Advent is a time when we anticipate God’s coming into our lives in mysterious ways. But are we really looking forward to God coming to us, or are we expecting business as usual, even if business isn’t all that good? Do we believe that God can affect our lives, or do we live on the assumption that such does not happen?

During a time of crisis, King Ahaz is urged to ask a sign of God but refuses to do so. (Is. 7: 1-12) Why? Asking God for a sign would alert him to the possibility that God might enter his life in some way. Business is bad, with the Assyrians threatening Jerusalem, but maybe he would rather be trampled by a powerful army then open himself up to what God might do. In the face of the king’s closing himself off, the prophet Isaiah announces a sign whether the king likes it or not. The sign doesn’t seem like much up against an invading army. How is a new born child going to solve the problem? Well, it isn’t exactly the baby who solves the problem; it’s God who solves the problem with a nudge that sends the invading army away. The baby was a sign of hope for the future, as babies often are. Nothing happens here that conflicts with the laws of nature. After all, God can accomplish much with the laws of nature. (The old translation that had a “virgin” conceiving in Isaiah’s time is considered by almost all scholars to be a mistranslation.) Now God’s little but decisive nudge wasn’t so bad was it? The only problem was that the king wasn’t in control of the situation. Not letting God control his situation would lead to Assyria controlling the situation. Is it easier to cope with being controlled by other humans that in some mysterious way being controlled, or at least led, by God? That is a particularly good question for us to ask ourselves during Advent.

Fast forward to Joseph confronted with a betrothed woman who has become pregnant, but not by him. Knowing the laws of nature as well as any modern gynecologist, Joseph decides to divorce Mary discretely, but before he can carry out his resolve, he is challenged by a dream to believe that God has intervened directly in violation to normal natural law. One could say it is once again just a little nudge. Once the conception of the child has taken place, the child develops in Mary’s womb like any other child and, when born, is just as fully human as any other child. But this little wedge, or nudge, is a big one, even a cosmic one. It is a nudge that has fundamentally changed the world for all time. And yet this little nudge, in spite of being contrary to natural law, did not send an army away. The Roman army stuck around and did its work, including the crucifixion of criminals, one of whom turned out to be the child conceived by the Holy Spirit. On the surface it doesn’t look like much of an intervention.

At this point we might ask ourselves: Do we need a decisive intervention from God such as Matthew claims to have happened with the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary? Maybe business as usual has been bad, but at least we’re used to it. St. Paul, however, insisted that humanity had become a train wreck and needed the direct presence of God within humanity before anything could get better. St. Augustine and subsequent theologians have seconded the motion. The modern thinker René Girard has offered us anthropological insights to suggest that we are too entangled in rivalrous relationships for any of them to be disentangled unless there is intervention from outside the system, which to say: from God. So, business is bad, as I said, but do we prefer the bad business as usual to the unknown possibilities that might emerge if we embrace the child born of the Virgin Mary? Christmas is coming. Do we really want Christ to come?