advent 4 year A

Isaiah 7: 10-16 NRSV text
Psalm 80 NRSV text
Romans 1: 1-7 NRSV text
Matthew 1: 18-25 NRSV text

Don’t you find Matthew’s nativity story deeply shocking? We’re so used to the Christmas story as we celebrate it every year in nativity plays and Nine Lessons and Carols services that we forget to play close attention to what Matthew (as opposed to Luke) takes great trouble to tell us! Matthew’s Christmas is not a happy, joyful, angel- and shepherd-filled Christmas! It’s stark and scandalous, dark and dangerous.

Before we look more closely at this week’s texts, I want to ask why it is that we will find it shocking. The answer is because, at Christmas if nowhere else, we subscribe to the “Jigsaw Theory” of reading the gospels: the notion that we get the fullest account of what actually happened by combining Matthew and Luke. It’s as though we assume that Matthew knew about the angels and the stable, but somehow forgot to include them – or supposed we’d be okay because we’d have Luke’s account at our side as we read his!

It’s also interesting to observe that Matthew constructs his story of Jesus so that it is bounded on one side by the nativity and on the other by the Passion. That’s interesting because we do the same sort of “jigsaw reading” at Easter that we do at Christmas. You’ll have heard the justification: “It’s like witnesses to a crime or an accident – different people notice different things, so the way to get the fullest picture of what actually happened is to combine the various accounts”. Sounds good and sensible – until we realise that the gospel writers aren’t in the same game. It doesn’t work. If we take seriously what each writer tells us, we quickly realise that the stories can’t be combined comfortably.

That’s because each evangelist wants to tell us the meaning of Jesus – and each has a different “take”. It’s not that the different “takes” can’t be combined – in fact, that’s where any “jigsaw” theory becomes appropriate! The fact is, though, that they only give us the power and detail of their “take” through the medium of telling the story. “Being biblical”, therefore, requires that we take each evangelist in his own right, and curb our demand that he should have done something other than he did (most commonly, to insist that he ought to have written a biography rather than a gospel)!

Matthew’s Christmas
Pretend you’re reading the gospel for the first time. What is more, assume for the moment that you have only Matthew’s gospel. Re-tell Matthew’s story of Christmas to yourself, and only then read Luke’s nativity – or compare it to the traditional Christmas account as it is seen on countless church and school stages, year by year. What do you notice?

• There’s no Annunciation and no Magnificat
• There’s no visit to Elizabeth, and the shared joy of divinely ordained pregnancies
• There’s no census that requires Mary and Joseph to journey to Bethlehem
• There’s no “No room at the inn” scene, no stable, and no manger, because Mary and Joseph already live in Bethlehem and the birth takes place in the family home
• There are no cattle lowing, and no adoring donkeys (!)
• There are no shepherds, no angel choirs, and no announcement of “Peace on earth”
• There’s no “Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart”

Instead, we have a Christmas with a radically different “feel” to it. Note some of the elements of Matthew’s story:

• Mary doesn’t say a word! The angel doesn’t say anything to Mary – in fact, no one does! The angel appears only to Joseph with instructions in a series of dreams
• Joseph is the architect of all the action – in faithful response to the angelic messages
• There is no account of the birth itself
• There are wise men who come from the East to see the infant Jesus – who is presumably aged 1-2 years at the time
• There’s the flight into Egypt and the Slaughter of the Innocents
• After the death of Herod, the family returns from Egypt and makes their home in Nazareth, which is why Jesus is known as “Jesus of Nazareth”

This is a very different Christmas story from Luke’s. Why, even the genealogies are different! Now, if we ask, “But which is true – or which elements are historical?” we’ve asked the wrong question. We’ve asked a historian’s question – which is fine, but it isn’t either a story-teller’s question or a disciple’s question! The story-teller’s question is, “What is the story Matthew is trying to tell us?” The disciple’s question is, “How does this enable me to see him more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly, day by day?”

Scandal and disgrace
There’s dodgy stuff happening here. It’s all about public scandal and disgrace – the disgrace of an illegitimate child. Mary and Joseph are engaged, but not yet living together – and Mary is pregnant! It is not necessarily scandalous that she had fallen pregnant while engaged. Engagement in that society of the time lasted anything up to a year and beyond. At some point, the woman (usually only a girl who had just reached puberty) moved into her husband-to-be’s house. That would be the point at which (in some groups) a sexual relationship would begin, while in others, sex happened for the first time on the wedding night.

Matthew’s point is that Mary is pregnant and the pregnancy has nothing to do with Joseph. In other words, she’s either been whoring around or else she has (as later anti-Christian propaganda asserted) been raped (there is a tradition that she was raped by a Roman soldier). Either way, (a) she is no longer a virgin, and therefore far less “valuable” a commodity to Joseph and (b) she has committed adultery, and thus Joseph is required by law, custom and social standing to divorce her. Joseph has 2 options: to make the whole thing public, or else just quietly cancel the arrangement with the disgraced Mary’s family. This is the option he goes for (1:19) – until the dream.

Let’s be clear about one thing: whatever his origin, Jesus is a bastard! He is not Joseph’s son. That much is clear from all the gospels, in different ways: it was clearly widely known in Nazareth that Jesus’ origins were distinctly not kosher! Look no further than the genealogy, and at how Matthew changes the formula of “x was the father of y” when he gets to Jesus: “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Messiah” (1:16). Joseph is known as the husband of Mary, rather than the father of Jesus.

Another indication of the effect of Jesus’ reputation as a bastard can probably be seen in Matthew’s opening verse. Matthew gives Jesus 3 titles: Messiah, Son of David, and son of Abraham. This latter is interesting. “Son of Abraham” means “a good Jew”. The point here is that, as an illegitimate child, Jesus would not be accorded the status of a “son of Abraham”. He would not be allowed to marry a “daughter of Abraham”, nor would he have all the benefits to which the first-born child in a family was entitled. If he had, in fact, been born as a result of Roman rape, this would be all the more pertinent. Whatever his origins, Jesus would be on the margins of respectable society for all of his life.

Matthew is thus concerned to tell us that Jesus is indeed a son of Abraham. Of course, this means, importantly, that Jesus stands in the line of the great saving promises of God. Matthew emphasises this with his constant emphasis on the connection between Jesus and the prophecies of promised hope (cf 1:23; 2:6). But Matthew is doing more than simply making theological statements about Jesus: he is showing us that Jesus is the seed of the New Israel – despite the fact that he is “outside the covenant” in terms of his birth.

Ambiguity, sexual impropriety and God
Let me be clear: I think the obvious sense of what Matthew tells us is that Jesus is the creation of the Holy Spirit. The angel tells Joseph as much in the dream. The child to be born is a son. Joseph is reassured and decides to do differently from what he had planned: rather than divorce Mary, he will marry her and bring up the illegitimate child as his own.

I find myself extremely ambivalent reading Matthew’s story at this point. It’s clear that Joseph is unreservedly a “good guy”. What he does requires compassion, love, understanding and, above all, faith! He risks being the object of local ridicule: “Look! He couldn’t hold on to his wife – she played around!” And, because he doesn’t cast Mary off: “That Joseph – he’s a right sucker! Imagine being prepared to have shop-soiled goods – and bring up some other man’s bastard! He must be desperate! Where’s his pride, for God’s sake? And as for that rubbish about angels and dreams … yeah, right! Pull the other one! What a loser!”

But what about Mary? She’s completely passive in this story. She doesn’t say anything – and, more importantly, she’s never told anything. The angel deals exclusively with Joseph, and Joseph, as far as the story is concerned, never tells Mary what is happening! Unlike Luke’s gospel, Mary is never asked about or told what is happening to her. She finds herself pregnant – without explanation – facing ridicule, rejection and scandal. She is enormously vulnerable and exposed, with no source of encouragement and comfort (other than the fact that her husband-to-be stands by her).

However we read the story of Jesus’ conception (and I think we ought clearly to understand it as a story of virginal conception), the fact remains that Mary has still to face her parents and the village. She will be forever tainted with the reputation of having fallen pregnant before marriage; of failing to be Joseph’s virgin bride. And the child that will be born will forever be tainted with the scandal of illegitimacy. The Messiah, the saviour, will be known throughout his life locally as a bastard.

How can God be involved in such ambiguity, with all the suggestions of sexual impropriety? Why does God expose Mary so? And how can something as fundamentally “holy” and important as salvation begin with enduring scandal?

This is where we need to look at Matthew’s genealogy. We’ve already noted that it is different from Luke’s. One striking point of difference is that Matthew includes 4 women in his genealogy. I find it surprising that Matthew does (being the good Jewish, patriarchal son of Abraham that he is) and that Luke doesn’t (being the inclusive, women-sensitive man that he is!). What is even more surprising is who Matthew lists: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba! This is hardly the list of female worthies that he could have picked from the pages of the Old Testament!

Look at their stories: Tamar (whose story is in Genesis 38) dresses up as a prostitute, sells herself to her father-in-law Judah, and by so doing, ensures a lineage for herself and so becomes the great-great grandmother of David.

Rahab is the prostitute in Jericho who shelters the spies. Living on the margins of society (literally within the city walls, closest to any attack), she is able to accommodate the spies without fear of questioning because she makes a living by renting out her body for money.

Ruth is one of the great saints of the Old Testament, and the subject of one of the best-loved biblical romances … but what about the threshing floor? Naomi tells Ruth to go to Boaz at night on the threshing floor, take off her clothes and “lie at his feet”. The story is wonderfully ambiguous, so that the question with which everyone is left is, “Do they or don’t they ..?”

And Bathsheba: was she a willing partner in the seduction? Was she a victim of royal rape? These are questions debated by the rabbis. But what they are agreed upon is that she took an enormous risk by sending word to David that she was pregnant. If the king wanted to cover up his deed (which he clearly does!) he could do so ruthlessly (as he does!). It would have been easy to have Bathsheba (rather than Uriah) killed. And anyway, if Bathsheba is raped, why does she keep the incident from Uriah?

What these women have in common is a story of dodgy, risky sexual histories. It is their sexual histories that either put them on the margins (Rahab) or continually threaten to erupt into scandal (Tamar, Bathsheba and Ruth). What they also have in common is a story of men who stood by them (Judah, David, Boaz and Joshua). But most importantly, it is precisely these risks that place them in the stories of God’s saving actions. Yahweh, it seems, is a God who shockingly, graciously and astonishingly becomes involved in sexual improprieties in order to save. And no more so than here, in Jesus’ birth.

Virgin birth? (Isaiah 7: 10-17)
Yes! Matthew wants to tell us that Mary is a virgin and conceives Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, we need to recognise that it is not absolutely necessary to read the story in this way. There is no annunciation: Mary appears on the scene pregnant (not by Joseph) and unmarried. There is the anti-Christian tradition from early on that Jesus was the result of her rape by a Roman soldier. She may have become pregnant by someone else in the village – or someone passing through.

My point is this: it is possible (though pretty tendentious!) to read verses 18 and 20 (referring to the work of the Holy Spirit) as “God is going to use this child through the agency of the Spirit” – referring not to Jesus’ origins, in other words, but to God’s plans for Jesus.

We need also to recognise that the matter isn’t settled by citing Isaiah 7:14; the Hebrew word for “virgin” can mean both a virgin or simply a (sexually active) young woman. It is the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) that uses the word parthenos, which must be translated “virgin”. Yet even if we’ve decided that Isaiah intended the word to be translated as “virgin”, we must recognise that he was not prophesying a virginal conception! Isaiah 7: 10-17 is a prophecy to Ahaz concerning a child to be born. It is a future event – but in the near future. 7:14 means, “A young woman – so young that she is still a virgin at the moment – will soon be married and conceive”. There is no miraculous origin intended: indeed, the scholarly consensus is that the woman in question is either the prophet’s wife or the king’s wife.

Having said all that, Matthew’s theology is that Jesus is the creation of the Holy Spirit – and thus, in a real sense, God incarnate. Matthew intends us to understand God as the origin of Mary’s pregnancy: he is “God with us”. Just as the child born in Ahaz’s reign would be a sign that Yahweh was with them, so Jesus will be “God with us” – not just as sign; not just derivatively, but truly.

Note Matthew’s motivation: this is not first and foremost an attempt to make Jesus respectable! Matthew lets the scandal around Jesus’ origins stand. He reminds us that God is not confined to acting only through conventional, socially-safe means: God acts on the margins and in the “grey zone”. What Matthew wants to do is precisely to emphasise that Jesus is a bastard: he is a bastard because his father is God, not Joseph. He is on the margins, counted as illegitimate and someone to be mocked, derided and viewed with grave suspicion.

Where else does this happen? The cross, of course. Matthew’s birth story is the prelude to the Passion. The gospel is bounded by these two stories. The Easter story is, if anything, even more scandalous: how can God possibly have anything whatsoever to do with Roman crosses? Jesus is mocked on the cross: “If you are the Son of God”, come down! Save yourself!” In other words, if Jesus’ origin is indeed divine, then he will show it by dissociating himself from the cross (literally!), because God can self-evidently have nothing to do with that sort of scandal and ignominy.

Matthew’s gospel story is a story about God saving the world through the most dodgy of means. Matthew’s point is this: through the act of the Holy Spirit, God walks among us in Jesus in order to save us.

Son of David, Son of God (Romans 1: 1-7/Psalm 80)
Matthew tells us in his opening verse that Jesus is the Son of David. The genealogy traces that. Jesus is the kingly Messiah and the true King of the Jews: he dies with that title above his head, and Matthew will go on to show how Jesus is rightly worshipped by the wise men as the rightful king (as opposed to Herod).

In his opening verses to the Romans, Paul locates Jesus within the saving traditions of the Jewish stories about Yahweh: Jesus is the one who was hoped for from of old – David’s son. That locates Jesus within the Shepherd King tradition of David – the one who “shepherd’s Yahweh’s people, Israel”. Look at Psalm 80. Israel’s shepherd king, David, becomes the model for Yahweh as the Shepherd of Israel. But note, too, how the image of Yahweh as the Shepherd slips naturally into Yahweh the Vinedresser (vv8ff). Shepherd and Vinedresser recall the seminal story of liberation/salvation – the Exodus. Jesus, in other words, belongs in the story of God Who Saves.

That alone is worth a pause for thought. But more than that, Jesus is “declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). Paul does not evince any knowledge of or interest in Jesus’ origins as one conceived by the Holy Spirit. For him, it is the Easter events rather than Christmas events that disclose Jesus’ divine origins. He is aware of the accusation: “How can Jesus possibly be the Son of God when he dies such a shameful death?” His answer is Easter Sunday: Jesus is shown to be the Son of God through the Spirit-power of resurrection – however unlikely and shocking that is!

Doing Christmas with Matthew
Matthew’s Christmas is dark. It is full of scandal, political intrigue and murder. Matthew’s Christmas foreshadows the darkness, scandal and horror of Easter. We don’t find an apologetic for Jesus’ scandalous origins – the fact that Mary is pregnant by the Holy Spirit is not an attempt to make Jesus respectable, but to emphasise that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, and the means by which God is going to save not only his people but the whole world. Just as Paul goes on to talk about Jesus being the means by which the Gentiles are included in God’s salvation, so Matthew has the risen Jesus declare, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go and make disciples of the whole world!”

If we’re left squirming in discomfort at the distinctly dodgy methods employed by God to do this, we are reacting precisely as Matthew intends that we do. The question of who Jesus is always and finally a question about who God is. Who is this God who is at work saving the world in Jesus? How can a holy God be involved in such murkiness? Surely illegitimacy discounts the possibility that God is involved here?

Matthew’s answer – both at Easter and at Christmas – is that God is involved. Jesus is illegitimate – because of the actions of the Holy Spirit. Jesus dies the most scandalous sort of death – because God is involved! Why is there a question about Jesus’ parentage? Because God is saving us! Why does Jesus not come down from the cross? Because God is saving us! God is the God whose saving grace is seen in the midst of disgrace. Do you want to see God doing God’s work of salvation? Then look first to Bethlehem, and then to Golgotha: look at the bastard son of Mary, who dies as a piece of human refuse on a Roman cross, and recognise the Son of the Living God!

Amen.

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