time too.

 

But still, with all of these difficulties in place,

Isaiah and the other prophets and religious leaders

promised that God would, one day, bring peace.

 

Chances are that Isaiah was writing his prophecies

during one of Israel’s times of  war and siege

in the 700’s.  The powerful Assyrian army

stormed through Israel five times,

reaping terror and destruction where it went.

 

And yet, in the middle of that destruction,

Isaiah paints one of the most famous passages of the Hebrew Scriptures :

The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the goat;
the calf and the lion together,
and a little child shall lead them.

 

It’s a beautiful image.

But if it happened now in our current world, as one comedian said,

“The wolf can lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.”

Predators do what predators do.

Isaiah’s image is not possible now.

Isaiah is describing something far deeper

than a photo-op with natural enemies sitting politely together.

This is a change in the very order of things.

The powerful no longer threaten the vulnerable.

The weak no longer live in fear.

It is a world where violence is no longer the default setting.

 

These animals are, of course, metaphors for human life—

for our power struggles, our conflicts, and our habits of harm.

Isaiah imagines an end to that dynamic that has shaped our world.

Isaiah is imagining peace.

Outer peace brought on by inner peace.

Or inner peace brought on by outer peace.

 

And this world of peace is brought about by a child—

a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a descendant of David.

 

David was a warrior king, but from his line will come a king

who brings peace not through force,

but through justice and righteousness.

 

As Martin Luther King Jr. said,

“Peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”

 

Real peace doesn’t come simply because people stop fighting.

Real peace comes when oppression ends,

when poverty is addressed,

when the rights of all people are honored.

 

Isaiah’s vision is not just about better

diplomacy or human self-control.

It is about a transformed creation—

hearts and minds reshaped by God.

This is more than humanity alone can accomplish.

 

This is the work of the Messiah.

The one we believe has come to us in Jesus Christ.

Jesus teaches us the ways of peace:

justice, understanding, openness, forgiveness, repentance.

These are the practices that create inner peace—

and they are the same practices that create outer peace.

 

We have not yet learned these ways fully.

But Christ shows us the path.

 

One day, God’s way will be born in all of us,

and that will bring true peace to the world.

And the choices we make now— how we live,

how we interact with strangers, how we seek justice—

are the building blocks of that eternal peace.

 

The promise of Isaiah is still ours: A little child will lead us.

Peace will come to this war-torn world.

And that promise can give us inner peace even now.