What's Your Sign?

 Have you ever asked God for a sign?  Did you ever receive a sign?  Both of these are not questions we ask easily in the United Church.  We are logical, rational human beings not given to flights of fancy. Some of us refuse to ask for signs, some of us ask for signs too often. It’s hard to get a handle on, and it can feels like getting our tea leaves read or staring into a crystal ball.  Maybe it’s more like driving down the highway in a snowstorm, unsure whether to keep our high beams on or not.  Those times when the snow is blowing so thickly that we can’t see ahead no matter how fast or slow we go.  We look with anxiousness for the next sign for our turn off or to get a sense of where we are or how much further we need to go.  I often feel like I’m getting close to Athabasca when I see the moose crossing sign on the highway.  I look for that sign, and when I see it, I know where I am.  I also know that when I see it, I need to take extra care and be alert for unexpected hazards.

Our Isaiah reading has an unexpected hazard in it.  If we cherry-pick how we read Isaiah, the longest book of all the prophets, we can indirectly feed into antisemitic attitudes.  The attitude that the Hebrew scriptures are useless or full of an angry God or only valuable when they predict the arrival of Jesus is a way of diminishing the influence of Jewish theologians on the world and on Jesus.  The verses we heard this morning were once translated as ‘behold, the virgin is with child and will bear a son” but that is based on a Greek mistranslation.  Now scholars have restored the ancient and accurate meaning to us.  When we put it into context, we see that Isaiah was preaching to King Ahaz who was facing a civil war with two other kings.  The two kings planned to attack Jerusalem, kill Ahaz and put a puppet ruler in his place so they could attack the Assyrian Empire.  Ahaz was unsure what to do.  Isaiah challenged him not to put his faith in politics but in God.  Ahaz couldn’t ask for a sign because he didn’t have confidence in his faith.  It’s hard to trust in God when there are two armies making a beeline for your front gate.  Isaiah heard Ahaz’s excuses and said, “See this pregnant lady here? Her child will not starve to death because of two armies but will eat healthily before he is very old.”  Isaiah was saying to Ahaz that hope even for the pregnant mom was so close she could name her baby, “God is With Us”.  She became a tangible sign of hope for their people and their king.    Even in the midst of doom, she became a sign that violence would not have the final word.  And it became something to remember in other times of danger, that helped people trust in God.

Trust in God came to Joseph too, in our gospel reading this morning.  Joseph found that all his ‘happily ever after’ hopes and dreams, were turned upside down.  As a carpenter, he might have been building a house or renovating the kitchen for the day when he and Mary would start their wedded life.  As often happens, his best laid plans were thrown into a tailspin.  He knew that he wasn’t the father, and as many men have, he decided he didn’t want to be involved.  If he married her when she was already pregnant, people would assume that he was somehow lacking as a man since his young fiancé had strayed.  But as always in a world that has a double standard for the behaviors of men and women, it would have been Mary that would have taken the brunt of abuse from the other villagers for not honoring her commitment to Joseph.  Joseph wanted to do the honorable thing according to the culture of his time.  Break the engagement privately and send her away.  The double standard for women back then would have meant that she would have been on her own, a single mom with no extended family to support her, no income support, no family allowance.  Most young women in such a situation would end up prostituting themselves to survive.  Putting her away quietly would have only kept Joseph’s and Mary’s families honorable standing.  It would not have protected Mary or her baby from the worst abuses the Roman occupied world could throw at vulnerable young girls.

Then Joseph got a sign.  Signs make us question our assumptions about the world.  Joseph’s dream had him question his assumptions about how to deal with Mary.  Just as Isaiah, pointing at a young woman in a land threatened with invasion, questioned his king’s assumptions about God.

Some signs that question our assumptions about the world that I saw this week, were the heroic intervention of a Syrian Muslim refugee in the shooting of unarmed Jewish people in Sydney, Australia.  His bravery disrupts the racist stories that brown immigrants are violent and evil.  Some conspiracists tried to pretend that he was Christian, not Muslim, or tried to erase him from the story altogether.  The other thing that disrupted our assumptions was Skate Canada cancelling all interprovincial figure skating competitions from being held in Alberta, in order to protect young girls from double standards here.  Double standards and fear-based disinformation are hard to see until we look for the signs that God sends us.  God wants us to look for signs that build hope, peace, love and joy.  This Advent season, like Joseph and Isaiah, let us see signs of hope and love to change our assumptions about the world.  So if you feel like you are driving in a blizzard, slow down and look for signs of God’s love.  Chances are, you will find them.  Thanks be to God! Amen.