'Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test. Then Isaiah said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.”'
--Isaiah 7: 10-16
Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, leading Joseph like a flock; * shine forth, you that are enthroned upon the cherubim.
In the presence of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, * stir up your strength and come to help us.
Restore us, O God of hosts; * show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
O LORD God of hosts, * how long will you be angered despite the prayers of your people?
You have fed them with the bread of tears; * you have given them bowls of tears to drink.
You have made us the derision of our neighbors, * and our enemies laugh us to scorn.
Restore us, O God of hosts; * show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
Let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, * the son of man you have made so strong for yourself.
And so will we never turn away from you; * give us life, that we may call upon your Name.
Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; * show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
--Psalm 80: 1-7, 16-18
'Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”
When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.'
--Matthew 1: 18-25
I have a bad habit of breaking ceramic communion vessels. I seriously damaged a favorite paten – that’s the plate for the bread – in a move some time ago, and in the first parish where I served after seminary, I dropped a chalice on the floor of my office, shattering it to pieces. It was made by the parent of one of my youth group kids in the place where I served seminary, so I was really bummed, but one of the staff members said she could patch it up. I didn’t believe her. There was no way to fix this damage. She said she could do it, asked me to trust her, and wouldn’t ya know who won the pony….she did it. But when she gave the chalice back to me, it was changed. What are these lines, I asked? That’s the lacquer holding it together; it’s restored, but the brokenness is still visible. That’s when I learned about the Japanese practice of kintsugi. When a piece of glass or pottery is broken it’s not thrown away, but is instead joined back together with lacquer mixed with gold, silver or platinum. Kintsugi means “golden joinery.” It is an act of restoration, and I would add, an act of trust.
Kintsugi
Advent is a season rooted in the deep, deep hope for the world to be restored. We anticipate not only Jesus’ birth but also his coming again with glory – his Second Advent – that we name in our Creed; and how many of us pray for that day to come so that Jesus may restore what has been broken? As we look back on the past year – sweet Jesus, what a year! – how can we not pray for the world to be restored, for the evils that have been committed to be wiped out, and for basic human decency to become normal again? I have to believe that God is restoring all things, yes, but I wonder if God’s restoration looks less like a return to the way things were and more like kintsugi; and if that’s the case, how much do I trust God to perform that restoration if it’s not going to look like what I want?
To pray for restoration is a deep, abiding prayer that we make this time of year. Our words echo the Psalmist: “Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.” This cry is so profound, the pain in the Psalmist’s voice so deep, that the line is repeated three times, just to make sure God hears it – or maybe to make sure we hear it. The Psalmist recalls a time when God’s people had moved so far away from God that it felt as though their prayers had gone unanswered, that God was giving them bowls of tears to drink. That pain is not forgotten or covered up, but it is named and brought before God along with the cry for restoration. Whatever new thing is going to happen, whatever is restored, will not discard the pain of the past, but will transform it. The Psalmist, it would seem, trusts in God to do this.
One person who very much did not trust in God was King Ahaz, with whom the Prophet Isaiah got into a bit of a tiff. Ahaz is regarded as one of the bad kings of Israel, a person who was more interested in maintaining his own power and position. He was paranoid, fearful of enemies amassing on his border, despite Isaiah telling him not to fear and to trust God, who even has Isaiah tell Ahaz to ask for a sign – a way for God, for God’s part, to show a kind of trust in Ahaz by offering to do something that God doesn’t generally like to do. But Ahaz says no thanks; God gets annoyed and tells him that he’s getting a sign anyway, a sign for the restoration of Israel that Ahaz is hoping for. See that pregnant woman over there? She’s going to give birth, not to a mighty warrior God who is vengeful in a world obsessed with getting even, but a child so vulnerable, so at one with the goodness and mercy of God that the child’s title will be God-With-Us.
Bad King Ahaz offering a child at a pagan altar.
Yes, the restoration Ahaz seeks is a promise that God makes, but it doesn’t look like things being restored with Ahaz standing tall as king. It looks much more vulnerable – more tender and mild, if you will – and Bad King Ahaz ain’t gonna be too happy about that.
But Isaiah trusts in this restoration. People will continue to trust in it when they are taken into exile for 70 years. And again, when a foreign king permits them to return home, they will trust in this same promise of restoration, assured now that the child Isaiah spoke of will come through the line of David, the great king and Psalmist. That trust lingers in people’s minds for centuries until it is stirred up once again in Joseph, a carpenter from Nazareth descended from the house of David—and, just so you know if you read the 17 verses that precede our selection this morning, also descended from folks of questionable repute, including a bunch of really bad kings. Joseph is told by an angel that not only will the child his fiancé Mary is carrying be holy, but he will be the agent through which God will restore the world. He will be the promised Emmanuel, “God with us.” Joseph has a choice, to trust God or to trust what seems much more logical, that Mary’s child is not from the Holy Spirit, and that he should dismiss her quietly. Jospeh chooses to trust, as Isaiah did, as the Psalmist did. He sees the pregnancy through with Mary, and they name their son Jeshua, or Joshua, which means “God saves;” from the Hebrew Jesuha, to the Latin Jesu, and finally to our lips in English as Jesus.
St. Jospeh and Jesus
Jesus does, indeed, save and restore the world, but it seems his restoration looks a lot like kitsugi, wouldn’t you say? The brokenness of the world was not erased by Jesus’ presence; it’s still there, only now Jesus becomes the lacquer that holds it all together. The chalice that was broken and restored can’t be used on a regular basis anymore – the more often it gets washed, the more likely it is to break again. Its purpose has changed; it’s a tool for teaching more than a vessel for the Sacrament. Might the same be true for us, who carry some broken pieces ourselves? We hold them gingerly in our hands as we come to the Table and reach out with that refrain: “Restore us, O God.” Take these broken pieces of our lives and help us find new meaning, new purpose. And as Jesus takes those pieces from our hands he gives us his very self in a morsel of bread, a sip of wine, medicine of immortality; the lacquer that restores our broken selves, not for the purpose of ignoring or forgetting our pain, but so that they may become teachable moments of grace, and for our tender and sometimes daunting days.
When we allow God to reorganize our lives so that the Christ child becomes our central reality, everything changes; from the way we see the world to the way we read our own story. We might resist the change; in fact, we are likely to resist it. But deep down we know, that the promises of our God who makes all things new are sure and trustworthy. So the question that this final week of Advent offers us is the same question Isaiah posed to Ahaz, that the angel posed to Jospeh. That question is this: Will you trust this child to put the pieces back together, to restore your brokenness and that of the world, even if it means you’ll never be the same?
