December 2007 Fourth Sunday of Advent Kim

One of the most memorable movies I have seen is the film of Charles Dickens’s novel ‘Little Dorrit’. It is actually two films, both very long. The two films do not follow in sequence, telling the first and the second halves of the story; instead, each film shows the whole drama, but from a different point of view. First we see the action through the eyes of the hero; then, in the second film, the same story through the eyes of the heroine. A few scenes are identical, but in the second film we understand many things that had not been clear the first time around. Like seeing with two eyes instead of one, the double movie enables the viewer to get a sense of depth and perspective on the whole dramatic story.
The story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s Gospel is seen through the eyes of Joseph; in Luke’s Gospel, we see it through Mary’s. No attempt is made to bring them into line. The central fact is the same; but instead of Luke’s picture of an excited Galilean girl, learning that she is to give girth to God’s Messiah, Matthew shows us the more sober Joseph, a caring, thoughtful and was somewhat older than Mary, discovering that his fiancée is pregnant. He did not seem to be an impetuous person but decides to quietly call off the wedding. He considered what to do about the situation and while doing this, the angel brought him guidance ‘in a dream’. As a result of this he had enough faith to go ahead with the wedding as planned. The only point where the two stories come close is when the angel says to Joseph, as Gabriel said to Mary, ‘Do not be afraid.’ These are important words for us, too in today’s world. It is fear that stops us from being the people that God wants us to be and stops us from doing his work. ‘What if I fail?’ ‘What if they turn against me?’ ‘What if’ can stop us dead.
Fear at this point in Matthew’s story is normal. For if people had found out that Mary was pregnant by someone other than Joseph, Mary would have probably been stoned to death and her baby with her and for centuries now many opponents of Christianity, and many devout Christians themselves, have felt that these stories are embarrassing and unnecessary, even untrue. We know (many will say) that miracles do not happen. Remarkable healings, perhaps; there are ways of explaining them. But not babies born without human fathers. This is straining things too far.
Some go further. Theses stories, they say, have had an unfortunate effect. They have given the impression that sex is dirty and that God does not want anything to do with it. They have given rise to the legend that Mary stayed a virgin for ever (something the Bible never says; indeed, here and elsewhere it implies that she and Joseph lived a normal married life after Jesus’ birth). This has promoted the belief that virginity is better than marriage. And so on.
It is of course true that strange ideas have grown up around the story of Jesus’ conception and birth, but Matthew (and Luke) can hardly be blamed for that. They were telling the story they believed was both true and the ultimate explanation of why Jesus was the person he was and is.
They must have known that they were taking a risk. In the ancient pagan world there were plenty of stories of heroes conceived by the intervention of a god, without human father. Surely Matthew, with his very Jewish perspective on everything, would hardly invent such a thing, or copy it from someone else unless he really believed it? Wouldn’t it be opening Christianity to the sneers of its opponents, who would quickly suggest the obvious alternative, namely that Mary had become pregnant through some more obvious but less reputable means?

Well, yes, it would; but that would only be relevant if nobody already knew that there had been something strange about Jesus’ conception. In John’s Gospel we hear the echo of a taunt made during Jesus’ lifetime; maybe, the crowds suggest, Jesus’ mother had been misbehaving before her marriage (7.41). It looks as though Matthew and Luke are telling this story because they know rumours have circulated and they want to set the record straight.
Alternatively, people have suggested that Matthew made his story up so that it would present a ‘fulfilment’ of the passage he quotes in verse 23, from Isaiah 7:14. But, interestingly, there is no evidence that anyone before Matthew saw that verse as something that would have to be fulfilled by the coming Messiah. It looks rather as though he found the verse because he already knew the story, not the other way round.
Everything depends, of course, on whether you believe that the living God could, or would, act like that. Some say he couldn’t (‘miracles don’t happen’); other that he wouldn’t (‘if he did that, why doesn’t he intervene to stop genocide, famine or wars?’). Some say Joseph, and others at that time, did not know the scientific laws of nature the way we do – though this story gives the lie to that, since if Joseph hadn’t known how babies were normally made he would not have had a problem with Mary’s unexpected pregnancy.
But Matthew and Luke do not ask us to take the story all by itself. They both ask us to see it in the light of the entire history of Israel – in which God was always present and at work, often in very surprising ways – and, more particular, of the subsequent story of Jesus himself. Does the rest of the story and the impact of Jesus on the world and countless individuals within it ever since, make it more or less likely that he was indeed conceived by a special act of the Holy Spirit?
That is a question everyone must answer for themselves. But Matthew would not want us to stop there. He wants to tell us more about who Jesus was and is, in a time-honoured Jewish fashion; by his special names. The name ‘Jesus’ was a popular boys’ name at the time, being in Hebrew the same as ‘Joshua’, who brought the Israelites into the Promised Land after the death of Moses. Matthew sees Jesus as the one who will now complete what the law of Moses pointed to but could not of itself produce. He will rescue his people, not from slavery in Egypt, but from the slavery of sin, the ‘exile’ they have suffered not just in Babylon but in their own hearts and lives.
By contrast, the name ‘Emmanuel’, mentioned in Isaiah 7:14 and 8:8, was not given to anyone else, perhaps because it would say more about a child than anyone would normally dare. It means ‘God with us’. Matthew’s whole Gospel is framed by this theme: at the very end, Jesus promises that he will be ‘with’ his people to the close of the age (28:20). The two names together express the meaning of the story. God is present, with his people; he doesn’t ‘intervene’ from a distance, but is always active, sometimes in most unexpected ways. And God’s actions are aimed at rescuing people from a helpless plight, demanding that he take the initiative and do things people had regarded as (so to speak) inconceivable.
This is the God, and this is the Jesus, whose story Matthew will now set before us. This is the God, and this is the Jesus, who comes to us still today when human possibilities have run out, offering new and startling ways forward, in fulfilment of his promises, by his powerful love and grace. This is the God and this is the Jesus, who wants to be allowed to come into the situations and events, the relationships, our work, in our lives, so that He can make a difference. Dare we, this Christmas, allow Him to do so? Go on I dare you! Let’s see what happens!