Hilton Head Island, SC – December 1, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 9:2-7; Matthew 11:25-30
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder; and his name will be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” – Isaiah 9:6 (RSV)
The liturgical season of Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas. The word “Advent” come from a Latin word which means “coming,” or perhaps more accurately, “coming into.” It is the idea that God’s Messiah is coming into the world. Advent is the Church’s way of preparing once again for his annual entry into the world as a newborn baby.
The Hebrew word “Messiah” (Mesheach) means “The Anointed One.” When Israelite kings were crowned, they were anointed with holy oil. Thus in a sense every king was a messiah, with a lower-case “m.” But in the understanding of the Hebrew Bible, which we Christians have always called “the Old Testament,” there would only be one person who would be The Messiah (with an upper-case “M”). Who he would be and when he would come no one knew for sure, but as the centuries passed, there was a growing conviction that the Messiah was coming - - - sometime.
The prophet Isaiah lived about 750 BCE. His prophecy is one of the longest of the prophetic books. It also is one of the most beautifully written of all the prophecies. From the little he tells us about himself, we know that Isaiah was born into an elite family in Jerusalem. He must have been well educated, because his writing, especially his poetry, illustrates an elevated mastery of language. He really knew how to weave words together in powerful and memorable cadences.
Isaiah was also the first of the prophets to express fairly frequent hints that God would send His specially chosen Anointed One sometime in the future. Isaiah did not know when this would happen, or who the Messiah would be, but he was convinced that he was coming - - - sometime.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, the German-British composer Georg Friedrich Handel composed a choral oratorio with a one-word title: Messiah. It was not The Messiah; it was just Messiah. Every word in Handel’s Messiah comes from scripture, and many of those words are messianic prophecies of Isaiah. The oratorio begins with a tenor recitative, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,” from Isaiah 40: vs. 1-3. Its most famous section is the Hallelujah Chorus, the text for which comes from three verses in the Book of Revelation.
Because of the way Christianity evolved from the first century on, and eventually broke away from Judaism, Christians came to emphasize the messianic prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures, especially those of Isaiah, far more than Jews did. After all, the Greek word Christos (Christ) is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Mesheach. Hebrew was the original language of Judaism, whereas Greek was the original language of Christianity. So we do not call Jesus Yeshua Mesheach; we call him Jesous Christos: Jesus Christ.
The first clearly messianic poetry that Isaiah’s prophecy contains is found in the ninth chapter, verses two through seven. Handel incorporated verse 2 and verse 7 into his oratorio. The chorus for verse seven begins softly: “For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given.” Then it builds in volume and intensity, ending with the majestic: “And the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called ‘Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.’”
At its inception, it appeared that the Israelite monarchy began well under King Saul. However, Saul’s life ended badly, likely in madness. Saul was followed, however, by the two greatest of the kings, David and Solomon, David and Solomon reigned in the tenth century BCE, and Isaiah lived in the eighth century BCE. By that time it seems that it was a common belief among Israelites that The Messiah, as compared to an ordinarily anointed monarch, would be a descendant of David, who was reckoned by most Jews to the greatest of the kings.
Even before the Israelites had kings, they had enemies. We read about them in the books of Joshua, Judges, and I and II Samuel. As long as the Jews had kings, they continued to have enemies. Therefore it was universally accepted that conditions would require that The Messiah would have to be a warrior king. He would lead the Jews to ultimate victory over their many adversaries. He would be a wonderful political counselor, a mighty leader who himself would be led by God, he would be like an everlasting father to his people, and a princely anointed one of God who would bring peace to Israel.
When Isaiah was inspired to create his poetic prophecies regarding God’s Messiah, he very likely had no specific concept of who that man would be or when he would appear in the future. Because the Assyrians represented a great military threat to the Israelites in the eight century BCE, maybe Isaiah thought the Messiah would appear soon to defeat them. That didn’t happen. Later, two centuries and more, the Babylonians and Egyptians and Syrians were the primary threats to Judah, but of course Isaiah had no way of foreseeing that. The Babylonians and then the Romans actually did conquer Israel. But when it happened, no one recognized anyone as God’s Messiah who had been sent to thwart these enemies. So Isaiah’s messianic prophecies simply remained in the collection of Hebrew scriptures, beautifully written, but historically unfulfilled.
Seven and a half centuries after Isaiah died, a male baby was born. Two writers declared that he was born in Bethlehem, the town in which David had been born, and no other New Testament writer said anything about where he was born. He definitely was not born among the Jewish elite in Jerusalem, nor did he grow up there. He grew up in the small backwoods Galilean town of Nazareth, which had existed for only a few generations before Jesus of Nazareth lived there. Hardly anyone had even heard of the backwater burg. His mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph, were not upper-class Judeans. They were working-class peasants. Joseph was a carpenter, but he wasn’t even a union member.
Jesus Christ did not become the Messiah of the Christians on the basis of his parentage or birthplace or social class. Furthermore, he became their Messiah as much on the basis of what he said as what he did. He became their Messiah on the basis of how he lived his life. But his life was not anything like what the traditional Jewish concept of the Messiah decreed it should be. Jesus never appeared to be regal or monarchical; he appeared to be one of the people of the land and not the people of the city. He clearly claimed to be a servant, and not a master, a bringer of peace rather than a fomenter of war.
It is not surprising that the vast majority of the Jewish people of the first century did not see Jesus as the Messiah. The few Jews who did perceive him to be the Messiah were not the people who were listed in Who’s Who in Judea, nor would anyone mistake them for being among the Top One Per Cent.
In almost no chapters or verses do any of the three Synoptic Gospels sound like the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John. But there are a few verses in the eleventh chapter of Matthew which almost sound more like John than John. And they occur in a very peculiar place in the narrative. Jesus had just condemned three of the villages on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee where he spent much of his time preaching and teaching. Apparently he concluded that it had all been to no avail, for he said, “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon,” (Gentile cities in what now is Lebanon) “they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes….And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades…. But I tell you, it shall be more tolerable in the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you!” (Mt. 11:20-24)
Those are very fierce words. They seem to leave no wiggle room for the people in the towns where Jesus spent much of the three years of his public ministry.
But then listen to what he next said, which is the part that sounds like the Fourth Gospel. Jesus starts out saying what sounds like a prayer, but then it quickly turns into a statement to be heard, not by God, but by the astonished and severely admonished people whom he had just lambasted. “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes.” In other words, the people with whom Jesus had spent countless hours didn’t seem to “get it” at all, but he assumed those who had heard little or nothing would “get it.”
Then Jesus abruptly seems to stop praying and to start speaking, without so much as an “Amen” or “Ah-meen.” And here is what sounds so Johannine, so like the Gospel of John: “All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
As someone who has studied and thought about the Gospels for a long time, that passage “blows me away,” as they say. It is so unlike the First (but actually the Second) Gospel and so like the Fourth. And the words spoken in these particular verses are so unlike those of the Jesus of Matthew. The blasting of the three Galilean towns sounds like many other passages in Matthew, but not Matthew 11:25-28! What a marvelous and perplexing book is the Bible! How wonderfully unifying and fearfully dividing are the words found within it! The messianic prophecies of Isaiah are so beautiful and so perplexing, the words of Jesus throughout the Gospels are so edifying and so dismaying!
But the next words, the next words in Matthew’s Gospel are so comforting and uplifting and inspiring, that Handel included them in his Messiah: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mt. 11:28-30).
Do you suppose Jesus suddenly thought he may have sounded far too harsh? I do! Do you think he realized he had been too rough on Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum? The people there were his friends! Several of the twelve disciples came from there! He couldn’t leave them quaking is despair; he had to give them hope! “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden! Take my yoke upon you. And learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest unto your souls!”
There never was a more complex person than Jesus of Nazareth. There never was a more fascinating or ultimately inscrutable personality than Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ of the Christians in most respects is a far cry from the Messiah of the Jews. That may or not be what we would prefer, but that appears to be who he is.
Nearly a hundred years ago, in 1926, the Rev. Dr. James Allan Francis preached a famous sermon. Part of that sermon was immortalized in what came to be called One Solitary Life. In his sermon, Dr. Francis said this:
“He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never went to college. He never put his foot inside a big city.
While still a young man the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends turned against him…. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth – his coat….
Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today he is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of the column of progress.
I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built, all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.”
Jesus as the Messiah was not like anyone had ever imagined before his time, and he seems to be larger than and less satisfactorily definable than any Messiah anyone has fully imagined since his time. He is greater than the greatest concept of the Messiah and broader than the broadest idea of the Messiah.
Jesus becomes the Messiah much more in our hearts than in our heads, and certainly not in the transformation of any political or military system. It is astonishingly ironic that “the Messiah” has become almost exclusively a Christian idea. Among Jews, only the Orthodox still look for the coming of the Messiah, and perhaps most of them have given up hope. Yet Christians believe that the Messiah has come, and that he is coming again at the end of Advent, and perhaps yet again at the end of time.
Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the divine government shall be upon his shoulders. What sort of government and what sort of shoulders remained to be seen back in the first century and still remain to be seen in our century. Only eyes of faith can see it.