Matthew 1: 18-25
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God and mother of us all. Amen.
I’m feeling a bit off-kilter just now, and I imagine you might be feeling that way too.. As churchgoing Christians we have one foot in the church world and the other foot in the world of our culture. Sometimes we’re not particularly bothered by it. But at this time of year we really feel the tension between the two. In both worlds it’s almost Christmas, and the church calendar tells us that today is the fourth and the last Sunday in Advent. The culture tells us that there are three shopping days til Christmas if you count this afternoon.
What increases our sense of disconnect is that the various stores we visit have been slowly bringing in Christmas merchandise since after Labor Day. After Halloween they moved the Christmas decorations and gift displays front and center. I’m pretty sure that’s when the piped in music took on Christmas themes as well. These things happen before the church calendar has even reached Advent yet. That’s one reason we can feel a bit off.
The culture keeps bombarding us with its messages. Hallmark’s been after us for years, not only through its card shops but through its movies and other media. When I took my car in for service a couple of weeks ago the dealer kindly provided me with a loaner vehicle. The car’s radio was tuned to a satellite radio channel that was all Hallmark Christmas music all the time. I couldn’t figure out how to get another station, so I listened to quite a lot of Christmas music that day. My takeaway was that Christmas is “the most wonderful time of the year,” and that it has little to do with the birth of Jesus.
Instagram is my personal guilty pleasure. If you’re not familiar with it, Instagram is an app on your smartphone that gives you access to pictures of just about anything you could imagine. Many accounts depict an idealized version of Christmas. The decor is perfect, the gifts are beautifully wrapped, and the food is elegantly prepared. Many pictures feature a large family composed of extremely well-dressed and very happy, relaxed people. Conflicts and worries are nowhere to be seen. Now over the sixty-five years of Christmases I’ve known, very few have borne any resemblance to these scenes. Preparations have been done hastily, roasts have gotten burned, recently deceased family members were sorely missed, and much fretting went on behind the scenes over the bills that would arrive after the first of the year.
But the biggest source of holiday apprehension concerned just what would happen when the motley assortment of folks we called family got together in one house. Would Aunt Sally criticize our daughter’s purple hair and her tattoos? Poor girl is struggling as it is. Would Grandpa drink too much and fall asleep at the table? Probably. It’s even more likely this year. Since Grandma passed he’s been self-medicating his sadness. Would our cousin Sue ask our gay son if he has a girlfriend? Wish she would both get a clue and mind her own business. Would Uncle Bill wear a certain red hat to the family gathering, and would that start a fight? Someone at the table would be only too happy to take him on. Would our cousin Bob tell an ethnic joke that just happens to concern the ethnic background of some of the family members present? It wouldn’t be the first time. Some of these things may have actually happened in my extended family. Names and details have been changed to protect the guilty. Some of these things may have happened in your family too.
Our families aren’t perfect. We ourselves aren’t perfect. Many of us are distressed because our country is less perfect than it has seemed in a long time or maybe ever. This year we may be finding hope for ourselves and for the world around us in very short supply indeed. We may find ourselves sorely in need of good news. And there is good news, right here in today’s short Gospel lesson from Matthew. We’re going to have to look for it, and we’re going to have to look a bit before what the lectionary gave us today, but the news is good indeed. Not only is the news good, but a look at today’s Gospel lesson shows us how God works for good in the most unpromising of situations.
Before we get to the text itself, let’s consider for a moment the world that Jesus was born into. If we’re unhappy with our political situation, first century Palestine was infinitely worse. The Jews were an oppressed people living under Roman rule. The local king, Herod, was in the pocket of the the Romans. He was no friend at all to the Jews. Herod was known not for justice but for his ruthlessness and paranoia. This King Herod is the same nasty fellow who in Matthew’s next chapter will be murdering all the boys aged two and under to because he fears losing his kingdom. The humble and poor Jewish family into which Jesus was born would have been at the mercy of both the government’s tax collectors and the Temple hierarchy, which made the obligatory sacrifices barely affordable. Life for Jews in Palestine was difficult for Jews at best and yet more problematic if they were also poor.
And let’s not forget, as we approach our text, that the circumstances of Jesus’ conception were murky at best. Mary is engaged to Joseph but not yet living with him, yet she is already expecting a baby. If we borrow from Luke’s gospel, we know that she has been visited by an angel who tells her that the child she carries is the son of God. Now times may have changed quite a bit, but the news would have been greeted with the same disbelief then as it would be today. Mary’s pregnancy would have been attributed to unfaithfulness, not divine intervention. Such a pregnancy ordinarily would have resulted in the ending of the engagement and Mary’s public disgrace. In fact, Jewish law required this kind of action on Joseph’s part. Under certain circumstances the mandated punishment would have been death by stoning. However, Joseph was a kind man, and he decided to end things quietly.
But as Matthew tells, us as soon as Joseph had decided what he would do, an angel appeared to him in a dream. The angel said to Joseph, “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.”
Now we need to consider a couple of things about Jesus’ name. The name Jesus is from the Hebrew name Yeshua, sometimes written as Joshua. It was a very common name at the time, and the name means “God saves.” The idea of the son of God being given a common name seems odd. Except in Latin cultures, and I may be wrong but it may just be in Latin American cultures, the name Jesus isn’t generally used for ordinary human beings but is reserved only for Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ. The point of giving this baby a common name is to unite him with the rest of humankind, to unite him with ordinary people rather than to set him apart. According to the angel in the dream this baby will also have another name, Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” The person of the baby Jesus unites the ordinary with the extraordinary. The person of the baby Jesus unites the human with the divine.
Another thing about this dream and the naming of Jesus. The angel addresses Joseph as “Joseph, son of David.” This connection of Joseph to David—yes that David from the Old Testament—links Joseph and Jesus to a long line before them that stretches all the way back to Abraham. Now this genealogy is explained in the verses preceding our lesson today, verses that the lectionary left out. The genealogy is sometimes referred to as the “begats,” from the word used in the King James Bible. I’m guessing the lectionary folks omitted this section because the reading of it can be somewhat tedious. But even if tedious it contains some things for our consideration.
If you’ve been bemoaning not only the folks who will be attending your Christmas dinner but also the sketchy composition of your own family tree that you’ve unearthed on ancestry.com, you might be interested to know about Joseph’s and Jesus’ forebears. They include Tamar, who was raped by her father-in-law, who then tried to burn her alive. There was David, whose famous adultery with Bathsheba produced his most famous son, Solomon. Let’s not forget that David sent Bathsheba’s husband Uriah to certain death in battle just to cover up his own sin. Uzziah was struck down by God for his arrogance. And then there was Manasseh, who restored idol worship and the cult of Baal, and who is known as the worst of the Biblical kings. We could reach all the way back to Jacob, who cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright. There are more examples of bad deeds by members of this line, but we don’t have the time right now to examine their manifold sins and wickedness. We’d be here all day.
`` The point is, if God has chosen this wildly dysfunctional—and worse—family as a vehicle for redemption, there’s hope aplenty for us and for our families. If God can save humankind through this family, just think what God can do with us and ours. Maybe we think we ought to be perfect, or at least better than we are, but we don’t need to be. God doesn’t require us to be holy. God just asks that we be human, with all that being human entails. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the significance of the Incarnation. To think otherwise is to misunderstand what it means for God to have taken on human flesh in the person of Jesus, a poor Palestinian Jewish baby born in the first century. God took on the whole business of what it means to be human, from the messiness of human birth to the painfulness of death and everything in between.
Let’s remember today as we leave the Advent season and move into the Christmas season, the meaning of Jesus’ two names, Jesus and Emmanuel. Forget about the Hallmark and Instagram versions of Christmas. The first Christmas wouldn’t have had a chance of measuring up, but who needs picture perfect when you’re welcoming a savior? Let go of your expectations for a perfect celebration. We won’t find good news in the culture but we’ll find it in the Gospel. After all, the word “gospel” means good news. The good news is that Jesus is coming. He came and he comes to be one of us. God’s got this. God will save us. God is with us. Amen.
