Matthew 1:18-25
This Advent we are reading the story of Jesus’ birth through the eyes of people who encountered angels and through those encounters became players in God’s good vision for life. Before Matthew tells the story of Joseph, in a predicament, he gives us a genealogy of Joseph. This isn’t a genealogy like Ancestry.com, which traces generations backwards and finds amazing surprises. Matthew knows where he’s going before he starts. He doesn’t much care about physical ancestors so much as he wants us to know that the spiritual ancestors of a carpenter named Joseph, a first century peasant, are the great people of Jewish history. Joseph inherits faith and trust in God from a long line of people who followed God’s way, beginning with Abraham, tracing through the greatest king David and several prophets, right up to Matthew’s time. There aren’t the genealogical surprises like those found on Tracing Your Roots, but there are some big spiritual surprises. In a line of famous men, Matthew has placed three women: Rahab, the prostitute who helped Israelite spies escape from Jericho before it was conquered; Ruth, the widow who persuaded her husband’s cousin Boaz to take her as a second wife after she moved to the land of Judah with Naomi her mother-in-law; the unnamed wife of Uzziah, whom King David abducted, raped, and took into his harem, having made sure that her husband was killed in war. She becomes the mother of famed King Solomon. These aren’t just any women, but three women whose interaction with men involved their sexuality, the men’s power of life or death over them, and the continuity of God’s people into a future.
In that setting we read about Joseph, inheritor of this history, who learns that Mary, his fiancée, in pregnant, not by him. The angel comes in a dream to tell him, “Don’t be afraid of Mary’s condition. God is going to use it to work miracles for the people.” The prophecy is quoted, “Behold, ,a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” This is the prophecy people quoted in their hope for a Messiah to free them from Rome. There are a couple of things we should know about this prophecy. First, it’s a mistranslation of the original Hebrew, which says, “a young woman shall conceive.” It foretells a birth, but not necessarily a miraculous one. Simply the birth of someone who will rescue the people. Second, in the first century to say that someone was born of a Virgin was to claim that person as the Emperor, entitled to power. In that age, every emperor crowned was given a new birth story, telling how he was the son of his mother and a god and therefore himself divine. To claim virgin birth for Jesus is to set his future kingdom alongside Rome, equal in significance and glory.
Over time this claim led Christians to assert that Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary.” It’s a physical miracle. And it may be. But it also may be a way to say something spiritual about the significance of Jesus at a point in time when people would have been unaware of the physical miracle they were projecting. Some scholars today suggest it’s more likely that Mary was raped, perhaps by a Roman soldier. It’s curious that the three women Matthew places in Jesus’ lineage were also physically at the mercy of men around them. Certainly rape or physical abuse would have been a common experience of women in the first century when they were considered property, without rights, living under military occupation. Even today rape is a much more common reality that we like to admit and women can easily find themselves with unexpected pregnancies. However we understand this story, miracle or predicament, it would have been unwelcome for Joseph to find his new wife pregnant with another’s child.
Because Joseph is a kind man, he doesn’t want to accuse Mary of infidelity publicly, condemning her to punishment, social ostracism and possible death. He will “put her away quietly.” But the angel insists, “Don’t be afraid to marry her. The child is about to become a great blessing to the world.” So Joseph takes a chance on Mary. Perhaps he already loved her. He completes the marriage and becomes the father of the one we call Messiah.
Last week the message from God was that blessing can come from difficult circumstances and from taking risks. This week Joseph is asked to take a risk with Mary in order to bless the world. He has every right to reject her and condemn her to an even more difficult life than a peasant girl would normally expect. But he takes a chance. I’m thinking God is telling us that blessing comes from taking a chance with people. Many folks face hardship in life, often through no fault of their own. How much blessing happens because someone sees them without judgement and dares to offer another chance?
When Jesus grew into adulthood and accepted his ministry, he went about the country taking a chance on folks others had rejected. Unclean women who were bleeding. Unclean people with leprosy whose bodies were decaying day by day. Unclean tax collectors who were hated by their villages. People with mental illnesses who couldn’t function. Those with crippling injuries who couldn’t work. Children. Pharisees. All sorts of people no one else wanted to befriend. He welcomed them, accepted them, included them, and helped them become whole.
When we were feeding the folks at LaGrave on First we saw what happens when people on the street are given shelter, sobriety, work skills, and trust. Sometimes they turn their lives around. Every week you give me the privilege of saying to people in our community, “You matter to us.” You give them a chance to stay housed, to have transportation so they can work, to receive prescriptions so they can be healthy. You are taking a chance and shifting the future of folks bit by bit. When we said “yes” to Global Friends, we took a chance to welcome New Americans into our community. They have become our friends and continue to make this town a better place. My daughter and all the special ed teachers in this town take a chance on children who are struggling every day, and with support some of them are learning new ways to grow into healthy adults.
The angel message: Don’t be afraid; take a chance; trust this person…is an important message in this moment in our history. Day after day we’re hearing another message from what constitutes the Empire of our time.
I don’t want them here. They are the worst of the worst. Immigrants aren’t welcome.
Those who live in poverty are lazy. They don’t deserve to eat, or to have health care.
We don’t want to see people without shelter. They are a danger on our streets.
If one person commits a crime, thousands of others should be punished – for their color or their language or their birthplaces.
Drug trafficking is an excuse to kill people without due process or trial or even evidence.
Often all this and more is spoken in the name of God, of Christianity.
The message to Joseph gives us a way to push back on those who would dehumanize or divide us. We are about to celebrate God coming into this world to redeem it. To show us how to live by a better vision – to trust each other, care for each other, lift one another up. We are invited every day to take a chance on people, some of whom may be in trouble, different from our expectations, a little scary. That is God’s way. One person at a time we can lift people up, give them a chance to put life together, invite them into community. When we do, slowly the world changes. That’s what it looks like when we become a blessing, and when God redeems the world through God’s people. That’s the world we are building together.