READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 7:10-14
St. Luke 1:26-38
Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love. (2 Jn. 1)
Who speaks to us today, saying,
“Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz…’Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign. Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call His Name Immanuel.’”
Now Ahaz is a very evil king in Israel’s history. He is, therefore, the perfect man to receive such a promise and prophesy from the Lord, for the Lord came to those who are sick, those who are lost, in order to save them. Did this promise and prophesy save Ahaz? Yes. Will he benefit from it in eternity? God knows.
So what is Ahaz doing at our remembrance of the Annunciation? He is here to represent us. He is there to be a picture of sinful humanity who constantly strays from God and His forgiveness. For Ahaz hated God. He went after other gods, ignored the prophet Isaiah and his words of comfort, and began to dismantle God’s Church, the Temple, and plunder her valuables in order to pay off other countries.
This practice would continue until the Babylonian captivity when nothing would be left of Temple or the city. In fact, Ahaz was the first to pledge allegiance to Babylon’s fore-runners, setting the tone for successive kings to follow suit. In the true fashion of the rebellious sinner, he regards the things of God as worthless and his own as priceless.
Not his family, though, because they are gifts from God. Another interesting fact about Ahaz is that he had two sons. One born for slavery and one for freedom (Gal 4:24-25). For the first son he sacrificed to the fires of Moloch (2 Ki. 16:3), to appease the gods of his lust. But the second son…the second son follows after the pattern of the Moses and the Messiah.
You may recognize his name: Hezekiah, one of the very few good kings, relatively at least. Yes, Hezekiah was saved from those evil fires by his mother, just as Moses was saved by his mother, and more importantly, just as Jesus was saved from the sword of Herod and carried away to safety in Egypt by His mother.
So it is that we encounter St. Mary this evening, the mother of God, asking the question of God’s messenger: “How will this be?”
“How will this be, since I am a virgin”. Well, St. Mary, lemme tell you how, says St. Gabriel, and in just three verses St. Gabriel reminds St. Mary of the words spoken to Ahaz and answers her own question.
“Nothing will be impossible for God”. Not a virgin bearing a son. Not the blood of bulls and goats making atonement and purification for sins. Not St. Matthias being chosen to replace Judas. Not all wisdom and truth leading to God. Not dirty hands doing clean work. And not even a feast, corrupted by wicked men, being used to teach of the Incarnation and salvation of God, as we have been pondering these Wednesdays in Lent.
Nothing being impossible for God does not mean that you get to slam dunk or hit home runs or even find confidence and success in life. Nothing is impossible for God when He sets out to do what He wants to do. And what He wants to do is be made a man, suffer, die, and rise again for you.
Repent. We sit on King Ahaz’s throne and pretend to offer obedience to God, throwing His own things back in His face. “Take back this body You gave me. It is worthless”, we say. Take back the wisdom of the world, ain’t no one got time for that. Take back Your Law, it only brings sorrow. Take back Your Church, it is only make-believe.
Dear Christians, be as bold as St. Mary. Ask for a sign from the Lord your God and let it be as deep as Sheol and as high as heaven. Ask and you shall receive. Don’t ask, and you shall receive an hundred fold over for whatever you could have possibly asked.
Look at Ahaz. He did not want favor from God nor even God’s attention. But he got all of it in the prophesy and promise of the Virgin Birth. Indeed, Ahaz had them even before he asked, for your heavenly Father knows what you need even before hand (Mt. 6:8). What Ahaz didn’t know, was that he needed a Crucified Savior. The Word from Isaiah had to reveal this to him.
Truly, this is God’s answer to all our prayers, whether we think so or not: Christ Crucified. Whatever we may pray for, we pray in garbled tongues. “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom 8:26).
And those groanings are Christ’s groanings on the cross, paying for your salvation and paying for Ahaz’s salvation. Those groanings are Christ’s as He first steps into this world, begging for food from His mother. Those groanings are God’s as He takes upon Himself the sin and death of our doing, beginning at the Annunciation which we remember tonight.
The Lord gives us His Son. The answer to all our prayers. To this great and glorious gift, we sit at the foot of the crucifix and repeat His words to St. Mary, with her, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
We are the servants who are served by the Lord Who serves. He gives us prophesies, He gives us promises, and He gives us His Word to eat and to drink. We are servants in that the Lord gives His Word and Sacrament and we bow and receive them, regardless of our own opinions.
We do not throw them away or neglect them, as Ahaz did, but we keep them according to His Word, as St. Mary said. Truly the Divine Service of the Church places us in the right place, at the right time, and even puts us in the right frame of mind so that it becomes nearly impossible to weary God in asking for His Signs.
For hearing and believing, taking and eating and drinking, are exactly how things play out when God breaks into His broken world, for you, answering your prayers with that sign you’ve always asked for: the Incarnation of the Son of God.
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