SON OF DAVID, SON OF GOD
Until the Son of God Appear
A Sermon by Bruce C. Birch
We have been looking at the first verse of our beloved Advent hymn, O Come, O Come
Emmanuel
And we must now consider the proclamation of the good news that comes at the
end of verse 1
Until the Son of God appear.
But, as I suggested earlier this morning, we cannot come to this good news too quickly
There is a history in the promise to David, the expected coming is of the son of
David, Emmanuel
And, there is a context in the human suffering of exile, not just in Babylon, but
in all generations; that of Joseph and Mary and of our own
Only then can we properly approach the mystery of the incarnation
Now, I don’t know about you, but in thinking about incarnation I have always found it
easy to go quickly to the Gospel of John
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. John 1:14
Without a history or a context this can suggest that in Advent we are preparing for
God’s new thing to be unique, unprecedented
But incarnation is not a divine do-over
Incarnation is the culmination of what God has been doing!
Even in the prologue to John’s Gospel what God is doing begins even before Creation
itself
In the beginning was the Word.
But let’s return to the Gospel of Matthew
The very first testimony of the New Testament
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.
This is not the opening of the Gospel; it is verse 18
Matthew’s opening words are:
An account of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of
Abraham
This is the genealogy window in the Saint Denis Basilica, France
Matthew, our most Jewish gospel, links the coming of the Christ Child to God’s
promise to Abraham at the very beginning of Israel’s story
The genealogy that follows traces fourteen generations from Abraham to David
And fourteen more generations from David to the exile in Babylon
And fourteen more generations from exile to the Messiah through Joseph
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Messiah, used three times in this chapter, means Anointed One
And, as we have seen, is the title of the Davidic kings
The birth of Jesus is linked to what God has been doing through Israel
As the final line of the refrain for our hymn reminds us:
Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel
When the Son of God appears
He is also a son of Abraham and
He is the son of David
But Jesus comes to us not only through these ancestral fathers
The genealogy includes some significant mothers in the ancestry of Jesus
Four women are named
And they all push the limits of acceptability by the standards of their times
But they all boldly claim their own future and in so doing become
“Mothers of Messiah.”
Tamar who dresses as a prostitute to have sexual relations with Judah who has
ostracized her and cut her off from a secure future
Rahab, a prostitute, who boldly hides the Israelite spies in Jericho and helps Israel
secure a future in the promised land
Ruth, a Moabite woman, an ethnic outsider, who boldly claims her right to a
future on a nighttime threshing floor beside Boaz
Bathsheba, a woman taken from her husband by David, who becomes the mother
of Solomon and helps him secure the throne.
Mary then becomes the final mother of Messiah, a woman pregnant before
marriage
Messiah comes as one who will be constantly connected to the tradition of David
and the fathers of Israel starting with Abraham
But Messiah comes also as the child born of mothers who defied convention to
secure a future that included those others despised and rejected
Here is the question, do we want to celebrate Advent in a way that cuts the Christ Child
off from this inheritance?
That negates this rich genealogy?
We anticipate the birth of the Christ Child as the Son of God
Until the Son of God appear.
But the incarnation is not just a God thing
It must also be a human thing; it takes both human and divine lineage to bring
Messiah as fully human and fully God
Matthew is unambiguous that Mary is with child through the power of the Holy Spirit
But in Matthew the annunciation comes to Joseph and not to Mary
Joseph is addressed as the son of David and of Abraham
And the opening line of the Gospel says that this is the genealogy of Jesus, the
Messiah
On the God side Jesus has only one parent
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But on the human side Jesus has an entire family tree of mothers and
fathers.
What makes Mary’s pregnancy a miracle is that she has not had human sexual
relationship
But neither has Joseph
If the Holy Spirit can perform miracles with an ovum could not the Spirit also
perform miracles with a sperm?
Is it not equally a mystery that
Christ is born of Mary
And that Jesus is constanty claimed in all 4 gospels to be born of the line
of David
Is this not in keeping with the long claimed mystery of the incarnation that led the
great creeds of the church to finally declare that Jesus Christ is
fully God and fully human
That’s what incarnation is all about
Matthew wants us to recognize in Jesus Christ, the son of David and the Son of
`God
Advent anticipation does not end with Christmas
For unto you is born this day, in the city of David
Advent is the beginning of a journey on through Epiphany and Lent
To that Holy Week that begins with the entry into Jerusalem
Jesus is riding on a donkey in the fashion of the Davidic kings when they
entered Jerusalem to be crowned
And the people shout, Hosanna to the Son of David. (Mt. 21:9)
But at the end of that week he ascends, not an earthly throne, but a cross
Suffering death as the final sharing of vulnerable human experience
But on Easter morning rising to new life as the Son of God who reigns
not over an earthly kingdom but over the kingdom of God announced
in his ministry
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
We wait expectantly for your coming, O Lord,
And we are confident that you are ever God with us in the midst of our complex
and often challenging lives
We claim the promise you gave to David to dwell ever in our midst
And prepare ourselves to journey once again to Bethlehem to welcome David’s
Son, who shared our full humanity to show us our own possibilities
And ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here
Open our eyes to the world of exile experience that surrounds us
and renders so many unable to sing the Lord’s song
Make us singers of the Lord’s song
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Proclaimers of hope and salvation; love and justice
as the gifts of your kingdom
Until the Son of God appear
Restore to us the capacity for wonder at the magnitude of your gift
in the Christ Child
Wonder at the possibility that the divine can become a part of our own
humanity
And restore our resolve to live more fully as those created in the image of God
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee O Israel.
Make us singers! Make us more fully aware of your presence in our midst!
Make us grateful to be inheritors of the promise first given to Abraham
And then fulfilled when you called forth a covenant people
To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God
Renew us in the vocation to live as God’s people in a constant Advent effort to
Prepare ye the way of the Lord!