Text: Matt 1:18-25
Introduction
First I want to do a little thought experiment. Pick a year say 1890 – the year the frontier was
officially closed. Think of everything you know about how they lived especially mores about
marriage and family and sex. Would that 1890 person find today, or the time of Jesus more
alien? Who would that 1890 person think has completely strange ways of living?
Now you can repeat that experiment for other time periods going back in time from 1890. You
could even push it forward slightly into the early 1900’s. If you exclude the Gatsby rich and
urban of the 1920’s, maybe even later. You can repeat that experiment today for various
countries. The sit-com Outsourced has been running just that experiment. Comparing the
marriage and dating mores of India to the American ex-pat. The American has been moved to
India by his company to run a call center. He has left family, friends, food and customs – in
pursuit of the company dollar. The good Kansas native is always, in a charming way, hopelessly
naïve. His company is exploiting him, slowly ratcheting down his pay to India levels – he can’t
afford to fly home for Christmas while his boss skype’s him from the company retreat with a
massage therapist. As much as one of his Indian call center employees dreams of the American
dating Bacchanal, most of them look at his ways as exploitative and ultimately sad. The
apparent freedom of America is seen as selling fake-barf and other mid-american novelties to
those willing to let themselves be exploited. A people so divorced from the idea of good – that
all they value is the dollar and cheap thrills.
I think if you are being honest in that experiment, the way we live today is the alien.
Text
Why I wanted you to do that is because today’s gospel would be immediately recognizable to
those Indian call center employees and to those last homesteaders in 1890, but we have trouble
seeing it and ask all the wrong questions.
First Mary was betrothed or engaged to Joseph. To us that means a ring and a personal exchange
of promises that might be discarded for something as trivial as cold feet. To almost every other
culture and time, Mary and Joseph and their extended clans had agreed that these two would be
married. Everybody they knew, knew about it. Betrothal was the first act of marriage. With
some variance, Mary would live with Mom & Dad for a year, and then they would have the
wedding, which was the “coming together” ceremony. If Joseph had died during that year, Mary
would have been a widow. To get out of a betrothal, Joseph would have had to divorce Mary.
Second, to divorce someone was to publicly shame them. Joseph found Mary pregnant, and
these people weren’t idiots. They knew where babies came from. And Joseph was a righteous
man which primarily here meant he would follow the law which called for that public shaming.
A man who would not publicly shame an adulterous wife was held up to ridicule himself. Which
makes Joseph’s actions somewhat anomalous. He was a righteous man, but unwilling to put her
to shame, decided he would divorce her quietly. Joseph, as the Son of David unlike his ancestor
Ahaz to which the later prophecy was originally directed, knew the law, but also knew the place
of mercy. Joseph is the height of man’s religion.
But man’s religion gets it wrong. God has to intervene to make sure this goes correctly. God
intervenes to make sure that salvation comes, that Immanuel comes. What God is doing with
Mary and Joseph and that child is so different, that it takes dreams and angels and direct
commands. But God will go to those extremes for his people. Joseph – don’t be afraid to take
Mary as your wife. Don’t be afraid to go through with the “coming together” ceremony and
bringing her into your house. Because what she is bearing is not what you are thinking. This
child is a special creation. What gets translated as birth – if I just transliterated the verb is
genesis. The genesis of Jesus Christ was so. The Spirit hovered over the waters. This is not a
Greek Myth with the Spirit taking human form. Christ is no demi-god like hercules. This is the
second Adam, but sharing the first’s humanity through Mary.
But that second Adam creates a problem. How is this one the Son of David? How does Jesus
fulfill that promise? Before Jerry Springer and paternity tests, if the couple are married and the
man names the child, it’s his. We have trouble with this. Partly because my guess is that most
men are at best 50% sources of names today. I wanted Grace. Ellen wanted Anna. So we have
Anna Grace. But Matthew repeats the same scene with two different children. The Baptist is
named John by Zachariah surprising everyone when he agrees with his wife. And Joseph names
Jesus. Jesus is the Son of David, even though he is the Son of Mary.
The entire purpose to Matthew of these verses is to explain how – even though Mary was a
virgin – to explain how Jesus was the legitimate Son of David.
Application
Needless to say, we don’t think in those terms. The only place that uses the phrase house of
anything today are fashion designers – the house of Versace.
I said we tend to ask all kinds of bad questions of this text. We want to get skeptical of virgin
birth. To Matthew it just was, and more than that it was prophesied. Modern scholars want to
complain about how Matthew uses the OT. It would take longer than a sermon to explain that
and walk through it, but a critical scholar calls foul ball or cherry-picking of quotations. But that
complaint really just goes to show some of the same cultural gulf. Matthew believes in God’s
purposeful control of both the words and the events of the OT, such that the OT can only be
appreciated fully in hindsight from its fulfillment in Jesus. “The law and the prophets all teach
about me,” Jesus would say. Modern scholars largely don’t see the Spirit as co-writer. And then
due to some Mary excess in the Roman tribe, we snicker about the perpetual virginity, even
though the text says until – implying a normal marriage after.
As interesting as those questions and fights may be, the text wants us to see Jesus as the
legitimate Son of David. What does that mean for us thousands of years later and a cultural
canyon in between?
Ultimately that is a question for the individual to work out, but I’ll risk a few items that I think
are incredibly meaningful in today’s world.
1) Jesus is the Son of David. The Davidic throne, the throne that has been established
forever, is in the New Jerusalem. (Not that anyone here has influence over this, but…)
Whatever is happening in the Old Jerusalem does not have special religious significance.
There might be very good reasons for current US policy toward Israel, like its being a
democracy and a good partner, but none of those reasons should include the words
rebuilding the temple or second coming of Jesus. The text today says that Jesus will save
his people from their sins. His people are right here – the church. The genealogy that
precedes this includes some very specific gentiles along with a bunch of Jews. The Son
of David rules a kingdom not of this world.
2) That said, Jesus is the Jewish messiah. Gentiles have been grafted in to salvation, and
can just as easily be pruned off. We’ve commented about how modern American culture
is somewhat the alien. To be a Christian, to continue to understand our scriptures,
requires maintaining knowledge of Israel’s story. And at a deeper level, Christians are
the body of Christ. We are called to incarnate Christ. And all incarnations are in a
specific time and place and culture. As a people who live because of an incarnation, we
have a special calling to figure out how to live as Christ here and now.
3) That last thing is all gospel. Because Jesus is the legitimate son of David, he holds that
Key of David (Rev 3:7, Isa 22:22). Isa attributes the key as that which opens and none
can shut, and which shuts and none can open. Jesus gives very similar keys to Peter and
the Apostles – the keys where sins bound on earth are bound in heaven, but those loosed
on earth, are loosed in heaven. And the gates of hell will not prevail against this
Kingdom. The Son of David – named Jesus – has saved his people from their sins.
Amen.