Tabula Rasa

The Reverend Seth Ethan Carey

December 23rd, 2007

Isaiah 7:10-16

First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois

www.firstconge.org

630-469-3096

Introduction to the Scripture

In this season of Advent, we look to the birth of Jesus Christ—an innocent child who will come to bear the weight of an entire world on his shoulders. And his coming is foretold in the prophecy we hear this morning from the prophet Isaiah. This prophecy is uttered against a backdrop of military invasion and war, spoken to Ahaz, the king of Judah. Now, Ahaz is fighting a war on several fronts, being as at least three neighboring kingdoms are trying to attack him. I’ll explain the situation in a little more detail later.

But for now, listen to this legendary prophecy, a prophecy that foretells the advent of innocence in the midst of evil days.

***

Every time I sit down to prepare a sermon, I am faced with the stark reality of a blank screen. While I’d rather have several pages worth of insightful remarks and meaningful stories and profound interpretations, I can’t help but admire the simple beauty of its emptiness—innocent and pure, unstained by the disorganized thoughts that hurtle through my cerebral cortex in unpredictable directions.

The page itself is crisp and white, and still, like a field of new-fallen snow. Nothing moves here, nothing but a blinking cursor, pulsing like a heartbeat. Its rhythms are hypnotic. Part of me wants to see it run across the screen like a caged animal set free. But that would require me to type something, which is a bit of a problem. My laptop waits patiently for me to get started. It’s just a machine, so it could wait all day. And it probably will.

And then suddenly, inspiration strikes like lightning. An idea occurs to me, an idea so original—so bold— that it frightens me. What if—

What if I just left it blank? What if I just left it the way it was?

I scan my surroundings carefully, as though I’m about to commit a crime. Why shouldn’t I leave it blank? Who am I to disturb such tranquility? These are the questions I ask myself as I imagine what it would feel like to stand up in the pulpit on Sunday morning, fully intent on saying nothing at all for a good fifteen minutes. I think I read somewhere that the Buddha did that, once. But I suppose it takes a certain amount of mystique to pull that off, and unlike the Buddha, I’m pretty sure I don’t have any. So, in the end I start coming up with some new ideas that actually pertain to the Bible, and won’t be mistaken for bad performance art.

After all, I suspect that a sermon about vacuum cleaners would be preferable to a sermon that is, in itself, a vacuum. And yet there is something alluring about a blank slate. It’s clean. It’s uncluttered. It’s completely empty, and yet full of possibility. While this principle applies to blank Microsoft Word documents, empty filing cabinets, and unfurnished apartments, it may also apply to human beings. The philosopher Aristotle once wrote that at the hour of birth, human consciousness is "like a clean tablet on which nothing is written.” Much later, St. Thomas Aquinas called this the tabula rasa, or the ‘blank slate.’

We usually call it innocence.

And innocence is an important theme in this prophetic passage from the Book of Isaiah. You see, this is a tale of war, and of the birth of an innocent child who would mark its end.

***

King Ahaz of Judah was nervously checking Jerusalem’s water supply in anticipation of a siege. It was hard to say which country was going to attack him these days, but whoever it was would have to get in line.

His neighbors in Israel and Syria had been making threats, trying to coerce him into joining forces against Assyria, the military superpower of the Middle-East. If Ahaz refused, they would attack Jerusalem and kill him, replacing him with a puppet king, a king with more sympathy for their aggressive foreign policy. But if he agreed to form an alliance with them and resist Assyria’s onslaught, then the Assyrian Empire would crush them all under its iron fist. For Ahaz, it was a no-win situation. Either way his kingdom would fall and he would be a dead man.

God sent the prophet Isaiah to speak with Ahaz, to alleviate his distress, and Isaiah found him by the conduit of the upper pool in Jerusalem. But he’d brought his son along, which was a very bad omen. You see in those days, it was believed that names held power. And Isaiah’s son was called Shear-yashub, which means “a remnant shall return.” And sure enough, Isaiah goes on to tell Ahaz that a remnant will return to Judah—but only after they are dragged off in chains and the land is laid to waste.

Talk about cold comfort. And yet, in spite of the dark days to come, there is hope.

“Look,” said Isaiah, “There is a young woman who is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land of those two kings whom you dread shall be deserted.”

In other words, everything’s going to be alright in the end. Whatever happens in the years to come, a remnant will return.

In the midst of this ancient warfare and bloodshed, a child is born; an innocent child untouched by experience, unscarred by war. His innocence is a sign of hope, a reminder that these murderous kings and the warriors they command were also children, once. They were also innocent, once.

And yet, for all the beauty of innocence, one could argue that it’s experience that gives this prophecy its power. It isn’t the child’s innocence that will signal the end of this war. As the prophet says, the smoke will clear when the child “knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.”

Innocence is a priceless treasure. But experience is important, too.

***

My mother can attest to this, because she had the dubious honor of watching me grow up. She says people used to call me Damien, because I got into so much trouble. I was never much of a misfit at school or anything like that, mind you. Strange adults intimidated me, so I usually fell into line when I was out in public. But back in my own house, all bets were off. I spent my terrible two’s careening through the house in one of those infant walkers on wheels, screaming wildly, chasing my older brother and pelting Cheerio’s at him until he clamored up the stairs where I couldn’t follow.

No one in my family was safe from this kind of mischief. I can vaguely recall flushing the toilet when my father was in the shower, just to watch him panic as the water temperature turned scalding hot or freezing cold. I also seem to remember hurling bath toys at him over the shower curtain for no reason other than to satisfy my own amusement. It wasn’t malicious. It was just fun.

Some years later, my brother and I developed a passionate enthusiasm for a popular cartoon series, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every afternoon at 4:00, we’d faithfully tune in for another adventure of the so-called heroes in a half-shell. And then, at 4:30, fueled by the excitement of that day’s episode, we’d start throwing computer floppy disks at each other, pretending that they were razor-sharp ninja throwing stars. They rarely found their mark, but rather went crashing into framed photographs and smashing into the woodwork of my mother’s antique furniture. We tried to patch up whatever we broke by the time my mother got home from work, but our lies about how things got damaged were even shoddier than our attempts to repair broken glass with scotch tape.

These are my tales of childhood mischief. These are my innocent sins.

As one might expect, my behavior has improved over time. My experience of the world has shaped me into a better person, a person who doesn’t entertain himself by throwing things at other people. I’ve learned to be better at refusing the evil and choosing the good, as Isaiah would say. But the better I get at making choices, the harder the choices become. Over time, the moral ambiguity of the playground has given way to a more complex landscape of ethical choices. That’s what makes life an ongoing process of development and transformation, a labyrinth of the utmost complexity.

Fortunately, there is someone to show us the way: an innocent child, born in a manger on a winter’s night.

***

Isaiah’s prophecy about the unborn child, Immanuel, is usually interpreted as a as a prophecy about the birth of Christ, which is why we read it at Christmas. And like Immanuel, the baby Jesus is an icon of innocence in a world gone mad. He is born into a tortured world, into an empire dominated by greed, hostility, intolerance, and oppression.

But this precious little child does something amazing. He grows up. Jesus doesn’t start an ideological revolution in his swaddling clothes. He doesn’t fight corruption from the safety of a cradle.

He doesn’t throw Cheerios at the Devil.

Jesus is born an innocent child, but he grows into an experienced man. And that’s when his most important work begins. That’s when he learns to distinguish good from evil. That’s when he teaches us to do the same. That’s when he fulfills his destiny.

When I look at the children we’ve baptized here today, I see innocence incarnate. These little babies know nothing of good and evil. Like Immanuel, they’re untouched by experience, unscarred by war. They’re as pure as a field of new-fallen snow. But someday they will grow up. They will learn the ways of the world, and they will have to make hard decisions of their own. On that day, their innocence will be lost.

But what if I echoed Isaiah, and said that a remnant of it will return?

***

If you’ve been to the movies lately, then you’ve probably seen the new Christmas-themed Coca-Cola commercial. It begins with a small girl standing on a snow-covered street, gazing into the window of a toy store. Santa Claus walks up to the little girl and cheerfully pops open a fresh bottle of Coke for her. Given that this is supposed to take place sometime in the early 20^th century, I can’t help but wonder if this is before or after the Coca-Cola Corporation dropped cocaine from its list of active ingredients. But I guess that’s something a cynical adult would wonder.

Anyway, the commercial fast-forwards through the years, and we see the little girl grow up. When 2007 rolls around, we find Santa Claus standing outside the very same toy store, where he gets a surprising tap on his shoulder. Standing behind him is that same little girl, now a smiling grandmother. She puts an arm around her young granddaughter and hands Santa a Coke, returning the favor from so many years ago.

This corporate advertisement is shamelessly corny and emotionally manipulative, but it gets me every time.

And it illustrates what I’m getting at here today: that our childhood innocence is never truly lost. Like Immanuel, like Jesus, like these children baptized here today, we all grow up. And that’s a good thing. But at times like these, in the midst of the Christmas season, a remnant of our childhood innocence comes back to us. We raise our voices in song, we stop counting calories, and we open gifts with more excitement than we’d care to admit. It’s like we believe in magic again. And as we celebrate the birth of God’s son among us, we feel his presence more strongly than ever.

Innocence is more than a lack of experience. It’s a kind of experience. It’s an experience of wonder. It’s an experience of appreciation. It’s an experience of love. And no matter how hard it gets, a life filled with these blessings is far better than an empty page.

Merry Christmas, Amen.