Isaiah 9:1-7

But there will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. 

The people who walked in darkness

    have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

    on them light has shined.

You have multiplied exultation;

    you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you

    as with joy at the harvest,

    as people exult when dividing plunder.

For the yoke of their burden

    and the bar across their shoulders,

    the rod of their oppressor,

    you have broken as on the day of Midian.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors

    and all the garments rolled in blood

    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

For a child has been born for us,

    a son given to us;

authority rests upon his shoulders,

    and he is named

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Great will be his authority,

    and there shall be endless peace

for the throne of David and his kingdom.

    He will establish and uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

    from this time onward and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. 

For the Word of God in scripture,

For the Word of God among us,

For the Word of God within us,

Thanks be to God.

***

Now, I know I haven’t been the sharpest this morning already—with my Easter blunder there—but you’re probably wondering again if I have my dates mixed up, if I’m somehow confused. Why are we reading a Christmas Eve text before Thanksgiving?

Are we, as the Church, going the way of big business, starting Christmas observances earlier and earlier each year?

Don’t worry, you still have time.

We are actually reading these familiar words from Isaiah 9 more in their proper context. What I mean is, these words were not originally written about Jesus. They were written well before his time. And remember, prophets are not people that have special access to the future. Rather, they are people who have supreme trust in God’s future. Prophets are not fortune tellers.

Most scholars believe that the words of Isaiah 9 were written for a coronation of a new king, one that perhaps everybody was excited about. Scholars think maybe Hezekiah. During a time when Israel was at war—probably with Assyria—one biblical scholar, Charles Aaron Jr., writes: “The poem expresses deep political desires of the human heart. It presents a doctrine of a top-down picture of a leader who combines the best qualities of any person in authority. The leader displays wisdom, strength, concern for the poor, justice, and facilitates relationships, righteousness.”

Professor Mark Hamilton writes: “How do we speak of hope in a world filled with terror?” A solution eluded them then because centuries punctuated by war, forced migration, resettlement, and all the accompanying tragedies kept generating dialogue about the work of God in such a world.

For a while now, people in the biblical narrative have put their hope in kings. First in Saul, and then in David, and then in Solomon. And then we remember, things got so tumultuous that the kingdom split into the Northern and Southern Kingdom. And that’s where we are now.

And so these people are going through these traumatic times. There are pressures from other nations. There are pressures from inside. And once again, people are looking for a place to put their hope, a way out of this darkness.

Remember, this is a time when light is so important. A candle that lasts the night means safety and warmth and all of these things. But Professor Hamilton also writes, “Even if, as many scholars think, this poem originated in this context and is about this royal coronation, the placement of the text in this larger context allows it to mean more.”

It’s this hope-filled language that points to worlds not confinable to a single moment, and they trigger new imagination.

I love that. New imagination.

We don’t often think of going to the Bible for new imagination, do we? New insight? No, that’s old imagination and old insight. But no, right here in Isaiah, we have an example of new insight, new ideas about God. We’re allowed to do that. Did you know that?

We can use new ideas and images for God. That’s allowable. You could do that.

Aren’t we supposed to stick with what we have, though? Isn’t it somehow watering down God’s word when we mix it with our own?

What we sometimes forget is that all of our language about God is metaphor. All of it is symbol. All of it is story—a way of talking about God.

And so whatever we say about God, whatever our speech is about God, it’s always incomplete.

Barbara Brown Taylor puts it so beautifully. She says, “Our words are fragile, but oh what gorgeous sounds our failures make. Words flung against silence like wine glasses pitched against a wall. As lovely as they are, they’re meant for smashing. For when they do, it’s as if a little of God’s own music breaks through.”

In other words, when we speak of God, it is our humility—and not our certainty—which gets us closer to the truth.

There’s the big one, right? And we even get it a little bit in this passage: “Son of God.” We call Jesus Son of God. And we’ve taken this literally. And this is a hurdle for so many people that I know—that this title, this word, this phrase—we’ve turned it into something literal. We say Jesus is God’s only son.

But what do we mean by that? And what did they mean by that? And what might we mean by that?

The truth is that “Son of God” is not meant to convey a biological reality, but a theological one. It’s meant to help us understand how God and Jesus are related to one another—how they’re the same and yet different—how they’re one and yet many.

And so many in the ancient world related to them as a parent and a child—a father and a son. It’s a relationship of caring and sharing. If it had been a different kind of relationship that they meant to convey—one that was more hierarchical—they could have chosen something different, right? Ruler and subject. Boss and apprentice.

But the one that dominated—the one that has persisted—is parent and child, father and son, which is a more loving relationship.

So do you see how acknowledging that we don’t mean it literally doesn’t take power away from it? It actually lends credence to it. It gives it more depth. And it makes it more useful.

And theological language needs to be useful. If it’s not useful, what good is it?

Our language about God should bring us closer to God—not set barriers between us and God—not push us further away. It needs to shed light on the idea of God, not obscure it further in darkness.

A few weeks ago in adult education, we were talking—I don’t even remember exactly the subject—but I talked about it as if God’s love and God’s justice were like radio waves or some kind of wave constantly bombarding the earth. They’re always there. It’s always there for us to access. But we’re not always tuned into it, right? We’re not always tuned into the right frequency.

I said, well, we can think of Jesus as like a satellite dish. Jesus was always tuned in to that frequency—to God’s justice vision. It’s always there, but we don’t always receive it. But we can look to Jesus to interpret it for us.

Some people found that helpful. Some people were like, “Oh, I didn’t know we could do that. Are we allowed to do that?”

Another example I used to use—some of you won’t get this because you’re too young—but I used to talk about Jesus in the Gospels—in Matthew and Mark and Luke—was like… you remember a dial-up modem? You couldn’t be on the phone and the internet at the same time. Matthew and Mark and Luke, Jesus is like that with God. There’s a connection. It just takes a little while. It’s a little slower.

Whereas in John, it’s like DSL. Remember when DSL came? You could be on the phone and the internet and it was quicker. You know, you could download something. You didn’t… you didn’t have all the noises.

Well, so that was helpful—but it’s already, that analogy is already outdated.

I feel like that’s what we can do with our… and you all can come up with a lot better ones than I can. But that was one that was helpful to me to get that point across. It made it useful, right?

And there’s been a whole lot of discussion in recent decades over the predominantly male language for God that heavily emphasizes God as Father, right? And the case for this is strengthened when we notice how often Jesus himself uses this metaphor for God—notably using the overly familiar “Abba,” which is not just “Father,” but “Daddy.” It’s much closer.

Additionally, when Jesus is asked to pray, he tells his disciples to pray addressing what? God as “our Father.” And what we might miss now is how innovative that was at the time—that Jesus would go around referring to God as “Father” or “Daddy.” I’m sure more than a few religious gatekeepers criticized him for that: “He’s changing the language about God. He’s making it overly familiar. He should stick to what we have.”

But today, now, “Father” sometimes can be a little off-putting for people. Not everyone has a loving relationship with their father. “Father” means someone who is emotionally distant—maybe even cruel—maybe absent.

So do we just stop using “Father”? Do we throw it out?

No. But maybe we use it a little bit less. And maybe we mix it with other metaphors. And that’s why I begin the Lord’s Prayer the way I do—not because I want to change the tradition—but because tradition itself doesn’t use just one metaphor for God, but many.

That’s what the Bible does. Father. Mother. Rock. Redeemer. Savior. Lord. Friend. Companion. Guide. River. Lamb. Lion. Eagle. Protective mother hen.

These are just a few of the titles—the words—the metaphors that the Bible uses to address God, to refer to God.

As one of my mentors once said to me, “As Christians, our job is not just to believe what scripture says. It’s to do what the Bible does.” The Bible uses many names and metaphors for God—not just one. And it uses not just the old traditional ones—the ones that people are familiar with—it uses new and innovative ones as well.

So maybe it’s not just permissible for us to do so. Maybe we’re supposed to.

Now I started by saying—and maybe this caught some of you off guard, maybe some of you knew it—that the original author wasn’t referring to Jesus when he uses all these words: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. We call Jesus “Prince of Peace,” right?

So what does it mean to say, “No, no, in Isaiah 9, not referring to Jesus but Hezekiah”? Who’s Hezekiah to us, right?

Does that mean we don’t follow Jesus?

No, of course not.

Acknowledging this doesn’t lessen its impact for us as Christians—quite the opposite.

You see, part of what I’m trying to show us is—we don’t have to trample on other traditions to uphold our own.

It’s important to recognize that first and foremost, this is a Hebrew text—written for the Hebrew people in their understanding of God. But it is also true that for us as Christians—for millennia—we have found Jesus in these words.

That’s to say, where people once put their hope in kings and warriors to save us—for many of us, once we met Jesus, once we heard him preach of God’s love, once we saw him heal the sick, embrace the outcast, challenge political and religious leaders of his day—we said, “That’s what a real king should look like.” That’s the type of ruler that we want.

One who leads from love and stands for justice. One who is not propping himself up at the expense of others.

So we can acknowledge that this is a Hebrew text and that it was not originally referring to Jesus. But we can also acknowledge that as Christians we have found him in these words. And that is where we place our hope.

It’s very interesting that Hebrew doesn’t have a past tense and a future tense. It has a perfect tense and an imperfect tense—something that has been completed and something that is yet to be completed.

When the author of Isaiah talks about this time in the future where peace will come—where we’ll no longer have need of the things of war, where we’ll have turned them into other things, where we are led by love, where righteousness and justice are not just constant—the author of Isaiah 9 says, “This is already completed. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

Being so sure of God’s future that even though it hasn’t happened, we know it’s going to—and so that is what we work ourselves toward.

So as we head into this season—one of thanksgiving and anticipation and hope—we’re going to hear a lot of different words for God. Different names. Different metaphors. Different language for Jesus and the reign of God.

May they not only enrich the message of God’s love and peace and justice, may they be a reminder for us to do what scripture does—to find new ways to communicate and show and make real and make tangible this gospel that we proclaim in word and deed, that the world may grow more and more into the likeness of the Holy who cannot be contained by our language but who invites us to try nonetheless.

Because in our trying—and even in our failing—we move ever closer to this ineffable mystery that we call God. This love in which we live and move and have our being.

Amen.

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