We all are curious about our beginnings.  We want to know where we came from;  who we are; whose we are; what went on before we our own memories kick in.  I’ve realized, since my mother’s death this spring, that since she was the last of her generation to die, carrying on the family stories now lies in my generation.  If we don’t tell them, they will be lost.

So it was with some interest that, in doing a major cleaning job in our apartment, Allen ran across my baby book, which my mom filled in after I was born.  Now I have to admit that my mother was fairly spotty about filling it in.  There are lots of blanks, holes in my story that I’ll never know.  But then there is other information that is nice to learn or relearn.  I know, for instance, that I was 7 pounds, 12 ounces and 22 inches at birth.

There’s a list of the first people who came to visit me though I don’t know what day...maybe on my birth day since I was born very early in the morning.  I know that when I was nine weeks old, I went to church for the first time.  Though who took me, what the minister and other people said remains a mystery.  I don’t know; maybe mom was trying to shield me from some unkind remarks.  And maybe I got there on my own.  I doubt it, looking at this picture taken around that time.  It doesn’t look like I did much at all on my own, precocious though I may have been.

So it is with each of us.  We are curious about our beginnings because beginnings are important.  And as true as this is for us individually and personally,  it’s all the more-so for us collectively.  Thus it is that there are a wide variety of creation stories to match the various cultures out of which they spring.

Some scholars think that the creation narrative we heard today sprang up during the time of the Babylonian exile.  The Jewish oppressors, the Babylonians, had violent, gory creation myths.  Our narrative, which each of us knows so well, may have been an antidote to those Babylonian creations myths.  Instead of violence, we have a creative God who brings into being creation; much more suitable to tell young Jewish children living far from their homeland.

The Hebrew word for “created” is bara.  The very first words of our Bible are b’ray-o-sheet bara elohim….”  (בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים) “At the very start, God created…”  Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the word bara is used only in conjunction with God.  God creates;  humans make or form, but they don’t bara.  That is left to God.  And on these six days of creation, God certainly did bara.  God brought into being all of creation:  the universe, the stars, the earth, all the creatures that inhabit it, including, of course, we human creatures.  God’s activity is one of creative energy that causes all of everything to come into being; certainly not something that we humans can do. 

And God saved us for last.  God created humans last and, in doing so, did so in God’s own image.  Our curiosity about our beginnings is satisfied, to a point.  It’s a bit like my baby book;  there is some important information, but still there are blanks.  What does it mean to be created in God’s image?  And what does “dominion” actually mean?  These are important and serious questions that we are left to ponder on our own.  I am, though, regularly encouraged, as I stop for a nap, to remember that God needed rest after all the work of creation that God did!

If we are in God’s image, how is it we’re like God and how are we unlike God?  An image is only a partial capture of the thing it is imaging, after all.  I do appreciate that in this account of creation (there’s a second account that follows this one), God’s image includes both genders; God created male and female at the same time.  That’s why I think gender-neutral language about God is so important:  God is at once both genders, without a single gender.  It’s a bit mind-blowing, but one that leaves us with no good pronoun for God.  “God” will simply have to suffice when talking about God.

When God gives us dominion over all the earth, God did a dangerous thing, the effects of which we see in particular over the past few decades.  We’ve taken dominion to mean that we can do anything we want with creation.  According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, dominion means to have supreme authority over something.  Certainly, in giving humanity dominion God did not mean for us to recklessly have our way with the world, stripping it of its resources in a few short generations.  Dominion, I believe, implies responsibility as much as it means control. 

But have we been responsible?  Have we exercised our dominion in an accountable way over the past decades?  I think perhaps not.  And this lack of responsibility has led to all sorts of difficulties in our world, most recently evidenced by natural disasters that many scientists are claiming are the result of global warming.  Global warming, of course, is a result of dominion run rampant.  We are paying for the results of years of our overuse of the planet on which we find ourselves.

If we are created in God’s image, it’s up to us to exercise our dominion with responsibility.  We aren’t Babylonians with a violent creation story; our creation myth involves a loving God who created everything and put us in charge, handing us the keys, as it were.  As the image of God, we should use caution as we become the dominate force in the world around us. 

Dominion and image are only two aspects of our communal creation story that we should pay attention to.  There is a variety of riches to be mined from these verses at the very beginning of our scriptures.  These stories remind us of the vastness of the universe which we are a part of and our part in it.

Creation stories are important: our creation story, my creation story, your creation story.  Those stories tell us who we are.  We recognize where we came from.  And they tell us who we belong to.  We learn that we are made in God’s image, both collectively and individually.   And as such, we need to recognize the great responsibility that we carry because of that.  All of us are created in God’s image.  Let’s live like it.

Emmanuel

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
"Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
   and they shall name him Emmanuel,"
which means, "God is with us." When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

I get an email five days a week from an organization called DelanceyPlace.com.  The email contains an excerpt of a nonfiction book:  some interesting nugget of information about history or business or some other aspect of life on this earth.  I’ve learned a lot, most of which, unfortunately, I’ve already forgotten.

Today’s reading from Matthew reminded me of an email I got from DelanceyPlace.com this past week excerpted from a book called Euphemania.  The excerpt was about euphemisms, those clever little phrases we all say to hide what we actually mean to say but can’t or won’t or don’t because of social strictures.  Did you ever hear the phrase “born on the wrong side of the blanket?”  Evidently, it was a euphemism popular in the late 18th century for...well, you can imagine what it was a euphemism for.  We all use euphemisms at one point or another to cover our meaning or avoid saying something directly.

Matthew’s writing this morning was heavy with euphemisms, at least part of it was.  Mary, he writes, was “found to be with child.”  In this instance we know exactly what Matthew is saying:  Mary was pregnant.  When we come to the words that Joseph planned to “dismiss her quietly” though, we’re not quite sure what Matthew meant.  Did it mean that he was going to send Mary away from her home and family to avoid the disgrace of being pregnant without being married?  Or did it mean that he would save her the horror of being stoned to death but still have her killed quietly?  We don’t know because that euphemism is lost to us now.

The words in Joseph’s dream are direct and to the point though.  They tell Joseph exactly what to do without any euphemisms or wavering in their meaning.  This clear message comes to Joseph via an angel.  Even though the angel is unnamed, I like to think it’s Gabriel again, the same angel who brought the news to Mary that she was going to bear Jesus.  That would make a nice symmetry: Gabriel, your all-purpose nativity angel.

What’s interesting about Matthew’s account of the birth narratives is that, unlike Luke’s account, this is told from Joseph’s perspective.  And this is the last we see of Joseph in the scriptures.  He disappears after this without a trace and is not mentioned again.  But Matthew, eager to settle in his Jewish readers minds that Jesus is a legitimate heir of David, gives us the genealogy from Joseph’s side and then tells the story of Jesus’ birth from Joseph’s viewpoint. 

God, through the angel, had to intervene to prevent Joseph from dismissing Mary quietly.   Without Mary, of course there would have been no birth.  But without Joseph, according to Matthew, there would have been no legitimacy to David’s throne.

Matthew is quick to quote Isaiah’s passage, the very one that we heard this morning in our Hebrew Bible reading.  In its original context, that reading was assuring a Judean king, Ahaz, that his line would continue with the birth of a son.  But Matthew uses that scripture in the context of Jesus’ birth, again adding in legitimacy to a Jewish readership that would know the original scripture well.   Matthew, from the very beginning is working to prove that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah who has come to save the world from itself.

Of course, the Jewish folks of the first century, who would be reading Matthew’s gospel and were Matthew’s intended audience, were looking for a political Messiah, who would free Israel.  But by the time Matthew wrote his gospel, there was already a split between Jews and Christian Jews, such that the Christians were no longer allowed in the synagogue.  So they were ready to accept a spiritual Messiah, one who came and conquered not Rome but death and sin.

The angel, back to our reading this morning, spoke directly to Joseph:  don’t be afraid; Mary’s baby is from the Holy Spirit; name the baby Jesus; Jesus will save the people from their sins.  That’s the summation of the angel’s message and Joseph took it to heart.  The name “Jesus” by the way is the Greek form of the Hebrew name “Joshua” which means “God saves.”  Thus the addition of the fact that Jesus will save the people from their sins in the angelic proclamation makes sense with the name, Jesus.

And that’s how we like our communications from God, isn’t it?  Direct and to the point without any room for equivocation.  Except when we’re looking for another answer than the one we got; then we want wiggle room, of course.  But when God sends an angel to deliver the message, you know that you’re going to get it direct and true.

Matthew was making a point here by focussing on Joseph.  If you think back through the Hebrew Bible, there was another famous Joseph, one who was known for his dreams, who traveled to Egypt and was known to be righteous, just as we were told Joseph is righteous.  Matthew’s Jewish readers and hearers would certainly make that connection between the more recent Joseph and his ancestor in the faith.  Again, a link to Jesus’ Jewish past is established through Joseph.

Matthew, in quoting Isaiah, gives Jesus a second name:  Emmanuel.  Emmanuel is a Hebrew name which does in fact mean “God with us.”  And that’s what the nativity stories are all about, aren’t they:  God entering into humanity as God has never done before.  God being with us in new and exciting ways. 

In fact, the whole of Matthew’s gospel is working to show that God was with us in the person of Jesus Christ.  In fact, if you jump ahead twenty-eight chapters to the closing verses of the book of Matthew, you’ll find “God with us” there again if you look closely enough.  For there at the very end of his Gospel, Matthew tells us of Jesus’ promise to be with us to the end of the age.  Emmanuel.  God with us.  Always.

This birth narrative from Matthew sets his readers and us up for the continuing story of God’s presence among us both now and for all time.  Jesus came, we are told from the very start, to save the people, not from Rome or from any other earthly power but from their own sins.  And, as we journey through Matthew this coming year, we’ll hear how God remains with us and will remain with us forever.

[Painting is The Vision of St. Joseph, by James Tissot.]