4th Sunday of Advent

Our first reading today presents us with the curious case of Ahaz being offered a sign from the Lord Adonai, but turning it down. The reasons that Ahaz turns down the sign are ostensibly quite noble, he says that he does not wish to tempt the Lord. Yet, the prophet Isaiah lambasts Ahaz for trying the patience of God with this refusal. Why does Ahaz get such flak from Isaiah, when Jesus himself when being tested in the desert by Satan also refused to put the God to the test? The reason for this is that Ahaz’s motives for turning down the sign from the Lord Adonai were not entirely as pure as his words might lead us to believe. At the time, Jerusalem was being threatened by its two hostile neighbours: the Northern Kingdom of Israel (Ahaz was King only of the Southern Kingdom Judah) and the Kingdom of Syria. These two kingdoms had already formed a coalition that had plundered the Kingdom of Judah, but had failed to take the city of Jerusalem. Ahaz feels that if he does not act fast, Jerusalem will surely fall to it’s enemies. So he toys with the idea of creating an alliance with their other powerful neighbour: the nation of Assyria. Isaiah counsels against Ahaz putting his trust in the military might of Assyria. Isaiah is convinced that the salvation of Jerusalem does not lie in playing power politics, but rather in unwavering trust in the Lord Adonai. By refusing to ask for a sign from the Lord Adonai, Ahaz is hedging his bets. He does not want to commit 100% to the Lord Adonai, and wants to keep his options open to courting the favour of the Assyrians. Ahaz is playing the field, and he eventually decides to go with the Assyrian option – which procures him protection, but at the price of having to pay a hefty tribute to Assyria, who basically became their oppressors.

In the gospel we are presented with another character to is put before a choice, but chooses to react in a very different way. Joseph has been put in a very difficult situation. He is engaged to be married to Mary, but has been told that Mary is pregnant. He must now decide whether to divorce Mary or to go ahead with the marriage anyway. All his life, Joseph has been an honourable man, and has always followed the law as an upright Jew. To the best of his knowledge, Mary has broken the law, by sleeping with another man. He must be very confused because obviously he would have taken Mary for a faithful and upright woman who surely would not have been capable of such a betrayal. But the facts are before him, and there can be only one interpretation of these facts – that Mary did indeed betray him. In doing so, Mary has brought shame not only on him, but also on the whole of her family.

But Joseph is not filled with a desire for revenge, for he decides to divorce Mary informally to spare her the shame of a fully public divorce. We are told that the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him not to be afraid to take Mary to be his wife for she had conceived her child by the Holy Spirit. Now Matthew passes over in a sentence what must have been a most thorny dilemma for Joseph. The way it is told by Matthew gives the impression that the dream that Joseph had instantly resolved all his doubts. But we know that dreams are very subjective affairs. Often we will wake up in the morning and are slightly bewildered by our dreams. We do not immediately take them as messages from God, no matter how vivid and clearly we remember them. Dreams need to be tested to see if they do truly come from God or from elsewhere. Joseph would probably have not been immune from this necessity of interrogating his dream and testing whether it was truly inspired by the Holy Spirit. He would have wondered whether he could really trust his dream, whether his dream was not misleading him. Perhaps he would have gone over to see Mary to tell her about his dream, and ask her if he wasn’t going crazy. In her turn, Mary might have shared with Joseph her own encounter with the angel of the Lord. Having listened to Mary recount what was told her by the angel Gabriel, Joseph would have felt confirmed in his own encounter with the angel of the Lord in his dream. He would have been helped to recognize the hand of God working in his life. This is often how confirmation works with discernment. There are very few people who are given the grace of absolute certainty proceeding from a direct communication from God in a dream or in prayer.

God’s way of dealing with most of us is to lead us to a decision on a certain course of action through prayer, but then God expects us to confirm this decision through interacting with others and asking their input into our decisions. As we hear how others have interpreted the will of God in a particular situation our own decision is either confirmed or modified. The assurance that we have found God’s will should bring with it a sense of peace that gives us the courage to face the difficulties that will come with that decision. In the case of Joseph, the consequence of taking Mary as his wife would have been to expose himself to great shame in the community. He would have had to take on the shame of Mary’s pregnancy. Like Mary, he would have lost his reputation as an upright man who devoutly followed the law, as people would have either assumed he was content to marry an adulterer or that he himself was the father of Mary’s child and they were unable to exercise the self-restraint required by the law and wait until they were actually married. Either way, by agreeing to trust that Mary’s pregnancy was by the Holy Spirit, Joseph would have exposed himself to ridicule by his peers and relatives. However, this shame would have paled into insignificance when considered against the supreme joy of being the instruments of God’s salvific plan for the world.

Joseph is a good example for us of how to deal with shame. Perhaps we are ashamed of a family member, perhaps we are ashamed to associate with a friend because they have messed up in some way. It could be a work colleague that we have decided to shun because we know that reaching out to them will mean that we will share their social ostracization. Like Joseph we might think that there is only one possible interpretation for the actions of the other person. But perhaps we are being called to reach out to this person, hear their side of the story and stand in solidarity with them. As we await the coming of our saviour, may we too realize that God’s call to us outweighs any shame of fear that we might have in facing the future and connecting with those we might have shunned up to now. May we confidently reconnect with those in our entourage who most need our support in this time of Christmas.

Questions for reflection

1. In what ways do I try to hedge my bets and avoid fully committing to trusting in the Lord?
2. Who are the people who am I ashamed of? How might God be calling me to reach out to them?