Joseph found his plans – and perhaps also his hopes and expectations – turned upside down (Matthew 1.18-25). What might this mean for us when our hopes are disappointed?
Context
We know that December General Elections are very rare in the United Kingdom. One, perhaps unforeseen, consequence of the recent election is that many of us find ourselves compelled to address some pertinent but different questions to the ‘Christmas story’ in the light of newly present realities we are experiencing. And asking what our Christian belief that, in Jesus, God is ‘with us’ has to offer as a challenge to our country in return. In a recent Big Issue interview, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has spoken of how he feels the country is moving in a worrying direction of travel.
Reflection
When I was confirmed, more than 50 years ago, the bishop who did the deed mentioned in his sermon that ‘the whole of the gospel can be found in the genealogy of Matthew’. I have not forgotten his comment and so I am rather sad that Matthew 1.1-17 never appears as a Sunday lectionary reading. Genealogies may look erudite and just boring, but this particular one is making a very important point – without which the next few verses – the Gospel reading for the coming Sunday, Matthew 1.18-25 – cannot be fully understood. It is those women in the genealogy, the four of them who ‘mess up’ the nice neat pattern of 14 x 3 male generations: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and ‘the wife of Uriah’. What women! All of them outsiders in one way or another, all of them challenging the sometimes unjust sexual mores of their patriarchal culture.
There is a wonderful verse retelling of all this by the biblical scholar Michael Goulder, which can be found online as part of a lecture I gave about 10 years ago (go to page 2). And one of the points that is being made when Matthew tells us about Mary’s situation and Joseph’s response is that he wants to place Mary squarely in this line of unorthodox fore-mothers. He emphasises this by his designation of Joseph as ‘Son of David’ (v.20) which makes a clear connection to the genealogy of the preceding verses. ‘Jesus the Messiah’ (v.18) is linked to figures who would have made many people feel rather uncomfortable (indeed, aspects of the stories of these women still feel very challenging today).
The passage then draws on the text of Isaiah 7.14 to name the baby not only as ‘Jesus’ (linked to the Hebrew word for ‘save’) but also as ‘Emmanuel’, which is explicitly translated for the reader as ‘God with us’. This is the ‘key’ which opens the whole Gospel of Matthew. The expression is recapitulated in Jesus’ final words at the end of the Gospel, ‘Behold I am with you till the end of the age’ (Matthew 28.20). Located between this beginning and this end, the whole of the Gospel of Matthew affirms the centrality of the incarnation, that in Jesus Christ ‘God is with us’. This, then, is what Christmas is ultimately all about. And Matthew offers a further subversive twist, for a careful reading of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25.31-46) suggests that one place where we can continue to see ‘God with us’ is in the faces of the hungry, the homeless, the poor, the refugee, those in prison: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…. When was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you? And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”’ What implications has this for how we mark Christmas?
Some interesting roads were explored in a recent podcast on ‘The Road to Now’ with theologian David Taylor: ‘We should permit the Nativity stories to remain as strange and bizarre and fantastical and difficult as they in fact are, rather than taming and distilling them down to this one nugget or theme of effusive joy. There is effusive joy in that – it’s simply that that’s not the only thing that characterizes these stories.…I would love to see us create…new music that either retells portions that we are already telling but not the whole of it, or we need to tell parts that have not yet been told….Let’s ask ourselves how God is at work in all the minor-key or difficult or dissonant parts of the Nativity stories, not absent from – those are not extraneous to God incarnating himself in Jesus Christ. Those are essential parts of it.’ The Art and Theology Blog, on which this comment is posted, includes a link to a painting by Scott Erickson which depicts ‘God with us’ in ways that many would find challenging – but which is perhaps in keeping with Matthew’s fore-mothers of Mary.
While Luke’s nativity is suffused with joy, in Matthew the story seems to be told in more of a ‘minor key’, beginning with Mary’s initially problematic pregnancy, and drawing to its conclusion with the flight into Egypt and the murder of the children of Bethlehem. As some of us grieve and worry what the future may hold and the direction of travel in our country, perhaps this December may be a year in which celebrating Christmas in a ‘minor key’ is called for? How can we honour both the ‘major’ and the ‘minor’ keys of Christmas?
Prayer
Loving Father in heaven,
Emmanuel, God with us,
of your goodness
you have given us yourself –
the richest gift of all.
You invite us to seek for you,
in the face of your Son,
where you have imprinted your likeness,
made glorious with the wounds
of suffering and passion.
Grant us a spirit of generosity,
so that we may be enabled also to discern your features
in the changing kaleidoscope of this world’s need.
Amen.
written by Clare Amos, written when working for the Anglican mission agency USPG
Questions
- Which bits of the Christmas story sing to you in a minor key? Which parts use the ‘major key’?
- What do you think about the current ‘direction of travel’ in our country?
- How should we respond as Christians if at the present time our hopes are disappointed, or indeed have been realised?
All-age activity
The well known Advent carol ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’ draws on the ancient Advent antiphons.
- 17 December: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
- 18 December: O Adonai (O Lord)
- 19 December: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
- 20 December: O Clavis David (O Key of David)
- 21 December: O Oriens (O Dayspring)
- 22 December: O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)
- 23 December: O Emmanuel (O With Us God)
If you take the initial letter of each antiphon and work backwards from the end, you end up with the Latin phrase ‘Ero Cras’ – which means ‘tomorrow I will come’. Working in groups, make your own acrostic. Choose a few titles/names/attributes of Jesus, and take the initial letter of each to make up a title that ‘sums up’ Jesus’ coming for you – for example: Jesus; Only son; Young child = JOY.
Young people
The Joseph we meet in Matthew 1 and 2 is a ‘dreamer’. He is like (but also different from) Joseph the dreamer of Genesis. Unlike at least some of the dreams of the earlier Joseph (Genesis 37.6-10), the dreams of Joseph in Matthew 1 do not focus on himself, but rather on helping and protecting others. Have a discussion about ‘dreams’. What dreams do we have specifically for ourselves, and what dreams do we have for how we might help others?
Dr Clare Amos is an Anglican Christian with long experience in Christian education, and a special interest in sharing the fruits of biblical studies. Among other roles she is currently honorary Director of Lay Discipleship in the Church of England Diocese in Europe.
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