December 24 and 25, Nativity (Isaiah 9:2–7; Luke 2:1–20)
Preachers who value their pulpit would be wise to avoid Isaiah 9 this Christmas Eve.
God alone knows what American politics will look like on the evening of December 24, 2019. The nation could be elbow deep in impeachment proceedings, or maybe the hearings will have come and gone. Perhaps there will be some entirely new horror to wrestle with.
Whatever happens, congregations will not want to hear a word about it. They’ll come to light candles and sing “Silent Night”—nothing more, nothing less. Exegetical preachers who value their pulpit would therefore be wise to avoid Isaiah 9:2–7 this Christmas Eve. Better known from Handel’s Messiah than from any sermon, the text arrives stinking of politics and sulfur.
It opens with a proclamation of darkness: not the coziness of a midwinter evening but the bottomless despair of Psalm 23:4, in which the same word describes the “valley of the shadow of death.” Isaiah has just spoken of the fall of Zebulun and Naphtali to the Assyrian Empire, presumably including the massacres that typically followed military defeat in those days. Decades later, the southern kingdom of Judah will be decimated by the empire, but already Israel is gone, and the specter of Babylon hangs over even the most confident of Isaiah’s promises.
