Episode 4: Episode 4: Advent 4 (A)

In our fourth episode we deal with the Lectionary texts for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A: Isaiah 7:10-16, Romans 1:1-7 and Matthew 1:18-25. They're texts that in different ways talk about the significance of signs.

King Ahaz of Judah is in a panic. Israel and Aram have allied to resist Assyria's expansion, and they are pressuring Ahaz to join the alliance. If he refuses, they will overthrow Judah and replace him with another king. The result may be the end of the Davidic line.

Isaiah assures Ahaz that he doesn't have to worry about Israel and Aram (Isaiah 7). The Lord will take care of them, and, besides, Assyria poses a greater danger.

But that’s not the heart of the prophet's message. Like Ahaz, Isaiah knows that the house of David is threatened. He knows that the land of Judah is afflicted. But the threat doesn’t come from Aram and Israel, and it doesn’t fundamentally come from Assyria either. The main threat to the house of David is the king who sits on David’s throne. The one who is really afflicting the land is not Aram or Israel or Assyria, but Ahaz, the Davidic king (7:16).

Ahaz’s is not a political failure. It’s not that he hasn’t played the political game cleverly enough. His failure is a failure of faith.
-Peter Leithart, https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2016/12/faith-in-a-time-of-crisis

According to Gowan (1998), the prophets to ancient Israel did not preach a legalistic message of moral reformation but an evangelistic message of faith in the God who raises the dead. From the first days of the human race in Eden, the curse threatened against sin is "dying you shall die," and the same curse hangs over Israel after Yahweh cut covenant with it at Sinai. The message of the prophets is not, "Israel has sinned: therefore, Israel needs to get its act together or it will die." The message is, "Israel has sinned; therefor Israel must die, and its only hope is to entrust itself to a God who will give it new life on the far side of death." Or even, "Israel has sinned; Israel is already dead. Cling to the God who raises the dead." This is precisely the prophetic message of 1-2 Kings, which systematically dismantles Israel's confidence in everything but the omnipotent mercy and patience of God.
-Peter Leithart, 1 & 2 Kings, 18.

Who is “Emmanuel?” Hardly a historical figure of the period. Perhaps a traditional name, or one selected by the prophet, to describe the expected Redemptor-King of the last day, to whom a kind of pre-existence is here ascribed. Perhaps the personification of what the remnant-Israel of Judah understood its God to be, and therefore itself, or according to the prophets ought to have done so. Perhaps both? Certainly a special key to the continual mystery of the history of this people in days of prosperity and in days of adversity, under the hand of God in blessing and in cursing. “God with us” is true when the people is at rest. It is also true when the enemy invades and devastates its land. It is always true, in spite of and in the most irresistible movements of history. It is so because and to the extent that in all these things there is revealed the gracious action of God to His people. No matter who or what is concretely envisaged in these passages, they obviously mean this: Emmanuel is the content of the recognition in which the God of Israel reveals Himself in all His acts and dispositions; He is the God who does not work and act without His people, but who is with His people as their God and therefore as their hope.

We are reminded of this remarkable name in Mt. 1:21f. The reference here is to a single, final and exclusive act of the God of Israel as the goal and recapitulation of all His acts. But this act, the birth and naming of Jesus, is similar to the events in the days of King Ahaz in that once again we have come to a change in the relationship between God and His people. As the Evangelist sees it, it is this time the great change compared with which what took place before was only from his point of view a prelude. And now it is the equally unexpected change from perdition to salvation, from an age-long judgment to a new and final blessing. And the Emmanuel-sign has it in common with the name of Jesus that the latter, too, although this time in the reverse direction, is a sign for both: a sign “for the fall and rising again of many in Israel” (Lk. 2:34), a sign both of the deepest extremity imposed by God (as in Is. 8:6f.) and also of the uttermost preservation and salvation ordained by God (as in Is. 8:9f.). Over and in both it is Emmanuel, “God with us,” and now therefore (ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ κυρίου διὰ τοῦ προφήτου λέγοντος*) Jesus, Jehoshuah, “God helps.”
-Karl Barth., Bromiley, G. W., & Torrance, T. F. (2004). Church dogmatics: The doctrine of God, Part 1 (Vol. 4, pp. 5–6). London; New York: T&T Clark.

‘Born of the Virgin Mary.’ Once again and now from the human standpoint the male is excluded here. The male has nothing to do with this birth. What is involved here is, if you like, a divine act of judgment. To what is to begin here man is to contribute nothing by his action and initiative. Man is not simply excluded, for the Virgin is there. But the male, as the specific agent of human action and history, with his responsibility for directing the human species, must now retire into the background, as the powerless figure of Joseph. That is the Christian reply to the question of woman: here the woman stands absolutely in the foreground, moreover the virgo, the Virgin Mary. God did not choose man in his pride and in his defiance, but man in his weakness and humility, not man in his historical rôle, but man in the weakness of his nature as represented by the woman, the human creature who can confront God only with the words, ‘Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according as Thou hast said’. Such is human co-operation in this matter, that and only that! We must not think of making a merit of this handmaid existence, nor attempt once more to ascribe a potency to the creature. But God has regarded man in his weakness and in his humility, and Mary has expressed what creation alone can express in this encounter. That Mary does so and that thereby the creature says ‘Yes’ to God, is a part of the great acceptance which comes to man from God.
-Karl Barth, (2011-11-09). Dogmatics in Outline (SCM Classics) (p. 99).

This is the most necessary conversion for those who have already followed Christ and have lived at his service in the Church. An altogether special conversion, which does not consist in abandoning what is evil, but, in a certain sense, in abandoning what is good! Namely, in detaching oneself from everything that one has done…

This emptying of one’s hands and pockets of every pretension, in a spirit of poverty and humility, is the best way to prepare for Christmas. We are reminded of it by a delightful Christmas legend that I would like to mention again. It narrates that among the shepherds that ran on Christmas night to adore the Child there was one who was so poor that he had nothing to offer and was very ashamed. Reaching the grotto, all competed to offer their gifts. Mary did not know what to do to receive them all, having to hold the Child in her arms. Then, seeing the shepherd with his hands free, she entrusted Jesus to him. To have empty hands was his fortune and, on another plane, will also be ours.

• Father Raniero Cantalamessa