Isaiah 7:10-16 (Common English Bible)
Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz: “Ask a sign from the Lord your God. Make it as deep as the grave or as high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I won’t ask; I won’t test the Lord.” Then Isaiah said, “Listen, house of David! Isn’t it enough for you to be tiresome for people that you are also tiresome before my God? Therefore, the Lord will give you a sign. The young woman is pregnant and is about to give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanuel. He will eat butter and honey, and learn to reject evil and choose good. Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.
These days if you are out in a boat on the sea of Galilee you may be buzzed by a C-130, (“reminding you who’s boss”, as one of my fellow pilgrims said in January 2015), or if you are in the small hill town of Nazareth by an F-16. Back in Joseph’s day when Zebedee was out on the lake with his two small boys, James and John, teaching them to mind the nets and watch the currents, and when Joseph was using his hands to hew a piece of furniture for a neighbor or build a wall for the nearby new town of Caesarea Philippi, there were no airplanes. There were, however, powerful forces that you could not ignore.
And that had been true before, and Joseph knew it. In the time of Isaiah the prophet, when Ahaz was king in Jerusalem, the powerful forces that threatened were from the north, the then kingdom of Assyria, and trouble was brewing. Joseph would have known about this, perhaps, and then he would have known about the prophecy that Isaiah gave to his king. Ahaz was probably trembling in his boots - or sandals - knowing much larger kingdoms were arrayed against him, threatening his little hilltop capital. And he would have hoped, as Will Willimon puts it, for an army. But that is not what the Lord sent him.
And that is not what the Lord sent Joseph, in his day. Joseph lived in the time of Roman occupation and Roman overlordship. Sure, there might have been a king in Jerusalem - but he was Caesar’s buddy Herod. And Caesar had troops handy, as close as Damascus, or closer, to back up Herod.
So what did the Lord send Ahaz, trembling in his boots, looking to the hills, wondering from whence his help would come? No army. No present help at all, but a promise: a hope. A baby. For behold, a virgin shall bear a child. And that child shall be called “God with us”.
Linger on that for a moment. Take a break from the threat, the lowering clouds. God with us. That is a promise. That is what the people of God always looked for, always look for: the presence of God among us. That is where salvation lies.
And that is what Isaiah the prophet promised his king. God is with us. And in yet a little while, the threat you fear shall be gone, as certain as the summer sun melts the snow. “Before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,” the threat you worry about will be past.
Joseph may have known this. Of course he knew the rest of history and he knew that history was not over. There was a more modern threat in his time, one more systematic, organized. It was the hegemony of an empire that lasted a thousand years. Rome. (Add another thousand, if you count Constantinople.)
And it was not to be turned over lightly. (Indeed, it was to be changed.)
But there was that promise again. A young woman, a girl, shall conceive and bear a child.
It sounds so passive. All Joseph had to do was wait, right? The summer sun would melt the snow, the oppressive occupiers would fade away, and all would be well.
Not so fast.
And not so easy.
The kingdoms that Isaiah faced, and the empire that Joseph faced, did not disappear with only a promise. Joseph had a hand in what happened next. He took on the challenge. He was not passive, but powerful, with the power only a pair of hands that shaped a future could hold.
He did not merely accept a promise, and an unwanted challenge, he rose to take them in those work-worn hands of his, and made a future, and made a family. With the family God gave him, he made a future. A future not only for them but for Israel, for the whole people of God.
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A version of this article, entitled "Look for the presence of God", was published in the Keeping the Faith feature of the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday, December 25, 2022.
https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/look-for-the-presence-of-god/article_5d25ab5c-8079-11ed-8162-bfebc05400f5.html
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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Caesarea Philippi: CAESAREA PHILIPPI, the name of a town 95 miles N. of Jerusalem, 35 miles S.W. from Damascus, 1150 ft. above the sea, on the south base of Hermon, and at an important source of the Jordan. It does not certainly appear in the Old Testament history, though identifications with Baal-Gad and (less certainly) with Laish (Dan) have been proposed. It was certainly a place of great sanctity from very early times, and when foreign religious influences intruded upon Palestine, the cult of its local numen gave place to the worship of Pan, to whom was dedicated the cave in which the copious spring feeding the Jordan arises. It was long known as Panium or Panias, a name that has survived in the modern Banias. When Herod the Great received the territory from Augustus, 20 B.C., he erected here a temple in honor of his patron; but the re-foundation of the town is due to his son, Philip the Tetrarch, who here erected a city which he named Caesarea in honor of Tiberius, adding Philippi to immortalize his own name and to distinguish his city from the similarly-named city founded by his father on the sea-coast. Here Christ gave His charge to Peter (Matt. xvi. 13). Many Greek inscriptions have been found here, some referring to the shrine. Agrippa II. changed the name to Neronias, but this name endured but a short while. Titus here exhibited gladiatorial shows to celebrate the capture of Jerusalem. The Crusaders took the city in 1130, and lost it to the Moslems in 1165. Banias is a poor village inhabited by about 350 Moslems; all round it are gardens of fruit-trees. It is well watered and fertile. There are not many remains of the Roman city above ground. The Crusaders’ castle of Subeibeh, one of the finest in Palestine, occupies the summit of a conical hill above the village.
