Is This Your God, Or Just My God? Series

Homily for December 20, five days before Christmas. 2024

Isaiah had to be one of the most frustrated prophets in the OT. He constantly challenged the leaders and people of Israel to return to the LORD, their God, and give up the sordid rites of the Canaanite peoples who inhabited the Holy Land before Israel. And they really were sordid rites. Today’s reading focuses on the bad king, Ahaz, who was so enamored of the Canaanite fertility gods that he sacrificed his firstborn son to them. That was supposed to help the crops, I suppose. It left the youngster, Hezekiah, as the prince-in-waiting. And he was raised right, and became a great king, but that was way in the future. Let’s focus on the conversation between God and Ahaz.

The Lord requests, through the words of Isaiah: "Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven." Ahaz may not have much use for YHWH, the true God, the God of Israel, but his crown was only bestowed on Ahaz because of the true God’s power. His kingship is being threatened by an invasion from Syria and the northern, rump kingdom of Israel. So Isaiah reminds the king that the LORD is, indeed, his God. Ahaz has a feeble reply. He probably wants to look pious and respectful, and he thinks he can get that by disobeying God. (What an idiot!) He says, "I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test."

Isaiah says prophetically, showing his displeasure: "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary MY God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Ahaz has clearly rejected the true God, consistently, and this is only the most recent example. Isaiah tells the king that he has worn out everyone’s patience, including Isaiah’s God, the true God. The rest of the prophecy follows.

But let’s ignore that continuation, just as the Church kind of does by cutting the Scripture short today. Let’s look at the Gospel and then consider what we should learn, what challenge is being laid down not just for Ahaz, but for everyone who follows God’s law.

Our Gospel is well-known. It is the scene in Nazareth of the Annunciation of the angel to the virgin Mary. Gabriel comes to her, probably during her prayer time, and calls her “full of grace,” or specially graced by God. Her God-given holiness and faith, in a sense, have attracted God’s attention. She is the only one with this grace, this call. But, like Ahaz, she is being challenged, not commanded. She will be the queen-mother of the Messiah, if she consents. Her only question is technical: how shall she get pregnant without a man’s participation, since she is determined to offer her virginity only to God. The angel invokes the power of the Holy Spirit to explain. Mary says to God, “I am your servant, let it be done as you have spoken.”

The challenge is clear. Jesus wants to be born in us, to live in us for the salvation of the world, of all the people we know or will know. We are to be, in a real sense, other Christs for the world. He asks that of us this Advent. What will be our answer? Mary didn’t know all she’d have to go through to be the “woman” of the New Testament. But she believed and trusted in the Word of God, and so her “fiat” enabled her to be the human mother of the Word of God, who takes away our sins and enables us to image her Son, Jesus, to a world in desperate need of Him.