And I can imagine
she’s thinking “He’d better be, if I’m to become an unwed mother in first
century Galilee” where even though she might not have been cast out into the
outer darkness—Galilee was fairly
cosmopolitan by Palestinian standards—she probably would have been packed off
to stay with her Aunt Tilly, wife of Achmed the camel waterer, until after the
baby came.
After she accepts
her assignment, and the angel leaves, Luke proceeds not to the birth of Jesus, or to the shepherds keeping flock by
night, but to her rendezvous with cousin Elizabeth, who as we saw last week,
was pregnant with her own special child.
And Luke goes into great detail about the interaction between the two
women, and culminates with the Song of Mary, the Magnificat, Mary’s paean to
the absolute goodness of God.
Contrast
that to this morning’s tale of annunciation, this time from Matthew. First of all, he begins with the birth of Jesus:
“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” And it’s worth noting that he ends this
passage with it as well, by noting that Joseph “had no marital relations with
her until she had borne a son, and he named him Jesus.” Literary types recognize this device, this
beginning and ending of a text with the same information, as an inclusio, and what is included, what is surrounded by the fact of Jesus birth,
is his account of the annunciation: the account of the annunciation begins and ends
with the birth of Jesus, it is wrapped in it just as the babe will be wrapped
in those celebrated swaddling clothes tomorrow night.
Another
thing to note is that where Luke’s version is Marian—and Elizabethan—centered
around the women, who at least share the stage
with the feckless Zechariah, Matthew’s version is all Joseph, all the
time. In the first half, it’s concerned
with Joseph and what a good guy he was not to have her immediately stoned. “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man
and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her
quietly.” Whereupon she would have no
doubt gone for an extended visit to Uncle Achmed and Aunt Tilly.
But
riding to the rescue is an angel—we don’t learn if it’s Gabriel or not—who saves
the day by appearing to Joseph and saying “Do not be afraid,” which should
remind us of that other annunciation, but with a big difference: whereas in
Mary’s version Gabriel is telling her not to be afraid of him, what he is not be afraid of here is taking Mary as his
wife. Don’t be afraid that she has
cuckolded you, don’t be afraid of all the shaking heads and muttered insults
that will come from your so-called friends and family when they get the news,
but go ahead and take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from
the Holy Spirit.
One
of Matthew’s main concerns—other than the birth itself—is that his listeners know that Jesus is not an illegitimate
child. And just to make sure we get it
he quotes from the prophets to seal the deal: “All this took place to fulfill
what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall
conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God
is with us.’” And Joseph wakes up—for
the angel has come to him, as they often do, in his sleep—and does as the angel
of the Lord has commanded him: he takes
her as his wife. And just to make sure one
more time that there is no doubt about who Jesus’ daddy really is, Matthew
tells us that he had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son.
Now,
one could be forgiven for thinking that all Matthew is worried about is making
sure we don’t view Jesus as illegitimate.
He goes to great lengths to show that far from being ill-legitimate, Jesus is the height of
legitimacy. What is a scandal to Jewish
society is diametrically the opposite for us Christians: he has the greatest,
least-scandalous father of them all.
But
what if that’s not it at all? Or rather,
what if that’s only part of it? What if
far from wanting to deny the
scandalous nature of Jesus’ birth, his aim is to emphasize it? After all, the
more a person denies something, the more it is underlined. And if
we weren’t aware of Jesus’ lack of an earthly father before we heard this, we certainly were afterward. To paraphrase
Queen Gertrude from Hamlet, methinks the
gentleman doth protest too much.
Old
Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us that for every act of
communication there is a text and a sub-text.
That is, there is what the communication says on the surface—its plain-sense
meaning, what the syntax communicates—and also what it says given the context
in which it is said. For instance the
text of “The car is white” says something very concrete, and confronted with
the statement alone, without any other contextual information, that’s what we
expect to see: a white car. But what if
we hear this statement—the car is white—while being shown a picture of a car that is purple?
At the very least, it sets us thinking: that car is purple . . . why are we
being told that a purple car is white?
Is there a sense in which all cars
are white? Or is there something about
the car that makes it metaphorically white? White is a color that is a symbol of
purity—is a statement being made about all cars being pure, no matter what it’s
looks like on the outside?
In
other words, contextual information—information that is literally with (in Greek con) the text—gives rise
to a sub-text, a text that is under (sub) the plain-sense one. It gives depth to a communication, and
richness, and there is evidence that Matthew is doing it here, specifically in
what he says right before this passage. Like
Luke, he begins his story with a genealogy, but it is different, in one very
specific senses. Luke, generally thought
to be more inclusive, nevertheless includes no female ancestors. Matthew, on the other hand, names four. And what’s more, they are women who have
somewhat scandalous sexual reputations . . . Tamar, who disguised herself to
have illicit relations with her father-in-law . . . Rahab the prostitute who
saved Joshua’s hide . . . Ruth, whose indecent behavior with Boaz saved the
Davidic line . . . and Jezebel, the wife of Uriah, who however unfairly became
an icon of the wanton woman . . . Matthew is ever-so-subtly emphasizing Jesus’
scandalous family history. And he follows it with reference to the
unmarried status of Mary which, to Palestinian society at least, carries more
than a whiff of scandal.
And
if his life begins as a scandal to the Jews, more than one observer has noted
that his life certainly ended with one.
No less than the Apostle Paul writes eloquently of the foolishness, the
contrary to good sense-ness of the crucifixion.
“. . . we proclaim Christ crucified,” he writes, “a stumbling block to
Jews”—and in Greek that is scandal—“a
scandal to Jews and foolishness to
Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ (is)
the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
And
that’s what Matthew is saying here . . . far from excusing Jesus’ less than
societally correct birth, he is pointing out the same thing as Paul: to Jews,
his birth without an apparent father is scandalous, a stumbling block to their
acceptance of him as Messiah, but for those who are called by God—no matter the
language they speak or the color of their skin . . . Jews and Greeks and New
Yorkers and even people from the region of Cincinnati . . . he is the power and
might and the holy wisdom of God.
And
in two short days we will be presented with it again, Christ will come again
into our hearts and minds and souls.
Laid in a manger—the most ordinary and humble and, yes, scandalous place where a king of the
universe might be born—surrounded not by courtiers and potentates and court
hangers-on, but by cows and chickens and sheep and goats—in two days will be
born a savior, who is Christ the Lord.
Hallelujah, amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment