Matthew 1:18-25
Our journey through Advent with Mary has almost come to an end. But not before we let Joseph enter the picture. This week, after 3 weeks of reading Luke’s lead up to the nativity story, Matthew comes in with his precise recounting of the events.
Not in Matthew are the stories of Mary meeting the angel Gabriel and rushing off to see her cousin and singing her song. No, Matthew is more concerned about giving credence to this whole birth story through Joseph.
Last week, you might remember that I went on some about Mary having little to say in the Bible. While Joseph has even less to say! In fact, I read this week about a church putting on a Christmas pageant. Just a day before the pageant, the boy who was supposed to play Joseph came down with a fever. The mother called the director of the pageant, who decided that it was too late to replace the boy with another and just wrote him out of the script. No Joseph in the Christmas pageant. The worst part is that no one noticed!
But Joseph is important to the story. We may not think so, but according to Matthew’s account, he is, because he brings legitimacy to the whole affair. In fact, it is through Joseph that Matthew traces Jesus’ lineage. The first verses of Matthew’s gospel are spent listing out the ancestors of Jesus through Matthew; back to David, back to Abraham. These are the “begats” using the language of the King James Bible that most of us grew up with. According to Matthew, Jesus legitimacy as a ruler of Israel goes back to the fact that Joseph is a descendent of David, the great ruler some 1,000 years earlier. And Matthew doesn’t really pull any punches in this genealogy. He includes the good with the bad: the adulterers, the cheats, the prostitutes and probably a horse thief or two. They’re all there.
Let’s recap the story from Matthew. Joseph and Mary are betrothed; which is an old way to say sort of that they were engaged to be married. Being betrothed then though, carried much more weight than does engagement these days. It’s a legal standing. The two people are bound to each other legally. Of course, it meant that the woman was the man’s property. It’s not a nice way to think about it, but there you have it.
Before they lived together though, Mary gets pregnant; by the Holy Spirit, Matthew is quick to tell us. Joseph is a righteous man; someone who follows the laws of his faith and keeps to Jewish rules. He can’t marry Mary, not in her, as we say, condition. But he’s also a good man who doesn’t want her unnecessarily disgraced. He plans “to dismiss her quietly” whatever that means. It doesn’t mean that he make a public disgrace of her and, at worst, have her stoned to death. Joseph, in his righteousness, is going to follow the rules but he’s not going to go the whole public route.
But just as he’s decided that, one of God’s angels, an unnamed one, but I like to think it was Gabriel again, comes to him; this angel comes to him in a dream and tells Joseph that he should indeed go ahead and take Mary as his wife. The angel explains the whole thing: how Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit and that this child will grow up to be a savior of the people. In fact, the angel tells Joseph what he should name the child: Jesus. Jesus which is the Greek version of Joshua which is an old Hebrew name meaning God saves.
Then Matthew does an interesting thing. He reaches back into Hebrew history again to quote Isaiah; the Hebrew Bible reading that we heard this morning in fact. Matthew uses this quote to bring legitimacy once again to the whole proceedings. Matthew’s book was written around the years 80-90. He has a Jewish audience; those early followers of the Way, as early Christians were called, who had come into the faith from Judaism, as opposed to those who were gentiles. The readers and hearers of Matthew’s gospel would know Isaiah and would get it.
But back to our story. Joseph, awaking from this incredible dream and being a faithful believer, does as he is told: he marries Mary. He takes her as his wife, pregnant as she is and even does name the child Jesus.
And that’s it. That’s the whole of the birth narrative from Matthew. Sure, the visit of the Wise Ones from the East, astrologers likely, not kings as we’ve come to call them, follows in Matthew’s story. But that could have been years later and is for Epiphany Sunday a few weeks from now.
But Matthew begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, this brief birth narrative and then the visit by the Wise Ones from the East. It’s terse and not filled with the emotions of the Luke version that we all know and love.
Matthew’s point is to give authenticity to a Jewish audience of Jesus’ place as a ruler; some 60 years after Jesus was crucified. By that point it was obvious that Jesus had not become the earthly ruler who would overthrow the Roman Empire that everyone had hoped for and expected. Instead, Jesus was born to be a different kind of ruler. And that’s the point that Matthew is making. Jesus rules a heavenly realm; one in which earthly matters aren’t a concern.
On this final Sunday of Advent, when all our candles save the Christ candle are aglow on our wreath, we are called to remember the couple who thousands of years ago were faithful & obedient to their God. We are called to remember Mary and Joseph, who met with angels and became the parents of the one who would grow to be our savior.
As we plunge headlong into Christmas, it is right that we should pause before that happens to remember those who allowed the birth stories to happen. Those who through their willingness to follow God into new and strange territories of their faith can teach us about being faithful.
Both Mary and Joseph were called to do things beyond their faith; they were called to do new things and they did so willingly and unquestioningly. Will we, now and throughout the year, be so willing and unquestioning? Will we, in our attempts to be God’s people, be open to new and different ways of being? With God’s help, I think each of us can.
16 December 2007
Luke 1:46-55
Growing up as I did in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches, I didn’t get much information about Mary. She showed up around this time of the year in the Christmas pageant and that was about all. She sat there, silently behind the manger, never a word crossing her lips.
In fact, throughout the New Testament, she doesn’t say much. In John she has some things to say. In Mark, though, where there is no nativity story, she’s barely mentioned, and she doesn’t utter a single word in Matthew. Paul refers to her as Jesus’ mother but never gives her name. But in Luke, ah in Luke, we have some remarkable words from Mary. Words that have gone done through millennia to provide prophetic hope to millions, by now billions, of believers. I’m talking about those words that were heard this morning known by most Christians as the Magnificat. The word “Magnificat” by the way is the Latin word that begins Mary’s song and has come to identify it.
Remember the sequence here now. First we have the angel Gabriel arriving to announce to Mary that she will carry God’s only child. Then we have the meeting between Mary and her relative Elizabeth who is carrying John the Baptist. Elizabeth’s words, if you remember from last week’s reading, upon seeing Mary were: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (NRSV)
Immediately, Mary goes into her song: her song of praise and thanksgiving to God. Now, Mary is not necessarily in what we would call “a good space” to be singing praises and thanksgiving. She’s dirt poor, even according to her own song, and here she is, unmarried and pregnant. She comes from nowhere…Nazareth, a Podunk if there ever was one. Nazareth isn’t mentioned in the Hebrew Bible at all; neither is it mentioned in the Jewish writings nor by the historian, Josephus. Mary is a nobody from nowheresville: a pregnant, unmarried nobody from nowheresville!
So why should such a person sing? What would possess this young woman, in one of the most frightening situations of her life, to come out in song? Well, she knows something that we’ve also been let in on: that God has favored her. God has lifted her up and given her a special status. Her song rings out as she’s standing there with her old cousin Elizabeth, the both of them with child and rejoicing in their state.
These words of Mary’s which come down to us thanks to the foresight of Luke, are indeed important. As Protestants, we’ve lost much of the feeling for Mary that our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters have. The Eastern Orthodox, in fact, have a special name for her: Theotokos which means “God-bearer.” But we have much to reclaim if we let Mary into our lives.
Luke reminds us, from the very start of his gospel, through Mary’s song, that God roots for the lesser-thans. First, God picked Mary as the bearer of God’s son. But secondly, the words of Mary’s song remind us of this fact. She sings that God “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly,” among others.
Mary’s song goes from the personal to the political. She recognizes the extreme favor God has shown her at the beginning and moves to how, through this child whom she is carrying, the status quo will be upended. No more will the powerful reign and the rich control everything. The coming of this child marks the start of a new realm; an everlasting realm that raises up the lowly and sends the rich away hungry.
But wait, you might say, the powerful reign and the rich control everything now. What good is this 2,000-year old song if none of it happens? Why should we listen to Mary now?
Because we all need hope. Because we all need to believe that the status quo is upended in God’s commonwealth. Because we all need to be reminded that God does not operate the way we do.
Mary sings not only for herself but also for all the poor and lowly and meek of all the centuries, of all the places. Mary sings out a warning to rulers and potentates and rich people everywhere. Mary reminds all of us, rich and poor, mighty and lowly, powerful and powerless, that God selects whom God will for God’s work on this earth. And God’s selects in a way that humanity might not understand.
Is Mary’s song our song? Do we sing along with Mary these radical words of justice? Or do the words stick in our throats, maybe just a bit, as we choke out our faint echo of Mary’s soaring descant?
We want our Advent to be soft and easy; like the wrappings on the presents under the Christmas tree. But Mary doesn’t let us off. Mary’s acclamation of God and her praise to the one whose child she is bearing is not the easy carols we love to sing this time of year. Instead, we are dealing with tough issues that unsettle us. Advent is not necessarily all twinkly and bright. Advent can be just as challenging as Lent, that other time of preparation.
Mary sings out from a place of emptiness and, likely, fearfulness. She knows only one thing: that God has chosen her. And that is enough to make her sing; enough to make the song rise and soar from her lips to the heavens.
We are not in such places for the most part. Most of us are safe and secure and not considered among the lowliest of our society. That is why that song might cause us to stumble a bit as we try to sing along with Mary. We don’t know on which side of the dichotomy we fall as Mary sings. We’re not sure whether we’re rich or poor; powerful or powerless. But the important question is whether we are going to join in on God’s side; whether we’ll take up the cause of the poor and powerless, even if we aren’t necessarily counted among them.
Sing out, Mary, continue your song! Sing out across the miles and the centuries. Sing out for the poor and the lowly of every age and place. Sing out for God has chosen you for important work. Sing out your song of joy and hope. Sing out and lead us to the manger where you will bear a savior. Sing out and urge us to join in the song.
Growing up as I did in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches, I didn’t get much information about Mary. She showed up around this time of the year in the Christmas pageant and that was about all. She sat there, silently behind the manger, never a word crossing her lips.
In fact, throughout the New Testament, she doesn’t say much. In John she has some things to say. In Mark, though, where there is no nativity story, she’s barely mentioned, and she doesn’t utter a single word in Matthew. Paul refers to her as Jesus’ mother but never gives her name. But in Luke, ah in Luke, we have some remarkable words from Mary. Words that have gone done through millennia to provide prophetic hope to millions, by now billions, of believers. I’m talking about those words that were heard this morning known by most Christians as the Magnificat. The word “Magnificat” by the way is the Latin word that begins Mary’s song and has come to identify it.
Remember the sequence here now. First we have the angel Gabriel arriving to announce to Mary that she will carry God’s only child. Then we have the meeting between Mary and her relative Elizabeth who is carrying John the Baptist. Elizabeth’s words, if you remember from last week’s reading, upon seeing Mary were: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (NRSV)
Immediately, Mary goes into her song: her song of praise and thanksgiving to God. Now, Mary is not necessarily in what we would call “a good space” to be singing praises and thanksgiving. She’s dirt poor, even according to her own song, and here she is, unmarried and pregnant. She comes from nowhere…Nazareth, a Podunk if there ever was one. Nazareth isn’t mentioned in the Hebrew Bible at all; neither is it mentioned in the Jewish writings nor by the historian, Josephus. Mary is a nobody from nowheresville: a pregnant, unmarried nobody from nowheresville!
So why should such a person sing? What would possess this young woman, in one of the most frightening situations of her life, to come out in song? Well, she knows something that we’ve also been let in on: that God has favored her. God has lifted her up and given her a special status. Her song rings out as she’s standing there with her old cousin Elizabeth, the both of them with child and rejoicing in their state.
These words of Mary’s which come down to us thanks to the foresight of Luke, are indeed important. As Protestants, we’ve lost much of the feeling for Mary that our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters have. The Eastern Orthodox, in fact, have a special name for her: Theotokos which means “God-bearer.” But we have much to reclaim if we let Mary into our lives.
Luke reminds us, from the very start of his gospel, through Mary’s song, that God roots for the lesser-thans. First, God picked Mary as the bearer of God’s son. But secondly, the words of Mary’s song remind us of this fact. She sings that God “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly,” among others.
Mary’s song goes from the personal to the political. She recognizes the extreme favor God has shown her at the beginning and moves to how, through this child whom she is carrying, the status quo will be upended. No more will the powerful reign and the rich control everything. The coming of this child marks the start of a new realm; an everlasting realm that raises up the lowly and sends the rich away hungry.
But wait, you might say, the powerful reign and the rich control everything now. What good is this 2,000-year old song if none of it happens? Why should we listen to Mary now?
Because we all need hope. Because we all need to believe that the status quo is upended in God’s commonwealth. Because we all need to be reminded that God does not operate the way we do.
Mary sings not only for herself but also for all the poor and lowly and meek of all the centuries, of all the places. Mary sings out a warning to rulers and potentates and rich people everywhere. Mary reminds all of us, rich and poor, mighty and lowly, powerful and powerless, that God selects whom God will for God’s work on this earth. And God’s selects in a way that humanity might not understand.
Is Mary’s song our song? Do we sing along with Mary these radical words of justice? Or do the words stick in our throats, maybe just a bit, as we choke out our faint echo of Mary’s soaring descant?
We want our Advent to be soft and easy; like the wrappings on the presents under the Christmas tree. But Mary doesn’t let us off. Mary’s acclamation of God and her praise to the one whose child she is bearing is not the easy carols we love to sing this time of year. Instead, we are dealing with tough issues that unsettle us. Advent is not necessarily all twinkly and bright. Advent can be just as challenging as Lent, that other time of preparation.
Mary sings out from a place of emptiness and, likely, fearfulness. She knows only one thing: that God has chosen her. And that is enough to make her sing; enough to make the song rise and soar from her lips to the heavens.
We are not in such places for the most part. Most of us are safe and secure and not considered among the lowliest of our society. That is why that song might cause us to stumble a bit as we try to sing along with Mary. We don’t know on which side of the dichotomy we fall as Mary sings. We’re not sure whether we’re rich or poor; powerful or powerless. But the important question is whether we are going to join in on God’s side; whether we’ll take up the cause of the poor and powerless, even if we aren’t necessarily counted among them.
Sing out, Mary, continue your song! Sing out across the miles and the centuries. Sing out for the poor and the lowly of every age and place. Sing out for God has chosen you for important work. Sing out your song of joy and hope. Sing out and lead us to the manger where you will bear a savior. Sing out and urge us to join in the song.
9 December 2007
Luke 1:39-45
We are spending Advent here at Chalice with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. There are few chances, in our male-dominated scriptures, for a female figure to shine as Mary does, especially during this season. Last week we heard, and saw, the Annunciation; the communication between Gabriel, the angel, & Mary informing her that she would become the mother of God’s child.
This week we get the next installment of Mary’s pregnancy; the visit that Mary makes to Elizabeth. Mary and Elizabeth are kinswomen; relatives in some way. Mary has been sent by Gabriel, you might remember from last week’s reading, to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth has her own story to tell, which Luke does recount to us earlier in his gospel account, prior to the annunciation. Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah are childless and beyond normal childbearing years, which makes this meeting all the more poignant.
Zechariah, Luke tells us, is a priest and while he was serving in the Temple had his own visit from the angel Gabriel. Gabriel came to tell him that he and Elizabeth would have a child whom they would name John. Zechariah at first doesn’t believe Gabriel and, in consequence, is made mute for the duration of the pregnancy. And indeed, Elizabeth and Zechariah did conceive. And it was in the midst of this pregnancy, six months into it in fact, that Mary came to visit.
So our actors today are these two women: one the young girl, just of marrying age, which was apparently pretty young in those days, and the elderly woman who should be past her child bearing years. Both are miraculously pregnant: Mary by God Godself and Elizabeth in her old age.
It’s interesting to note how this story is recounted. Both Elizabeth and her in-womb child react to Mary upon her arrival, without knowing yet Mary’s miraculous story. Elizabeth, we are told, in fact was filled with the Holy Spirit when Mary greets her.
Now, Elizabeth, we know is carrying John: John who would become known as John the Baptist. He, the one who would prepare the way for Jesus with his calls for repentance in the desert, is being carried by Elizabeth. He would have his own disciples and followers and make enough of a fuss to cause him to be jailed and executed by Herod. But that’s a story for another time in the year.
Right now we’re focused on Mary and Elizabeth, meeting in that small hill town in Judea. What can this meeting mean to us, some 2,000 years later? Why should we bother with these two women, both probably poor and insignificant in their own culture?
Well, because God has made them significant. God has come into their lives and raised them up. God doesn’t care about their cultural standing. God has special jobs just for them and cares not one whit about their social standing. God did not pick out a queen to bear either Jesus or John. God did not go to the wealthiest class to find women to be the mothers of these two important figures.
The General Minister and President of our denomination, Sharon Watkins, in the video we just watched, spoke of hope in the Middle East. Hope for a brighter future; hope for peace and an end to strife. In many ways, today’s story is similar. For what is a more hopeful time than pregnancy? During this time, one hopes for the future in a personal way: will my baby be a boy or a girl; will it be healthy; how will she or he grow up?
In much the same way, we are in the same situation. I know of a minister several years ago, who got in trouble by getting up in the pulpit during Advent and proclaiming, “People of God, we’re pregnant.” I doubt that I would get into the same trouble as she did for making such a proclamation here. But it’s true; we are pregnant as God’s people; pregnant with the hope of which Rev. Watkins spoke. Pregnant with anticipation of the way things will turn out in our world.
As someone said to Rev. Watkins during her trip to the Holy Land, we don’t have the luxury of losing hoping. It’s as true for us, as Christians awaiting the coming of our savior, as it is for those who deal daily with the violence of the Middle East. As we await, we do not have the luxury of losing hope. We must hold onto hope, as do those in Israel and Palestine, as do those who are pregnant carrying new life in their bodies.
People of God, we are indeed pregnant. And our pregnancy is one in which we shall wait, hopeful for the outcome and for God’s realm on our earth. Mary and Elizabeth knew of that hope. Both were graced by God and knew that they had hope not just for their family but for all of humanity.
As we remember Mary and Elizabeth meeting in that small hillside village all those years ago, let us live in the hope in which they did and watch for the Holy Spirit to come over us and lead us to leap with joy for the coming of the one who will save us.
We are spending Advent here at Chalice with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. There are few chances, in our male-dominated scriptures, for a female figure to shine as Mary does, especially during this season. Last week we heard, and saw, the Annunciation; the communication between Gabriel, the angel, & Mary informing her that she would become the mother of God’s child.
This week we get the next installment of Mary’s pregnancy; the visit that Mary makes to Elizabeth. Mary and Elizabeth are kinswomen; relatives in some way. Mary has been sent by Gabriel, you might remember from last week’s reading, to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth has her own story to tell, which Luke does recount to us earlier in his gospel account, prior to the annunciation. Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah are childless and beyond normal childbearing years, which makes this meeting all the more poignant.
Zechariah, Luke tells us, is a priest and while he was serving in the Temple had his own visit from the angel Gabriel. Gabriel came to tell him that he and Elizabeth would have a child whom they would name John. Zechariah at first doesn’t believe Gabriel and, in consequence, is made mute for the duration of the pregnancy. And indeed, Elizabeth and Zechariah did conceive. And it was in the midst of this pregnancy, six months into it in fact, that Mary came to visit.
So our actors today are these two women: one the young girl, just of marrying age, which was apparently pretty young in those days, and the elderly woman who should be past her child bearing years. Both are miraculously pregnant: Mary by God Godself and Elizabeth in her old age.
It’s interesting to note how this story is recounted. Both Elizabeth and her in-womb child react to Mary upon her arrival, without knowing yet Mary’s miraculous story. Elizabeth, we are told, in fact was filled with the Holy Spirit when Mary greets her.
Now, Elizabeth, we know is carrying John: John who would become known as John the Baptist. He, the one who would prepare the way for Jesus with his calls for repentance in the desert, is being carried by Elizabeth. He would have his own disciples and followers and make enough of a fuss to cause him to be jailed and executed by Herod. But that’s a story for another time in the year.
Right now we’re focused on Mary and Elizabeth, meeting in that small hill town in Judea. What can this meeting mean to us, some 2,000 years later? Why should we bother with these two women, both probably poor and insignificant in their own culture?
Well, because God has made them significant. God has come into their lives and raised them up. God doesn’t care about their cultural standing. God has special jobs just for them and cares not one whit about their social standing. God did not pick out a queen to bear either Jesus or John. God did not go to the wealthiest class to find women to be the mothers of these two important figures.
The General Minister and President of our denomination, Sharon Watkins, in the video we just watched, spoke of hope in the Middle East. Hope for a brighter future; hope for peace and an end to strife. In many ways, today’s story is similar. For what is a more hopeful time than pregnancy? During this time, one hopes for the future in a personal way: will my baby be a boy or a girl; will it be healthy; how will she or he grow up?
In much the same way, we are in the same situation. I know of a minister several years ago, who got in trouble by getting up in the pulpit during Advent and proclaiming, “People of God, we’re pregnant.” I doubt that I would get into the same trouble as she did for making such a proclamation here. But it’s true; we are pregnant as God’s people; pregnant with the hope of which Rev. Watkins spoke. Pregnant with anticipation of the way things will turn out in our world.
As someone said to Rev. Watkins during her trip to the Holy Land, we don’t have the luxury of losing hoping. It’s as true for us, as Christians awaiting the coming of our savior, as it is for those who deal daily with the violence of the Middle East. As we await, we do not have the luxury of losing hope. We must hold onto hope, as do those in Israel and Palestine, as do those who are pregnant carrying new life in their bodies.
People of God, we are indeed pregnant. And our pregnancy is one in which we shall wait, hopeful for the outcome and for God’s realm on our earth. Mary and Elizabeth knew of that hope. Both were graced by God and knew that they had hope not just for their family but for all of humanity.
As we remember Mary and Elizabeth meeting in that small hillside village all those years ago, let us live in the hope in which they did and watch for the Holy Spirit to come over us and lead us to leap with joy for the coming of the one who will save us.
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