God once asked his thirsty people to get water out of a rock. In the Bible and on Christmas morning alike, wondrous things can come from the unlikeliest of packages. Water can come from rock.
Various stories about Ahaz and Job show us the rock out of which comes the water of Christ.
Colin Nicholl writes about King Ahaz during the time of the prophet Isaiah:
"In Isaiah 7:1-25 the prophet was challenging the covenantally faithless king of Judah, Ahaz, to trust in Yahweh through the crisis precipitated by the Syro-Ephraimite invasion of Judah in 734/733 BC rather than turning for help to the regional superpower of his day, Assyria. To encourage Ahaz to have faith in the God of David, God offered him an authenticating sign:
"Again Yahweh spoke to Ahaz, "Ask a sign of Yahweh your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven." But Ahaz said, "I will not ask, and I will not put Yahweh to the test." And (Isaiah) said, "Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:10-14)" (Nicholl, The Great Christ Comet, 197)
Ahaz can name whatever sign he chooses. 'Deep as Sheol' suggests something seismic in the earth. 'High as heaven' suggests some sort of celestial wonder. But Ahaz declines. Nicholl describes Ahaz's response as 'pseudo-piety', drawn from Deuteronomy 6:16, but he is really only covering up his resolute unwillingness to trust God: "Ironically, Ahaz, by his refusal to specify a sign, was in fact "putting Yahweh to the test." (Nicholl 199) Ultimately, this led to Judah becoming a vassal state to Assyria. In the meantime, since Ahaz had refused to specify a sign, Yahweh chose one for him. Poor Ahaz. He could have asked for any kind of sign he wanted. Something really obvious. But he preferred to hold God at arm's length. And God gave him something obscure and difficult: "The virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
Christmas is obscure. After today, the world will continue to go on as usual, as though nothing happened. One senses that this was the case for the people around the child Jesus, and his very ordinary family. An ordinary family - hardly the great sign that would encourage our faith in God.
But Christmas also shows God to be generous and abundant. Though Judah failed to be generous in asking for a sign, God did not only give this one obscure sign. According to Nicholl, Isaiah 9:2 describes how in the former times - the times of Ahaz - the land of Judah will be "brought into contempt" but in the latter times, a certain type of glory will be seen:
"the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone." (Isaiah 9:2)
Nicholl notes that this is the sign that Ahaz "spurned." (210) He didn't expect much from God. He didn't have much to ask from God, and he certainly didn't want to expose himself to any sort of excuse to change his stubborn ways. But in the latter times, God would grant what Ahaz couldn't even ask for - a sign literally as high as heaven, a sign that had Gentile astrologers from the east come running to worship this Jewish Messiah, the greatest of all signs - the star - pointing in its generous splendor to the obscurity of Jesus. Generosity in obscurity.
Thus, in God's generosity, do common shepherds find themselves the recipients of lavish signs of what is happening. John Milton captures the mundane quality of the shepherds keeping their watch:
The shepherds on the lawn,
Or e'er the point of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in a rustick row;...
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep. (Milton, "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity" quoted in Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word, 97)
Not much going on here. 'Silly thoughts' staying busy.
And then Milton continues with a grand description of the worshiping host of angels:
When such musick sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet,
As never was by mortal finger strook;
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.
Nature that heard such sound,
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat, the aery region thrilling,
Now was almost done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.
At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shamefac'd night array'd;
The helmed Cherubim,
And sworded Seraphim,
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven's new-born Heir.
Such musick (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator Great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanc'd world on hinges hung;
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep. (Guite, 97-98)
In describing the music the angels sang the morning Christ was born, Milton suggests these shepherds and their 'silly thoughts' are hearing the music that created the world. More than that, in stanza four, Milton suggests something impossibly bold. He takes us back to the book of Job. Job suffers evil, causing him to bang relentlessly on Heaven's door in prayer. God questions him with regard to various things listed in Milton's fourth stanza: the world's foundations (38:4), channels for water (38:25), constellations (38:31-33), morning stars singing, and angels shouting for joy (38:7). Job is humbled, for no one knows these things. That is, not until a bunch of shepherds experienced it all musically in a field one night.
All of God's blessings, all of God's generosity are poured out at the nativity of Christ. What Ahaz couldn't bear to ask for is given freely and doubly. What Job discovered only after endless pleadings is lavished on 'silly', sleepy, soporific shepherds. The water of the New Covenant comes from the rock of the Old. It is as Jesus put it in the Gospel of John: "Your Father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad." (John 8:56) The whole Old Testament leans in with us on this glad morning...all of God's people from all times and places peer happily with us into the manger. Drink deep!
No comments:
Post a Comment