When I was in my first year of high school and attending the local Anglican church with my parents, my school principal led a Bible study during the service for the handful of teenagers there. At the end of the year, he presented each of us with a book and a card for Christmas. Nearly thirty years later I still remember the verse on the card:
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
Isaiah 9:2
In later years I would also sing other famous words from that passage when the school choir performed the famous chorale from Handel’s Messiah: For unto us a son is given... Both music and my principal’s card have endured these words stay readily in my head and today when I saw verses from this passage in morning prayer for this sixth day of Christmas both came back to mind instantly.
And, thanks to Handel, we rightly connect these words to Jesus. But we don’t often look at where they sit in the book of Isaiah. They come after two chapters in which the names of children and the image of darkness are given particular potency. Faithless King Ahaz has refused to ask God for a sign from Isaiah of what lay ahead for his kingdom, and so God has given him a sign anyway: Immanuel, God with us, a word of comfort for the faithful, a word of warning for the faithless for whom God’s immediate presence may not be so comforting.
In the chapter that follows, God gives more signs through the children he gives to Isaiah and the names he tells him to give them. Each name signals the judgement that lies ahead. Isaiah also finishes chapter 8 warning those who listen to false prophets – the ones who promise military victory and require no humility or faith – that they will be put in darkness and won’t be able to see the truth.
It’s into this scene that Isaiah 9 comes blazing with hope: light for those in darkness, and a child born with a promise in his name. And what is his name? Nothing less than the “mighty God” himself, the “Prince of peace”.
Unless we know how much our human rulers and leaders fail to save us, we won’t appreciate how amazing it is that God has come himself to save us. And we will only know how incredibly life and world changing Christmas is unless we know that we need saving. Only then will we hear the real triumph in Handel’s chorale and be able to fully sing along.
The Consolations of Writing 