I often think we have got used to coming to the Christmas
story, the story of Jesus birth, through the high art of a well crafter
nativity set, or by Christmas lights reflected in the glint and sparkle of
tinsel or through the lens of a Hallmark greeting card. We have this picture of
an idyllic, if not rather exotic and even romanticised version of the Christmas
story. I’m not saying that’s bad or wrong I’m just stating a fact… Maybe it is
hard for us to access an event that happened 2000 years ago a whole world away,
without the wrapping of all those trapping and traditions.
One of things that it does is distance us from the amazing
truth that in Jesus the Christ, the messiah, the real God, became a real human
being and stepped into our real world with all its messiness and difficulties,
wonders and celebrations, troubles and triumphs, with a real hope of real
liberation and transformation.
The thing that really grabs me about Matthew’s narrative of
How Jesus the messiah came to be born is that its very real and gritty. Luke
tells the story from Mary’s perspective and with the songs and angel choirs it kind
of has the feel of being like a musical. There is a deeply political element to
it as the Kingdom of God clashes with the realms of this world, and we are
going to look at that next week. But Matthew as a first century Jewish man tells
the story from Joseph’s perspective. While it still has the angelic visitation
and joyous pronouncement of a miracle birth, Joseph finds himself in a great
moral dilemma, and that joy filled Christmas declaration comes in the middle of
a stress filled crisis-messy situation. It’s real joy and real hope in life’s reality.
Matthew had started the story with Jesus genealogy, hiswhakapapa, showing that Jesus was the
son of David, in the royal line, and a son of Abraham. The genealogy links
Jesus into two millennia of human history and two millennia of God’s activity.
There are famous people, obscure people, that we’ve never heard of except in
this list, there were the great heroes of the faith, like the people in our
family tree that we’d be happy to point others to, and bad and evil people, the
kind of people we just don’t admit to being connected to. It also links Jesus
to the hope that Israel had in the promises of God, of a just king in David’s
line, that would bring peace to Jerusalem and Israel, and the promise of God
that God would bless all nations through Abraham. Matthew tells us Jesus is
that messiah, that anointed one. Matthew finished his genealogy mysteriously by
saying Joseph was the husband of Mary, who was the mother of Jesus… now the
story unfolds…
Joseph is betrothed to Mary. In Jewish society there were
two stages of getting married, a period of betrothal, think engagement on
steroids, where the marriage had been arranged between the family of the bride
and groom. They were considered husband and wife, but did not live together, in
fact they were not supposed to be left unsupervised together. During this
period a dowry and bride price would be arranged and paid. Then there would be
the wedding the marriage was consummated, and they would go and live together
as man and wife. During that betrothal period if the man had any reason to want
to break off the marriage it was considered a divorce and the women would be
seen as a divorced woman, with all the stigma that entailed, she would forfeit
her dowry and bride price. If the man died she would be considered a widow.
We are told that Mary was found to be pregnant, From Luke’s
account we know that Mary had gone off to be with her relative Elizabeth but
now as she has come back it obvious, she is pregnant. Joseph is a righteous man
and according to Jewish law he must divorce his wife for adultery. Joseph does
not want to do that but he wants to do the right thing. If he does not do it
opens them both up to being ostracised by their community, maybe even separation
from Jewish religious life, they would be considered sinners. However, if he divorces her publicly it opens
Mary up to public ridicule and even death as an adulterer. But as well as
wanting to do things right according to the Law, Joseph is a man of compassion
and love. In the very short description we have in Matthew’s gospel you get the
sense that this is a real struggle for him. He decides that the best thing to
do it to divorce her quietly. Again the Jewish custom was all a man needed to
do was give a women a divorce notice in front of witnesses. Josephs plans were
just to do in front of a couple of trusted witnesses. It’s still a mess but
this seems best.
Into this crisis-messy situation comes the Christmas proclamation.
Maybe after sleepless night’s once joseph has made his decision he falls into
an exhausted slumber, but he has a dream and an angel of the Lord, a messenger,
appears and brings God’s word. Joseph is
acknowledged as a son of David, not just an acknowledgement of his royal lineage
but his faithfulness and compassion. Like with most such encounters the angels
first words are don’t be afraid. That was the angels first words to Mary in
Luke’s gospel, but here its not to calm him about the angel turning up, rather
that he is not to be afraid to take Mary home as his wife.
Joseph is then told the amazing truth of this child’s origin,
that Mary has conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Something that it would be hard for a first century Jewish man to accept
as it is for our myth soaked and science sceptical twenty first century minds. This
is God’s doing, God’s plan. We might find ourselves like Mary and joseph
wondering if this is possible, and Joseph does not receive the affirmation that
Luke records Mary getting ‘that with God all things are possible’. But his
scripture trained mind would look back at all that God had done in the past. He
would look back to the fact that the Holy Spirit was there in the beginning as
part of God’s creation activity and realise that without understanding it, that
the creator God is able to bring about a new creation.
The uniqueness of this child is then revealed in two names.
One Joseph is told to give Mary’s son and the other in a scripture from Isaiah
which we are told this child is a fulfilment of.
Well before the
benefits of ultrasound, Joseph is told that Mary’s baby will be a boy and he is
to name him Jesus. Jesus, or yeshua, Joshua… was a common name in first century
Israel. It was used by Jewish parents as a way of expressing their hope that
God would send a deliverer for his people, a saviour, who would save them from
their enemies and re-establish Israel as an independent nation. The name means
“God saves”. Joseph is told that that is indeed what this Jesus will do, but
not from their physical enemies, but from their own sins. Not a military
saviour, but a spiritual one, who would bring them back to God with
forgiveness, reconciliation, wholeness… shalom and peace.
Then whether it is the angel still speaking, or Matthew as
the narrator, we the readers are told that this is to fulfil what the Lord had
said through the prophet. Matthew’s gospel was written predominantly for a Jewish
audience and his goal is to show them that Jesus is the messiah in fulfilment
of the scriptures. In John’s gospel after Jesus resurrection we have the
account of two unnamed disciples on the road to Emmaus encountering the risen
Jesus, something they did not expect, and as they walked having Jesus life and
death explained to them from Moses all
the way through the prophets, this is the walk that Matthew invites us to also
take in his gospel.
Here we have a word from Isaiah, in the time of king Ahaz,
where Jerusalem is threatened with conquest, Isaiah tells the king that God
will delver his people, and the sign that will be given is a child will be born
to a young maiden, and will be named Immanuel… which means God with us… Now the Jewish word used could mean simply a
young women or a virgin, but the Greek word used in Matthew is specifically a
women of sexually mature age who is a virgin. The word of Isaiah had come to
have this hope filled future expectation, pointing to the messiah. The name of
the Child Immanuel speaks of God being with us. As John’s gospel will
poetically state God’s word became flesh and pitched his tent in our
neighbourhood… The promise of the Old testament of God dwelling with his people.
In these two names we are invited to see Jesus not only as a
son of David and a son of Abraham, but also as the unique Son of God, which is
how Mark introduces Jesus in his gospel. Here in the narrative of the birth of
Jesus the messiah we are told the Good news that God has stepped into history
to save his people from their sins, and has stepped into history to dwell with
his people. To enable us to come into a new relationship with God, and to have
a new way to live, the way of peace and love. You and I can be set free from
all we have done wrong in the past and know God’s abiding presence in our
lives. Matthews’s gospel is book ended
by that promise of God’s presence with us in Jesus, here in the name Immanuel, and Jesus last words and
“Lo I am with you till the end of the age”. It is the Holy Spirit, who had been
at work in creation and in Jesus conception that makes that new life and new
creation possible in us, as Christ dwells within us by his spirit.
This is the Christmas Joy, that in the coming of this child
in the middle of crisis messy sorrow, there is new life, freedom from the
things that would hold us captive, and the growth of a new creation in our
lives and our world. It is the Christmas Joy that can come in to the messiness
of our own lives, with hope and love and forgiveness and transformation through
the abiding presence of God, as we come to know Jesus the messiah, born of
Mary.
Joseph never seems to take centre stage in our nativity
scenes however he stands as a model and a witness to us of how to respond to this
joyous Christmas declaration, this good news of Jesus Christ. Matthew tells us
that Joseph woke up, and I really like the way Christian musician, Keith Green
talks of becoming a follower of Jesus in one of his best Know songs he says “
It’s Like waking up from the longest
dream, that seemed so real when your love broke through, I lost in a fantasy
until your love broke through”. The joyous news of Christmas is the coming of
God’s son Jesus into the world and how that can bring transformation and new
life in to our lives, as we wake up to the reality of who Jesus is.
Then Joseph did what the angel of the Lord commanded him. He
took Mary as his wife. Again I love a
line from Canadian folk singer Bruce Cockburn’s
Christmas song “in the cry of a tiny babe” where he says “
Joseph came to Mary with his hat in his hand, he says “forgive me I
thought you’d been with some other man, she says “what if I had been but I
wasn’t anyway and guess what I felt the baby kick today.” It was a tough thing
to do not just talk about it but to do it… you can imagine all the gossip and
speculation about the whole situation that he would endure, he didn’t
Consummate the marriage until after the baby was born, can I just say that
Catholics believe that Mary stayed a virgin, but there is no biblical evidence
for it, in fact the gospel’s talk of Jesus brothers, Joseph did what he was commanded and gave the
child the name Jesus. In this Joseph is
an example for of faith. he hears God's word and obeys it...
At the end of his sermon on the mount, Jesus grown to be a
man, would use the example of two builders to talk of how people were to
express their faith in him. Maybe that was with the thought of Joseph the
carpenter, a just and compassionate man of faith, in the back of his mind. The
builder who built their house on a solid foundation was the person who heard
Jesus words and put it into action. We are used to coming to the Christmas
story with all the wrapping of trappings and tradition and that can distance us
from the joyous message, but Joseph invites us to come with faith in this
Christmas proclamation, faith in the God who saves and is with us… and allow
that to bring real joy and real hope into our real lives.
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