ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
SERMON PREACHED BY THE VICAR ON ADVENT 4, 2009 AT EVENSONG & BENEDICTION
"Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way". Matthew 1.18
Over the last century or more, the infancy stories of Matthew and Luke have taken a battering at the hands of biblical critics who have dismissed them as unhistorical legends, no different from the stories of extraordinary births which grew up around other great figures in the ancient world. They have been regarded as picture book theology for Sunday Schools and nativity plays, or occasions of adult nostalgia like carol services when even Richard Dawkins will listen to them.
In their disdain for the infancy stories of Matthew and Luke, these modern-minded critics have found allies in a surprising quarter. Many evangelical and pentecostal Christians influenced by "dispensationalism", that theology popular among fundamentalists, which divides sacred history into periods, relegate the gospels to the second division because they come from before Pentecost and so don't have the same spiritual "oomph" as say the Book of Revelation. This is of course historical and theological nonsense as the gospels were written after Pentecost too, even though they deal with events which happened before it.
Another fundamentalist stance is that the Virgin Birth must be believed; not out of regard for the Incarnation, much less out of any sense of honouring the role of the Virgin Mary in our salvation, but because the Bible says it is true. And if we doubt one thing that the Bible says, then we can doubt anything. So what is being defended here is not the doctrine of the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, the union of divine and human, as expressed in the Catholic Creeds, but the fundamentalist doctrine of the inerrancy or infallibility of Scripture: something which is not the doctrine of the Church of England, although there are those who will try to persuade you that it is.
When we listen to Matthew's telling of how the birth of Jesus Christ took place, the first thing we need to get out of our heads is that he is some theological lightweight, to be compared unfavourably with proper theologians like Paul and John. True, his theology is expressed not in conceptual terms, the kind of thing intellectuals and critics like, but in narrative, story. But if we learn to read his story we find in it something far deeper than a nice story for children.
At the beginning of his gospel, the bit which most people skip over, the genealogy, the long list of Jesus' forebears, Matthew anchors him firmly in the history of Israel, in God's purposes for his people. Joseph and Mary are the last link in the chain which stretches back to Abraham our father in faith. Interestingly, it includes a number of women who might seem out of place , either because of dubious morality: Tamar and Rahab and Bathsheba or because they were not Jewish: Ruth.
And now Jesus is to be born of Mary, a young woman betrothed to a man of the house and lineage of David and she turns out to be pregnant. In the marriage customs of the time, couples would go through a betrothal ceremony. But because often the bride only a 12 or 13, she would continue to live with her parents for at least a year before moving to the house of her husband after which the marriage would be consummated. In the meantime, they would be considered legally married.
First century Palestine was a society in which "honour" was of paramount importance. Adultery on the part of a woman betrothed to another man would be a great scandal and bring dishonour on her family. . Recent news stories of so-called "honour" killings in immigrant communities serve to bring home to us something of what this would have meant in the time of Mary and Joseph: a great deal more than the embarrassment of having to cancel the wedding and send the presents back. According to the strict letter of the Jewish Law in Deuteronomy, the consequences would be fatal for the woman. She would be returned to her own family whose would be expected to stone her to death.
The severity of this punishment had already been lightened by rabbinic rulings by the time of Mary and Joseph, but it is still likely that the offending girl would find herself out on the streets and faced with prostitution as the only means of supporting herself and her child.
Matthew speaks of Joseph as a "righteous man". By this he means someone who obeys the Law of God. Joseph's first reaction demonstrates that he is more than someone who simply keeps to the letter of the law. He decides to protect Mary in so far as he can by divorcing her quietly. Matthew, who is much concerned with the law, shows us in Joseph a model of one whose "righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees"; someone whose response reflects the Sermon on the Mount which expects us to obey the spirit of the law rather than just the letter.
This just man then receives an angelic message, his equivalent of Luke's annunciation. He is told not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
He is to name the son to be born "Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins". Jesus was quite a common name at the time. It is the Greek version of Yeshua, or Joshua; itself is a contraction of Yehoshua, a name which means "Yahweh or God helps" or popularly, "God saves". Jesus will live out the meaning of his name, he will save. But notice that "he will save his people from their sins." This is not what most Jewish people at the time were looking for at the time. They saw themselves as the victims of Roman oppression, and the Messiah, the Saviour they looked for was one who would save them from that worldly captivity. It was other people who were the heavyweight sinners, not them.
Sceptical commentators have had a good deal of fun at poor Matthew's expense with the next bit. "All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel'".
They point out that Isaiah speaks not of a "virgin" but of a "young woman". He is speaking of a young woman, probably a princess in the royal household, giving birth to a prince who will be a sign of hope to his people at a time of political crisis for Jerusalem. We need not doubt that this is exactly what Isaiah thought he was talking about. But Matthew is quoting not from the Hebrew version of the scriptures which uses the word "almah", a "young woman", but from the Greek translation used by Jewish and Christian communities around the Mediterranean world. Most Jews, even in Palestine, did not speak or read Hebrew. If they lived in Palestine they spoke Aramaic; elsewhere they spoke Greek. It was not unusual for there to be textual differences. In the passage from Hebrews which was the epistle at mass today, the words of Psalm 40 are placed on Jesus' lips. When he says "a body you have prepared for me", he is quoting the Greek version. The Hebrew version says "you have given me an open ear". The Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, rather than the Hebrew, was the Bible for the early Church and in Isaiah it used the word "parthenos" - "virgin".
Matthew sees Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Testament, so the sceptics say, what he must have done is to seize on this text and build on this shaky foundation the whole edifice of the Virgin Birth. But this is to think that Matthew uses fulfilment texts the way we might. In fact, it is more likely that what he is doing is looking at the Old Testament in the light of what he believes about the incarnate and risen Lord, the tradition of his Virginal conception which he seems to have received independently of Luke, and seen in that verse from Isaiah a "type" or foreshadowing of it. In the light of the risen Christ and his Spirit, Matthew sees in the Old Testament more than the Old Testament itself could.
The Virginal conception of Jesus is often seen as being about sexual purity; and a Church which adopted and developed a negative view of sexuality quite early on, has often seen it this way. Hence the belief that Mary remained a Virgin after the birth of Jesus - in spite of what is said in the Gospel; that Joseph "had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son", not ever, and the mention of Jesus' brothers and sisters in the gospel itself. In the family photograph album these have been re-labelled as cousins, in spite of a complete lack of linguistic support for such a conclusion. Scripture has been modified to support doctrine and devotion, not the other way round. Even many Roman Catholic scholars now suggest that the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary is built on shaky foundations and is pastorally harmful in its negative attitude to sexuality in married life.
Matthew is not concerned here with such issues. What is at stake is the nature of Jesus, Son of Mary. This child is not simply a particularly good and kind human being. Nor is he God merely pretending to be human. These are the two great Christian heresies: one stresses humanity at the expense of divinity; the other, divinity and the expense of humanity. Jesus is "Emmanuel. God-with-us", both divine and human and because that is so, he can restore the relationship with God for which we were made. Even scholars who say, "Well, there is no historical proof of the Virgin Birth", often find themselves admitting that it does say something which is vitally true about the divinity and humanity of Jesus.
And at the end of the Gospel, the perspective from which Matthew writes, the risen Christ will say to his disciples as he sends them out to share in his mission of reconciling the world to God: "Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age".
His sacramental pledge of that in the Blessed Sacrament serves to remind us of that immortal bond between divine and human which is the meaning of the child whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.