God is with us – Isa 62:1-5; Matt 1:18-25

 Christmas (Vigil Mass); Christ the King parish.

Video (homily begins at 13:30)

Our readings tonight started with a statement of protest. “I will not be silent; I will not keep quiet.” Our lector brought to us the Spirit-inspired proclamation of a prophet who wrote around 2,500 years ago, over 500 years before the birth of Christ, a prophet who refused to sit down and shut up, a prophet whose words were a rebellion against hopelessness and despair, a prophet who had good news to proclaim. You might be thinking, “aren’t we here to talk about the baby Jesus?” Well, we are. But we’re here to talk about the baby Jesus not as someone cute or tame, but as God’s daring proclamation of good news, God’s protest against human despair. And we get to hear what God is saying in the baby Jesus more clearly if we spend a little time first with the words we opened with from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

 

Isaiah uses such rich images for how good the good news he has to share is. And these images are so powerful, so universally human, that they work even if you don’t know how this oracle fits into Israelite history. But a brief refresher perhaps on that can make these prophetic words pack even more of a punch, give them even more weight in our ears. About 70 years before these words were written, the Babylonians had come to Israel and destroyed everything. Everything the people had, everything that showed them God, was gone. The temple was destroyed, the kings were replaced by puppet rulers, the people were death-marched away from their Promised Land. But then, after a lifetime of exile, the next powerful empire, the Persians, had conquered the Babylonians, and had not just let the Israelites return home, but were giving them a little help to rebuild. This oracle probably comes from during that rebuilding, which the people had started to find really really hard.

 

They had their vindication and their victory, but it didn’t feel so shiny. So, the prophet starts with that, crying out that he will not be silent until Jerusalem’s victory shines forth like a burning torch. In the nighttime of their fear and trepidation, the prophet longs for the good news that God has brought them home to shine. Imagine a fire in the cold night to come an hour from now, revealing the way forward, warming those who tremble from cold, delighting the eye. Oh, what a holy night, to have such fire in it. Oh, night divine.

 

Next, the prophet talks about giving the people a new name. What did people used to call you? What did you used to call yourselves? Forsaken? Desolate? No, God now calls you “my delight,” now calls you “espoused,” a daring promise where God commits to the people of Israel as a husband commits to his wife. The prophet encourages the people to see themselves not as poor downtrodden former exiles still dusty from the walk home, but as cherished, beautiful, adorned as a bride. Sometimes it takes someone authoritative to come and name something in us that we dare not accept in ourselves. Well, to the Israelites God comes and says, you are my delight, just as at each of our baptisms, God came to us and said, “You are my beloved daughter, you are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased.” Long lay the world in sin and error, pining, ‘till He appeared and the soul felt its worth. Oh, night, oh night divine.

 

The most powerful image in this whole oracle though, may lie in the middle, when the prophet describes the people as “a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord.” This is how precious you are, he says. Precious and dignified like a crown. Treasured, securely, lovingly, tenderly held in God’s hand.

 

Friends, we need that too. After this year, this year of fear, of isolation, of grief, we need someone to not be silent, we need a fire to light up our darkness, we need someone to call us by our new name, remind us we are not forsaken, we are beloved, we need someone to hold us in the palm of their hand and connect with us that closely when we feel alone or isolated. And God does. God is with us. The stars are brightly shining on this holy night because it is the night of our dear savior’s birth. The angel promises Joseph, this child that is born is not just an assurance that God is with, he is God with us. He is with us when we feel alone. He is with us when feel like we’re not enough. He is with us when it feels too hard. He has appeared, and the soul has felt its worth.

 

God kept on saying that to his people through the prophets, but on that night in Bethlehem, God said it in a new way. He said it through his Son. He said, this is how precious you are to me, my people, I want to take on the fullness of humanity to be with you. And in a few months, on Good Friday, we’ll gather here to remember how he took on the fullness of the human condition by accepting even death. And then, just three days later, on Easter, we’ll celebrate God’s conquering of death. We’ll celebrate that God loved us so that not even death, death at our hands, could keep Him from being with us. But tonight, we celebrate something different. We celebrate that God loves us so much that He took on the smallness, the vulnerability of being a baby for us.

 

So we know, if ever we are lonely, afraid, if we feel that we’re not enough, not powerful enough, God can say: I’m with you. I took on the littleness of a baby for you. Here in this place, God takes on the fragility of bread for us, breaking for us at this altar, feeding us. God cups us tenderly in the palm of His hand, and at the same time bids us receive Him, hold Him, be warmed and nourished by Him, and know that we are never alone, we are never not enough, because God’s got us. Oh night divine; it is the night of our dear Savior’s birth.