Anton Raphael Mengs, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Text
Last Time on ‘The Story’
So we have crossed over from the Hebrew Scriptures to the Christian Scriptures. The Jewish people have now been occupied by the Roman army for a couple of generations. As the book opens, Herod the Great has been crowned as ethnarch and ‘King of the Jews’ by the Roman Senate. There has been a steady desire and expectation for a ‘Messiah’ of God’s people, an ‘anointed one’ who is the son of David. Several attempted revolutions have risen to various levels of success. Arguably the most effective one was the Maccabean Revolt, which claimed independence from the Seleucids, and quickly devolved into civil war between pro-Hellenist and anti-Hellenist factions. Most of these attempted revolutions have failed, but serve to raise the political temperature of the area. Rome currently allows the Jewish people a certain amount of autonomy, especially in matters of their religious practice, but that could (and eventually would) change.
Into this political/religious soup, we hear of Jesus of Nazareth, a Rabbi (Jewish teacher) and non-violent political leader who was executed by the Roman Governor, and whose disciples (those who follow) and/or apostles (those who are sent) claim was resurrected from the dead and ascended to heaven. The early sect of believers who believed Jesus to be the Messiah were remarkably made up of both Jewish and non-Jewish believers who began teaching and serving in the way of their teacher, and telling of the good news (great proclamation) that he is alive, and that all can find life in him. They gathered in houses primarily, and a whole underground movement of disciples quickly spread across the known-world (and even into the less-known world). The first writings about Jesus were likely collections of sayings that Biblical Scholars call the “Q source” as well as writings from apostles to communities of believers. For much of Church history, we believed that the gospel (good news) according to Matthew was the first written narrative account, and then later shortened by Mark and expanded upon by Luke. However, Biblical scholars now believe that the gospel according to Mark was written first, and then expanded upon by Matthew and Luke.
Overview of Matthew
Overall, Matthew’s account of the gospel presents Jesus as the new Moses. There are several direct and indirect references to Moses, and Matthew organizes the gospel around five teachings (Torah) of Jesus, just like the five books of the Torah of Moses (sometimes we call them the Pentateuch, meaning ‘five’). The major sections of Matthew are as follows:
Ch. 1-2: Overture
Ch. 3-7: Announcing God’s Kingdom, culminating in giving Torah (Sermon on the Mount)
Ch. 8-10: Enacting the Kingdom, culminating in Jesus’ instruction to his apostles (sent ones) as they go out.
Ch. 11-13: Responses to Jesus, culminating in Parables about the Kingdom
Ch. 14-20: Various Expectations of Messiah, culminating in Jesus preparing his disciples/apostles for his death
Ch. 21-25: Direct Confrontation with the Religious Leader, culminating with a blistering critique of the Pharisees
Ch. 26-28: Crucifixion and Resurrection
Dr. John Dominic Crossan, in the Homebrew Christianity Online Class “The Christmas Stories” makes the claim that the Birth stories in both Matthew and Luke’s account both serve as Parabolic Overtures for the rest of the gospel accounts. Overture being a musical term for the opening piece of music in an opera or a musical which introduces the musical themes, but also gives an idea of how the story is going to go. A similar artistic element would be the prologue of a book or the pilot episode of a series. The point is that this opening set of narratives gives you a clue to the themes and overall tone of the following story. This model is more easily seen in John’s account, which starts with a broad sweeping and poetical telling of the ‘Word/Logos’ (which for Jewish folks could stand for the divine name of God, and for Hellenized folks stood for the knowable nature of the universe itself). This opening does not fit the overall style of the rest of the narrative (poetical instead of narrative), but does introduce the overall tone and themes of the gospel.
Crossan claims that these openings are also Parabolic, as in a story told for effect rather than to relay (what modern readers would call) factual information. As one might assume, this got some push-back in the class, but his claim is that given the fact that the two accounts differ so greatly, it is more likely that they have been constructed for the purpose of preparing the reader (hearer) for the story to come. This is not the case for other elements of the gospels where many times all three synoptic gospels relay similar stories.
Here is my breakdown of the opening of Matthew’s gospel, which we will be dealing with for the next few weeks:
Matthew 1:1-17 a Genealogy which runs from Abraham to Jesus in three sets of forteen
Note there are five women which are listed among the men, including Mary
1:18-25 Annunciation in a dream (1) to Joseph and the birth of Jesus
2:1-12 Magi from the East come to visit the ‘newborn king,’ Harod is tipped off, and they escape ‘by another way’ after receiving a dream (2)
2:13-15 Joseph receives a dream (3), and flees to Egypt (now a place of safety)
2:16-18 The Massacre of the Innocents (Herod the Great cast as Pharaoh)
2:19-23 Joseph is told in a dream (4) to come back to Judah, and then told to go to Nazareth in another dream (5).
Today’s Story
The Birth of Jesus the Messiah: So, in case you were wondering who the person is that we will be reading over, there should be no question. Here Jesus is unequivocally introduced as the Messiah, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Found to be with child by the Holy Spirit: Again, not a lot of playing around. There is no flowery conversation about a messenger sent to Mary. We are given, in quick succession, that his mother was Mary, that she is engaged to Joseph, but not living with him. This is an interesting contrast to Luke’s account, which holds up Mary as the primary character for this story, and yet her name is given after her hometown, sexual status, marital status, and relationship to Joseph. Here, we are introduced to her first, and then the story goes on to focus on Joseph.
She is found to be pregnant, but don’t worry dear reader, it is the Holy Spirit all along.
Joseph’s Dilemma: Today’s story holds Joseph as the actor of the story. This may well be for patriarchal reasons, though this is also the gospel that specifically brings up the matriarchs (and some who are ‘bad girls’ too) in the genealogy, so perhaps something else is going on.
Joseph is introduced as a ‘righteous man,’ but one who is put into a dilemma of being betrothed to a woman who is pregnant with not-my-son. In this account (and actually, not in Luke’s account either), Mary does not tell him what has happened (though the narrative has told us there is nothing to fear). However we are told that Joseph is contemplating divorcing her quietly so as not to create too much drama. It is interesting to think about what non-drama would actually be able to be accomplished in a small village, but we will leave that aside for the moment. It was certainly possible for a man to divorce his betrothed, the dowry would be returned to the bride’s family, no harm, no fowl. The alternative would be that he could have her brought out before the town elders and be stoned as an adulterer. This is the story we are presented, but some deeper questions could (and should) be asked as to what we are not being told.
Dr. Crossan has the interpretation that this story is presented specifically to connect Jesus’ life in utero with that of Moses. Looking at the Mishna, a collection of Jewish commentary on the Torah (which he describes as extra notes made by storytellers), there was likely questions about the beginning of the Exodus story. In that story, Pharaoh makes a pronouncement that all of the male Hebrews must be killed. The obvious question, unless we have been conditioned not to ask it, is why would the Hebrews engage in sexual activity while under that mandate? Why risk giving birth to a son and having it killed? The Mishna tells a story of the elders of the Hebrew people making just such a pronouncement, that in light of Pharaoh’s edict, that there would be no marriage and no marital relations. In one story, Moses’s father refuses to obey the law (inspired by God). In another, Miriam, the prophetic sister of Moses, has a dream, and informs her parents that they can go ahead and conceive, because the child will be a savior for their people.
Similarly, in this story there is narrative tension over the marital status of Jesus’ parents, and a dream tells Joseph that all is well with this pregnancy.
The Child Conceived in Her is from The Holy Spirit: This is a tough one for us modern Westerners. We have all sorts of questions like, ‘where did the Y chromosome come from?’ This has led many modern-day critics to dismiss at least the virgin birth, if not the entirety of the Gospel. Ancient readers, however, would have had very little trouble with such a statement. The Greek and Roman world (along with several other cultures before and after) had lots and lots of stories about divine impregnation of human women (something like 80% of all the Greek myths are about Zeus getting frisky). Many other great and powerful men were depicted as coming from divine and sometimes even virgin conceptions. Augustus Caesar called himself the Son of God, tracing his lineage through Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome, who along with his brother Remus were born of their virgin priestess mother and Mars, god of war.
You Shall Name him Jesus: This one is a little bit lost on us. The name given to the person we call ‘Jesus’ in English, is ‘Yeshua’ in Aramaic, or “Yehoshua’ in Hebrew. Yeshua means “YHWH is my Salvation,’ so, “you shall call him ‘YHWH is my salvation’ because he will save his people from their sin,” makes a bit more sense. When this name is given for Moses’ right-hand-man and replacement (coincidence?), it is translated into English as Joshua. English really does not like initial hard vowel sounds, especially diphthongs, and really loves inserting the letter ‘J’ into Biblical names even though neither Hebrew nor Greek have an equivalent. Interestingly, when we translated the name of the Messiah into English, we used the Latin transliteration ‘Isus’, from the Greek transliteration ‘Iesus,’ of the Aramaic name ‘Yoshua,’ from the Hebrew ‘Yehoshua,’ stuck the ‘J’ in front of it (‘cause ‘Ie,’ more like ‘ew,’ amiright fellow Anglo-Saxons?), and got ‘Jesus.’
A Virgin Shall Conceive: So, this one is a bit of a stretch, to be honest. The context for the verse from Isaiah chapter 7 where Ahaz, the king of the southern nation of Judah is worried because the king of Aram and the king of Israel (the northern country) had joined in an alliance against him. These words are a word of comfort from Isaiah (after putting him on blast for bothering YHWH with such trivial matters), saying that in the timeframe of a young maiden marrying, conceiving, and bearing a son (so, like a year), those enemies will be no longer on the national scene (not long after, the Assyrian Empire destroyed both).
Matthew, however, along with the early church, took it to be a sign of Jesus’ divinity, and the importance of him in general that he was born of an actual virgin. Perhaps this was in part because the stories could be lifted up alongside of the stories of Caesar, and people could compare and contrast.
Emmanuel/Immanuel: And here for me is the real center of this text, Emmanuel, God with us. As I said before, if we take the Isaiah text at face value, he is talking about the short term concern about the Israeli-Aramean alliance. However, Isaiah also throws in this little nugget that the child will be called “Emmanuel” which means “God is with us.” So sure, the end of that alliance could be seen as a sign of God’s being with the people of Jerusalem and Judah. The birth of a child almost always is a sign of hope, having a child is a sign of hope. But here we are applying it to the birth of Jesus, the Messiah. As Christians we not only believe that Jesus is a great teacher and a overall spectacular human being, but God’s very being made flesh. Whether we are more compelled by the metaphors of ‘Son of God’ or ‘God incarnate,’ either way something truly amazing is going on in this Godperson that we are ultimately unable to know in this life. But one thing we can know, is that in Jesus Christ, God is with us. In a way unlike any other time in history, God is truly with us, in physical form, living a finite mortal existence. If we take a classical viewpoint of God’s divine being, God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite, eternal, unbound in any way that we can possibly imagine; emptied God’s own divine being (in the words of Philippians 2) to be a finite being, experiencing one moment at a time, bound by crude fleshly body. If we see it from more of a Progress viewpoint, in Jesus God entered into the creation experiencing it from the inside and inviting creation into relationship with the divine. Carl Barth would also add that God is not only with us, but the incarnation of Jesus also means that God is for us, God is on our side, God seeks to be in relationship with us. This is good news indeed!
Jesus is Born: and then Jesus is born. No pomp and circumstance. No stable, no innkeeper, no shepherds, no imperial census, and Bethlehem is not mentioned (yet). The proof that Jesus was born is that he lived and died, just like the rest of us (of course, unlike the rest of us he rose again, but that is later in the story).
Pop Culture References
There have been many depictions of the nativity, some more faithful to Scripture than others. One that truly surprised me with how good it was is the animated film, “The Star.” In this clip, Joseph (voiced by Zachery Levi, so you gotta love that) receives the news of Mary’s pregnancy. We see the beginning of a subplot, that will be picked up later, of his feeling of worthiness.
after this scene, there is a subtle nod to the dream, and a sweet scene where Joseph lies down next to Mary.
Hymn Suggestions
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
O Come All Ye Faithful
Joy to the World
All the hits
Links
Homebrew Christianity Online Class “The Christmas Stories”
Advent Music Playlist on Spotify
My Advent Devotional on “Our Bible App”
Fourth Sunday of Advent (Matthew 1, NRSV)
ONE: Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob,
MANY: And Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers
ONE: and Judah the father of Parez by Tamar, and Parez the father of Hezron,
MANY: and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab,
ONE: and Aminidab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab,
MANY: Boaz was the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.
(Light four candles)
Let us pray: O God, before whom generations rise and pass away, we praise you for all your servants who, having lived this life in faith, now live eternally with you. We thank you for the generations that lead to Jesus, the Messiah, and for the generations since. We thank you for those who have come before us, and we pray for those who will live lives of faith after we are gone. Amen.
Light One Candle to Watch for Messiah (Glory to God # 85)
Light one candle to watch for Messiah: Let the light banish darkness.
He shall bring salvation to Israel, God fulfills the promise
Light two candles to watch for Messiah: Let the light banish darkness.
He shall feed the flock like a shepherd, gently leading them forward.
Light three candles to watch for Messiah: Let the light banish darkness.
Lift your heads and lift high the gateway for the King of glory.
Light one candle to wait for Messiah: Let the light banish darkness.
He is coming; tell the glad tidings. Let your lights be shining.
ONE: So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations;
MANY: and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations;
ALL: and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
Christmas Eve (Luke 2, The MESSAGE mostly)
ONE: About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the empire.
MANY: Everyone had to travel to their ancestral hometown to be accounted for.
ONE: So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth to Bethlehem in Judah, David’s town, for the census.
MANY: As a descendant of David, he had to go there.
ONE: He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant.
MANY: While they were there, the time came for her to give birth.
(Light four candles, plus the Christ candle)
Let us pray: God with us, Immanuel. You have blessed us with your presence in Jesus Christ. Tonight we remember Jesus’ birth. We gather with shepherds and magi, the lowest and the wisest, to worship your incarnation, and wonder at your marvelous works. Give us your wonder and peace this evening. Amen.
Light One Candle to Watch for Messiah (Glory to God # 85)
Light one candle to watch for Messiah: Let the light banish darkness.
He shall bring salvation to Israel, God fulfills the promise
Light two candles to watch for Messiah: Let the light banish darkness.
He shall feed the flock like a shepherd, gently leading them forward.
Light three candles to watch for Messiah: Let the light banish darkness.
Lift your heads and lift high the gateway for the King of glory.
Light one candle to wait for Messiah: Let the light banish darkness.
He is coming; tell the glad tidings. Let your lights be shining.
ONE: She gave birth to a son, her firstborn.
MANY: She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the inn.