Each year, the churches follow the story of Jesus through the eyes of one of the synoptic gospel writers (Matthew, Mark or Luke). John make intermittent appearances in the Sunday readings in all three years. This year (Advent 2006 to Advent 2007), we follow the story of Jesus through the gospel of Matthew. These notes (a shorter version also appears in the 'The Net' - the Corfe & Pitminster parish magazine) are for anyone who would like to follow through the gospel and understand more of the background to gain a deeper insight into the scriptures.
It helps to know for whom this story was written. It was written for early Christians, maybe forty to fifty years after Jesus' death and resurrection. Most of the people in this Christian community were formerly Jews: Matthew is very keen always to show how the Jewish Scriptures (our Old Testament) pointed forward to Jesus' life and ministry. This would have been of profound interest to people brought up as Jews, but only of minor interest to those from the non-Jewish world.
Nowadays, we're used to television stories starting straight away, and only going on to the theme tune and credits after a couple of minutes when we're already hooked! So this great list of the names of Jesus' genealogy isn't something that people want to plough through: many get put off here and go away disappointed. But there are some interesting things to notice about this genealogy.
The first is that four women are, unusually, mentioned in it. A standard genealogy of the time never mentioned women - they bore children, but no-one realised that they had any genetic input into the child's make-up. These four women have their stories written in the Old Testament, and all of those stories are double-edged: they have moral implications of the purity of the Jewish line. Ruth is a foreigner; Rahab and Tamar conceive their children in dubious circumstances; Bathsheba becomes David's wife only after he has caused her first husband to be killed in battle. Yet through all the devious works of humanity, God still manages to shape and bring forth his plan of salvation.
Also worth noting is the repetition of the number fourteen. Fourteen generations from Abraham to David and his great and famous reign; another fourteen from Solomon to Jeconiah and the exile of the Jewish elite to Babylon; again fourteen generations from Jeconiah to Jesus and the next major event in Jewish history. What's so important about fourteen? The Jews, like the Romans, used letters of the alphabet to represent numbers. Any Jew would have known that the letters used to make David's name added up to fourteen, and so Jesus' status as a descendant of David is being emphasised. Davis was by far the most successful and famous of all the Jewish kings, and it was understood that the Messiah (literally, 'God's chosen one') would be a descendant of David.
The story of Jesus' birth as told in Matthew is not the story that we know from a thousand Christmas cards. It's much darker than that. Read verses Chapter 1, verses 18-25 to see it through Matthew's eyes. This account is much more sober, much darker, than Luke's joyful version. Seen from the point of view of Joseph, it's clear that there is much hard work to be done in bringing up this child, and also public ostracism. The emphasis is on the two names given for the child to be born: 'Jesus,' which means 'saviour'; and 'Emmanuel' - 'God with us.' Just as Matthew began his gospel by tying it in with the Old Testament and showing how Jesus fulfils its expectations, he now quotes Isaiah 7: 14 'a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel'.
When Isaiah wrote his prophecy, he wrote in Hebrew, which has two distinct words for 'young woman' and 'virgin'. The scriptures were later translated into Greek which has one word which carries both meanings. Some think that it was through an accident of translation that the story of the virgin birth came about. Yet it's worth understanding what a virgin birth would have meant in the understanding of Jesus' own time. The understanding of conception and childbirth was that the man supplied the seed, which was planted in the woman, and the woman provided the environment in which the child grew. It was also understood that all human being were 'fallen' - imperfect. However hard we try, and whatever resolutions we make, we keep on making mistakes and doing bad - even evil - things. This is part of the human condition, and something which no child can avoid. The idea that Jesus had no earthly father therefore meant that he was able to be outside this cycle of human sin; he is able to be the first of a new 'race' of God's sons and daughters who can be released from their slavery to doing wrong and foolish things. Whatever doubts and uncertainties you have about a virgin birth, it's well worth remembering what it is that this special birth is supposed to convey to us: at last, here is someone who can rescue us from ourselves. He is like us and understands us, but his nature is such that he's able to resist the temptations that we keep on falling into.
Matthew, alone of the gospel writers, continues the story of Jesus' birth with the visit of the wise men and Herod's massacre of the children. Note hat within these stories there are yet a further four quotations from the Jewish scriptures, showing how the story of Jesus chimes in with what is expected of the Messiah. These stories bring home to the reader, right at the beginning of the gospel, two important truths. Firstly, that Jesus comes to speak to people of all nations, not just the Jews. In this gospel, he is worshipped only by foreigners. The second is that his existence is fragile. At the very beginning, he is recognised as being a threat to established powers, both political and religious. In Jesus' time and in our own, we can see how such powers can easily be used to further the agendas of institutions. Jesus way was not to meet power with power, but to challenge and subvert that power in what he said and what he did. Jesus, who refuted all power, is the one who is still remembered and followed today, when empires founded on power have crumbled to dust.
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