December 20

Title

The Sign is the Reality

Outline

We want certainty so we seek signs

We want a sign that this is the vocation for us or, for some others, the spouse for them, or the job, or the house or whatever. These are signs we ask for out of insecurity or mistrust.

Ahaz got a sign that he did not want

He did not want a word from Isaiah, for he did not trust God. He piously said he would not “test God.” And God says, “It is no test if I offer” and gives him the sign he did not want.

But it is a dual sign. On the one level it is everyday: a young woman of marriageable age, pregnant, about to bear a son, but this one will have enough faith to name him Emmanuel, God with us. Then he goes on to say that before he is three the two kings Ahaz fears will be gone. Ahaz never does trust God, but he trusts Assyria. Yet without his trust Emmanuel was born.

Move forward 600 years

Now we need to know that when translated into Greek the term for “young woman ready for marriage” became parthenos, virgin.

Such a woman, not in Jerusalem where Ahaz had been, but in Galilee, was in the first stage of marriage, that is contract, with a man named Joseph. And she was a virgin. Gabriel “came” in some way and greets her as someone special. “I’m a nobody here, so what can this mean?” thinks Mary. “Well,” says Gabriel, “think Isaiah: you are the young woman, conceive, bear a son, but call yours Jesus, Savior or he saves.” Oh yes, “He will be Son of the Most High and will have the throne of David his father.” “David his father,” thinks Mary, that’s Joseph, not me. “How can this be? We are not at the consummation stage of marriage yet.” “Oh,” says Gabriel, “the pregnancy will have nothing to do with Joseph but with the Holy Spirit. That is the reason he will be called ‘Son of God.’”

“And let me give you a sign, namely Elizabeth is 6 months pregnant.”

This is a bit overwhelming for Mary but she understood at least one thing: a sign is to inform and elicit trust. She got the trust part: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”

She will quickly go to see Elizabeth, to see her sign, getting, as she probably knew she would, further revelation. But she was already pregnant before she left, and since she had to find a caravan and travel took up to a week, she knew she was pregnant before she got there.

See how God works

A sign is to strengthen or confirm faith - and Ahaz refused to allow it to do that. Luke realizes that Mary is a sign to us, as she shows the continuity of salvation history being a virgin. She trusted even if far from fully understanding. Gabriel was her sign, and she became a sign to those who hear the story. She receives the sign of Elizabeth’s pregnancy and trustingly goes to discover what God meant by it and receives Elizabeth’s greeting and she herself bursts into Holy Spirit song. Isaiah is filled fuller. And we are brought into the story.

How may signs and trust and meditation on them have worked in your life? They have in mine.