Now the birth of Jesus took place . . . in which way?
Next week, we will do what we often do, and as many other churches do. We will trace the story of the birth of Jesus in reading and in carols and in reflection. This is the story we shall tell again: how an angel appeared to Mary and announced that she would bear a son, how she and Joseph journeyed to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born in a stable, because there was no room at the inn. We’ll read about the visit of the shepherds, followed by the visit of the Magi, and we’ll remember that King Herod, filled with wrath, ordered the slaughter of every baby boy, but that Jesus escaped by being taken by Mary and Joseph into Egypt. It is all very familiar. But it will be a mash-up. Because this story does not occur in the Bible. Every bit of it does, but not together, and not actually in that order. Centuries of Christian tradition have taken two quite separate and distinct stories about the birth of Jesus and blended them into one, trying to harmonise them along the way.
This service is about separating them out, in order to learn their distinctive lessons.
Here are some questions we might like to ponder:
Why are there only two accounts of Jesus’ birth? There are four gospels, after all. Why is there not one other single reference to the nativity or the virgin birth anywhere else in the New Testament?
Why do Matthew and Luke give such wildly different genealogies for Jesus?
Why is the angelic annunciation given to Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel, but to Mary in Luke’s? And why is the story told entirely from Joseph’s perspective by Matthew and entirely from Mary’s by Luke?
Matthew assumes that Mary and Joseph live in Bethlehem, but Luke says they live in Nazareth and them provides a fairly unlikely reason for them to have to travel to Bethlehem. Why should this be?
Why does Luke never mention Herod’s anger and the flight to Egypt?
Why does Luke omit the Magi while Matthew says nothing of the shepherds?
And why do so many in Luke’s account break into song at some point or another – Mary in response to the angel’s announcement, Zechariah in response to the birth of his son John the Baptist, the whole heavenly host in response to the birth of Jesus, the shepherds in response to seeing the baby in the manger, yet not one note of music is heard in Matthew’s version?
These questions cannot be answered, but thinking about the issues they raise will lead us to appreciating anew the unique message of each story. We must not think that Matthew and Luke were each counting on the other to fill in their own blanks. They weren’t. They were presenting truth as they saw it. Truth, not history, and that’s an important distinction, though a difficult one for modern minds to comprehend. Though the stories are very different, we must not conclude that either of them are wrong, even when they contradict one another. Rather, each was trying to say something different.
“This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.”
Matthew sounds very clear, very definite, but this is not, actually the beginning of his account of the birth of Jesus. This is Chapter 1, verse 18, but we never read the first seventeen verses. And there’s a good reason for that. They consist of an elaborately constructed genealogy of Jesus, starting with Abraham, working down through Isaac and Jacob and Judah to David and Solomon and on through the generations to Joseph.
It is a passage leading to a particular conclusion, which is then sidestepped at the last moment. The ancestry of Jesus is traced through the male line, with name after name being described as the father of the one that comes next. But when it reaches Joseph, all it says is that he was the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born. But in Matthew’s story, it is Joseph who is key.
He is not, though, the only interesting name in the list. We recognise a few of the more prominent men, but many of the names mean little to us, though they all appear in the Old Testament. However, hidden among all these fathers and sons are five women, and their inclusion is very interesting. There’s Tamar who was left childless when her husband Judah died. By subterfuge, she seduced her father-in-law, none of Judah’s brothers being willing to marry her, and thus secured the continuation of Judah’s name, as was the custom of the time. Her descendants went on to be the most powerful tribe of Israel. Then there’s Rahab, a gentile prostitute who played a pivotal role in the siege of Jericho, the fall of which opened the way for the children of Israel to enter the promised land. She became incorporated into the Israelite people and an example of courage and faithfulness to later generations. Then there’s Ruth, a woman from Moab, a people the Israelites hated, who put her trust in the God of Israel, married an Israelite and became the great grandmother of King David. Then there is Bathsheba, referred to not by name but as Uriah’s wife, who was raped by David. And then, finally, there is Mary, whose story of inexplicable pregnancy is just as scandalous as the others.
What is Matthew saying here? Two things. Jesus is from a royal line, counting David and Solomon and many other Kings of Israel among his ancestors. But he is also saying that it is an ancestry which contains scandal and sin, in which there are foreigners, in which there are both Jews and Gentiles and which, crucially, has been thrown off course a number of times. There are unexpected twists. Things are not necessarily what they seem.
And that continues as he relates the story of Jesus’ birth. Actually he says nothing of the birth but instead tells the story of Joseph, how he heard from an angel that his betrothed was to give birth to a very special child, the long awaited Messiah; how he resolved to divorce her, but then relented on the advice of the angel; how he had the privilege of naming the child ‘Jesus’; how he took Mary to his home; and how he did not have union with her until Jesus was born. Then, after telling us about Herod and the Magi, Matthew tells us how Joseph was told by an angel of the danger the child was in; how he took Mary and Joseph by night to Egypt, and how later he brought them back, not to Bethlehem but to Nazareth, for their safety.
The key to understanding this is to realise that Matthew chose to tell the story of Joseph according to an Old Testament narrative template. The one he chose is the story of Moses. We’re going to hear a little bit of that now.
Exodus 2: 1-10
Baby Jesus corresponds to Baby Moses. In a genealogy of Moses contained in Exodus, we learn that Moses’ father was Amram and his mother Jochebed, corresponding to Joseph and Mary. Herod follows in the footsteps of Pharaoh who ordered that every baby Hebrew boy be drowned in the Nile. The Magi correspond with magicians at the Egyptian court.
But Matthew subverts these roles. Just as the women in the genealogy subvert expectations about Jesus’ lineage, the roles of some of the characters in Moses’ story are swapped around as Matthew weaves a new story about a new prophet come to rescue God’s people. In Matthew’s story, the magicians honour the true king. The villain is not a pagan emperor but Israel’s own king. Matthew is using a narrative that would have been utterly familiar to his first readers, but by changing things round, he is indicating that something radically new was happening.
We have to do a bit of work to recapture that, but that’s what we’ve just been doing. And so we are now in a position to see what Matthew was doing. He was declaring that a new Moses had been born. As Moses led God’s people out of slavery in Egypt, so Jesus would lead God’s people out of the slavery of sin. As Moses gave the Law, so Jesus would give new teaching which would fulfil the Law. As Moses ushered in a new age for God’s people, so also would Jesus. And the subversive things Matthew drops into his story tell us much about this new age. Women who had been through tough times, foreigners who had risked all to come to God, even magicians who worshipped other gods are key to Matthew’s understanding of who Jesus was and what he came to do. Matthew’s nativity is ultimately about God’s inclusive love.
I’m not going to read Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth. We could probably recite it, and we’ll hear it next week.
Luke’s story is quite different from Matthew’s. He tells of Mary, a young woman who lives in Nazareth, betrothed to Joseph. She is told by an angel that the child she will bear will reign over Israel on David’s throne. She understands this to mean that, in her son, God will fulfil his promise to deliver her people. He then tells us of a census which required Mary to go with Joseph to Bethlehem, where the child was born. After an angel announces the birth, a group of poor shepherds visit the child. Then they all go home to Nazareth.
There are some overlaps with Matthew, but not many. Most significant is the story telling technique which Luke employs. He also uses the pattern of an Old Testament narrative to tell his story. His, though, is not a specific narrative like Matthew chose, but a common genre, known as an “opening womb” story. Here’s one of the most famous ones.
Genesis 21: 1-7
Sarah was so old she had given up hope of bearing a child. The same was true of Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, in Luke’s Gospel. Common to all of these stories, such as the birth of Isaac, of Samuel, of Samson and of John the Baptist, is a couple who do not consider that it is any longer possible for them to conceive, but who are blessed by God with a child. All of these children grow up to play decisive roles in the history of Israel. Their miraculous births are signs that God has acted to guide, and often to save, his people.
Luke does not mention any danger faced by the infant Jesus. That would come later when Jesus announced his ministry to the congregation in Nazareth. Matthew tells of Jesus’ nativity as a confronting of the powers-that-be. Luke shows no interest in them at all. He tells of the most significant birth in history being predicted, fulfilled and revealed entirely among the poor and lowly – a peasant girl, a displaced family, a bunch of shepherds. If we were to ask where God is revealed, the answer he gives is not among the places and people of wealth and power, but among the anonymous, the humble, the people on the margins, literally those outside in the night. Luke’s story may lack the conflict of Matthew’s but still it announces a fierce ideological confrontation. In answer to the question, what really matters, he answers – not the wealthy and the systems of power, but the poor and meek and lowly, for it is among them that you will find God.
In speaking of what Matthew and Luke wrote, I’ve been deliberately calling them two stories, not two versions. They are so different. But at the heart of each is the announcement of the birth of God with us. Next week, we will doubtless return to the comfortable way of thinking about the birth of Jesus. The angels will be more cheering than alarming. The shepherds in our minds will be kindly and clean, rather than uncouth and smelly. And there will be wholly unbiblical sleepy cows and asses lending warmth to the scene. It will be like this because we cannot break the habits of a lifetime. We cannot completely reject all that we love about this story.
But the lovely imagery we so cherish obscures some of the truth of Jesus’ nativity. Though one confronts power and the other simply dismisses it, both stories are intensely, radically, dangerously political. Matthew presents a radical inclusiveness at the heart of God’s birth in Jesus, an inclusiveness we find offensive because it shows us unambiguously that God loves especially those we find too hard to love. Luke presents a revolutionary political manifesto, of God’s new order brought to being in Jesus exalting the humble and throwing down the mighty. Both tell of good news to all the people, but it is good news of liberation, of rescue of the marginalised and needy, of deliverance from oppression. It is bad news for business as usual, for those who already have their comfort and security. This is good news for all, but for some, the story, or rather the stories, of Christmas, are rather harder good news than for others.