Matthew 1.18-25

The Birth of Jesus the Messiah

¹⁸ Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 

²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’

²²All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
²³ ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
   and they shall name him Emmanuel’,
which means, ‘God is with us.’ 

²⁴When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Today will be about the 6^th or 7^th time I will have read this passage this week in addition to the many times I have read over it in preparation for this sermon. This is because the last week in the Michaelmas term is one filled with Carols Services four schools for which I am the Chaplain. But I am still not tired of hearing it. What I am afraid of is the familiarity of this passage, even amongst our now largely non-Church attending society, because it is so popular in nativity plays and carol services. For many in our society, I would not be surprised that they would add that they love it too, but in the same way that they love Father Christmas, and the Snow Man and the Polar Express and all the other fairy tales that are associated with the happy childhood memories they have and which they want their children to experience as well. I find it is incumbent of me to stress at this time of year, the truth of this passage, the historical fact that there was a man called Jesus, from Nazareth, whose presence has been so significant that more than half the world organise their calendars around his historic reality.

And Matthew hits us between the eyes with his bold statement from the start – in verse 18:

18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.

The Christ, the long awaited and foretold Messiah that the people had heard about for hundreds of years, the one who would bring light and joy and hope into the world, the one who would once and for all. show us who and what God is like, the one who would make our own lives whole and enable us to live lives of meaning and purpose – his birth took place in this way.

A pure and holy young woman, who in her childhood had been engaged to Joseph – something arranged by their parents – had taken the step to agree to the union and had become betrothed to Joseph. I can remember the joy when Trish and I became engaged and can imagine how Joseph must have felt. This beautiful young women, beautiful in looks, demeanour and holiness, had agreed to the union arranged by their parents. He would have been thrilled. It was now all legal, and could only end by a legal divorce. She too would have looked with eagerness, for the statutory completion of the year before their marriage when they could live together and start their family.

And then this. The account in Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that this was not good news for Mary to begin with; she must have been terrified: for who would believe her? How could she ever expect Joseph to believe her? And she was right. Joseph, to begin with, did not. He could have insisted on Mary being stoned to death, because this was the law as stated clearly in Deuteronomy 22.23-24 which reads:

23 If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, ²⁴you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbour’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

And Matthew records that Joseph was a righteous man, and is it not a mark of righteousness that one follows the law? No, certainly not. This child to be born of Mary made this a central tenet of his ministry, challenging those who slavishly and literally follow religious texts. The truth is not read, it is not reasoned it is revealed – and this is what Jesus came to us to do, to reveal the truth of God to the world. Joseph obviously knew the Torah well, and knew therefore that at the heart of the law is mercy and love and forgiveness and so was ‘… unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly…’

But then he had a dream. Imagine how much faith the man must have had. He obviously loved Mary deeply, was this not a mere matter of wishful thinking on his part? A love J C Ryle’s comment. He sees in Joseph ‘… a beautiful example of Godly wisdom and tender consideration form others …’ Ryle continues:

He saw the appearance of evil in Mary. But he did nothing rashly. He waited patiently to have the line of duty made clear and probably made it a matter of prayer.

He would have known the prophetic utterances concerning the birth of the Messiah as he was steeped in the Scriptures, and so could have the assurance that his message was indeed from God. His Son was to do the same later when he heard tempting voices in the desert; he too could answer: ‘… it is written …’

May people get hung up on the virgin birth, but I contend that to do so is to miss the central point of this passage which is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Throughout the Old Testament, that which Joseph and the people of his day would have studied it was the role of the Spirit to bring God’s truth to humankind. And this was the teachings of the prophets who tried to open the eyes of the people to God’s truth. Without the guidance of the Spirit, it is all too easy to be blinded by ignorance, led astray by our prejudices because we are biased and influenced by our sin.

It was also the role of the Spirit to give life. Remember in Genesis 1:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

The word translated here as wind is ruach in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek, often translated as Spirit.

There is a sense that we are not really alive, and we cannot see truth clearly unless we are aided by the Spirit. It is the Spirit that makes the reality of the presence of Jesus with us now in spirit, and especially as we gather around this passage and in the Eucharist.

It is the work of the spirit to renew and re-create. I certainly need this, especially at this time of term when I feel physically, mentally and spiritually worn out. Don’t you love the image of the dry bones in the valley in Ezekiel and the words of the prophet speaking on behalf of the Spirit of God: ‘… I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live …’

Breathe on me breath of God, fill me with life anew …

And then confirmation of the Messiahship of this child to be born – the angel referring to him as Emmanuel – God is with us. The beauty of this is captured in the Song of Songs 1.3 where the poet writes: ‘… your name is perfume poured out …’ Here we have the union of two natures – God and human. This child would be fully human, he would experience all we experience tired ness, hunger, thirst, disappointment, betrayal, pain, nut also love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and self-control. And he would also be the revelation of God to the world and would have power over evil; conceived by the Holy Spirit – divine – yet born of the virgin Mary – human.

And Mary was told to name him Jesus because he would also save people from their sins. It is wonderful to be reminded of the fact God loves us and never tires of forgiving us. We are not saved from sorrow, or pain or conflict, but Jesus takes away our sin – he is our atonement – a great mystery. I have spent the past two weeks in a detailed study of the different theories of atonement and exploring the differences between expiation and propitiation when translating the Greek word hislasterion.

And it is good to exercise one’s minds and to try to fathom these things. But as Ryle explains, there is a limit. He writes:

They are depths which we have no line to fathom … which we have not mind enough to comprehend, let us not attempt to explain things which are above our feeble reasoning … [let us] not speculate about matters which we cannot understand. … [It is] enough to know that with him who made the world, nothing is impossible.

We do not dismiss reason, but we acknowledge with the greatest minds of the age, that reason is severely limited. Even at the height of the Enlightenment, which was the time when reason was championed as the only way we can know anything, one of the core thinkers, Emmanuel Kant, wrote his Critique of Pure Reason – stressing there is more.  We need more, we need to know with our hearts and our minds and our spirits. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 2.14:

Those who are unspiritual^* do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are discerned spiritually.

God loves us. It was this love that made him to enter human history, live our life and die our death on the Cross. It is this love that offers us the gifts of forgiveness and His Spirit to enable us to live the lives that God wants us to live and which we want to live ourselves. It is the gift of His Spirit that fills our lives with love and hope and joy and fulfilment. It is the same Spirit that was with Mary and the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, as Paul wrote to the Romans in 8.11:

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ^* from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through^* his Spirit that dwells in you.

Amen