23 December 2007

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.