Two interesting characters lie at the heart of our Scripture readings for the morning, King Ahaz of Judah and Joseph, a simple man from Bethlehem. In some ways they are very different people. Ahaz is a king; Joseph is a carpenter. They are separated by over 700 years of history; Ahaz lived in the 8th century BCE, prior to the Babylonian exile; Joseph lived in the 1st century CE under the oppression of the Roman Empire. In many ways, Ahaz and Joseph are very different people.
But they share some things in common. In the first place, they’re kin, as I learned to say in the South. They are both members of the tribe of Judah, of the House of David, though that means much more to Ahaz than it did to Joseph. In 735 BCE, it made Ahaz a king. t made Joseph leave Nazareth and go down to Bethlehem to register for the emperor’s census. Connection to some ancient king meant nothing in Joseph’s world. I’m a descendent of John Winthrop, founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630—what would become Boston—but he had fourteen children so there’s probably a couple million of us in the United States today! None the less, Ahaz and Joseph are both of the House of David, Israel’s most beloved king. Go back seventeen generations in Joseph’s genealogy in Matthew 1 and you’ll find great-grandaddy King Ahaz.
And they both face serious predicaments. Ahaz’s is political in nature. He faces a threat from an alliance of two countries to his north; the Northern Kingdom of Israel, referred to as “Ephraim” in our reading, and Aram, today’s Syria. They threaten to invade Jerusalem. His heart, along with all his people, “shakes as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.” Ahaz is anxious.
And they both are seeking peace, resolutions to their worldly predicaments. To ease his troubled mind, Anxious Ahaz considers making an alliance with Tiglath Pileser, the King of Assyria, a superpower of Ahaz’s day. This would be like Estonia seeking an alliance with the United States to protect them against Russia. Ahaz seeks the help of a superpower to protect him against military threat. This is what Anxious Ahaz resolves to do to find his peace.
Joseph’s predicament is much more personal. His fiancée is pregnant, and he knows he’s not the father. Joseph had a favorable reputation in the community. Matthew describes him as “a righteous man,” a tzadik. He’s a “Good
Joe,” to use contemporary language. All of that will go out the window if he marries a pregnant woman. The law says Mary should be stoned to death, along with the father if he can be found. Joseph doesn’t want to see that happen. He’s a Good Joe. Yet, if he marries her, he’ll be shamed because people will think they either had relations before marriage, or he’s raising a child that is not his own. Either way, his reputation will be shot. It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation and a moment to ruin it. Regardless of his decision, this Good Joe will most likely become a Shmo. He resolves to “put her away quietly,” in hopes the storm will blow over sooner than later. This is what the Good Joe resolves to do to find peace.
Both men find themselves in a predicament. Both resolve what they are to do. Then both are paid a visit by a messenger of God who throws a wrench in the works of their worldly resolutions. To Anxious Ahaz, God sends the prophet Isaiah. “Don’t do it!” proclaims Isaiah. “Don’t submit to that superpower Assyria over two nobodies to the north. This will all blow over, Ahaz. These two countries will be gone in sixty-five years, so don’t worry. Hold tight. Hang in there. Stand firm in faith or you will not stand at all. For God’s sake, don’t sell your soul to the Assyrian devil!”
Good Joe receives a similar message in a dream. An angel tells him, “Don’t panic, Joseph. Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Her child is God’s idea, conceived by the Holy Spirit. He’s going to be very special, part of God’s plan to save the world. Go ahead with the wedding plans, it will all be OK.”
Both Anxious Ahaz and the Good Joe are given the same sign to show that their predicaments will be resolved. And what is the sign? Pregnant women, whose babies will change the world. Babies are signs of God’s presence amid their predicaments. Sometimes babies are seen as predicaments in and of themselves, but here they embody God’s presence. Anxious Ahaz will not find his solution in making military alliances with a superpower. God’s power is not made known in bombs, but in babies. Ahaz is not to trust in swords, but in a baby, a baby to come whose name will be Immanuel, “God with us.” God with us, now that’s superpower!
Like his ancestor Anxious Ahaz, Good Joe gets the same sign, a baby. Joseph’s predicament is in fact God’s plan, God’s way of coming into the world to conquer our sin and restore us to life by reaching out to us in love. Well intentioned as he was, Good Joe will not resolve his predicament through the practical, by sweeping things under the rug, but by taking Mary as his wife, enduring the public shame, sacrificing his reputation, moving forward in faith that in this baby, God is with us.
So what do they do? Therein lies the most significant difference. Anxious Ahaz does not stand firm in faith. He makes his alliance with Assyria, trusting in their false gods more than in the living God and the promised child. But
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God’s will is not thwarted. Ahaz dies at age thirty-six, and his son, Hezekiah, born about nine months after Isaiah’s prophecy, becomes king. Hezekiah is one of the few good kings in Judah’s history, restoring faith in God to be God and getting rid of all the idols put in place by his father, not to mention miraculously surviving an Assyrian siege.
Good Joe, on the other hand, stands firm in faith, doing exactly as he was told; taking Mary as his wife, sacrificing his reputation, enduring the ridicule he no doubt received, naming the boy Jesus, just as he was told. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Today, we live in a world filled with predicaments, wars being waged, alliances being formed. Where is God in all of that? Closer to home, what about the predicaments faced by the church? Here at Myers Park Presbyterian, we continue to buck every trend of institutional religion. We are blessed by growth. We’ve welcomed ninety-nine adult members into our church this year, and seventy-one 8th grade confirmands. There’s a lot of life here. Yet the realities of changing giving patterns, fewer households pledging, and more targeted, unpledged giving present challenges to funding the church’s operating budget each year. Plenty of forces are aligned against the church’s future. We know something about what Anxious Ahaz might have felt over 2,700 years ago. Where will we be in sixty-five years?
How should we respond? I read the other day about churches using AI to create chat lines for prayer. There’s even a chatbot Jesus you can pose questions to. What could possibly go wrong there? What would it mean for the church to stand firm in faith amid so much existential angst instead of making alliances with AI and secular management strategies and marketing campaigns to attempt to secure our future? What would it mean to put our trust in all those babies we’ve been baptizing? How can we stand firm in faith for them amid the anxious world they have been born into?
These babies will grow into children and teenagers who face challenges the likes of which no other generation before them has known. Our younger generations are experiencing anxiety and depression at unprecedented rates.1 Suffice to say, alliances among social media and achievement culture are not providing any help in the epidemic of mental health crises so many face these anxious days. With Joseph, too many people know far too well how reputations and relationships can be forever changed by one social media post or one rejection letter from the college of your dreams or one failure that becomes all too public. No wonder anxiety reigns over so many souls these days.
That doesn’t even touch the anxieties brought by health crises, job pressures, financial pressures. It’s not hard for us to imagine the realities of Anxious Ahaz and Good Joe. The question we face amid all the anxieties of life in this world, from the personal to the relational to the socio-political, is where do we stand? Do we stand with Anxious Ahaz in fear? Or will we stand with Joseph in faith?
What might it mean to stand in faith? On a societal level, Ahaz was basically told that sixty-five years from his time, everything would be ok. Amid the socio-political realities of our day, can we imagine what the world will be like in 2090? Most of us will no longer be here. But what would it mean to not live in fear of the immediate threats we perceive, to make decisions based not on what is expedient today, but what will provide for a better tomorrow in 2090? What would it mean to operate not out of self-interest, but to be motivated by the legacy we wish to leave those who will come after us? How might trusting in a story that is so much bigger than our individual desires lead us to live amid the anxieties of our day? Faith often calls us not to act based on the practical, but on principles rooted in God’s promised tomorrow, a tomorrow defined by justice and righteousness. Ahaz couldn’t do that. Amid the anxieties of this world, can we?
What about on a personal level? Surely Joseph was afraid of what his marriage to Mary might mean for his reputation. Imagine what social media would have said about that! His world no doubt saw him as a fool; yet he stood firm in faith. He did what God called him to do. He trusted in God’s presence. He trusted God’s promise of Immanuel, first made to Ahaz, now made to him. God was with him. God was with Mary. God was with them both amid their predicament in a way the world could not fathom. And that was enough. God’s presence amid the predicament was enough for Joseph.
Amid the anxiety and fears we face, can it be enough for us? Can it be enough for our church? Can we trust that our worth is not based in what we’re able to achieve or fail to achieve, not on budgets or pledges or numbers, not in our grades, not in our skills, not in our athletic performance, not in what college we get into or don’t get into, not in our job performance, not in our title at work, not in how many zeroes are included in our salaries, not in what any other human being thinks of us, but rather in God’s presence with us, God’s saving work among us and in us, God’s love for us all?
In those days, Anxious Ahaz couldn’t stand firm in faith. In his days, Good Joe did, thanks be to God, opening the way to the salvation of the world. Amid the anxieties of these days, where will we stand? With our brother Joseph, may we stand in faith.
Notes
