READINGS

Matthew 1:18-24
Isaiah 7:10-15
Deuteronomy 13:6-11
Genesis 6:6
Wisdom 3:14; 6:15
Matthew 27:19 (Pilate's wife's dream - a just man)

HOMILY

Today we have the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, or rather the second beginning: just as in the Book of Genesis, there are two accounts of what we call the Creation, the Becoming of things.

The first one with the days and the light;
The second one with Adam and Eve in the garden.

In Matthew's Gospel, we have two accounts of Genesis and both have the word Genesis.

The first is a long list of ancestors; it's what we call a genealogy, and the the key point is that the list of relatives start with Abraham and end with Joseph and Mary.

There's a beautiful homily by Herbert McCabe, in which he goes through the relatives and makes some interesting observations.

It start with the only thing that might reasonably thought to be of urgent birth in the Old Testament, which is God's promise of a child to Sarah when she and Abraham were well past of bearing age.

The genealogy starts with Abraham, but it's centerpiece is David.

It makes clear that the whole purpose of the genealogy is structured around King David who is the high point of the promises of God to Israel.

It's emphasized that it's David by the fact that the genealogy is divided into three chunks of 14 generations.

14 generations from Abraham to David
14 from David to the exile
14 from the exile to the Messiah

This number is based on the Hebrew letters for David through gematria - the traditional system where letters also have numerical values:

**דָּוִד
ד (Dalet) = 4
ו (Vav) = 6
ד (Dalet) = 4
4+6+4=14

So for creation up till now was the fulfillment of the prophets through a miraculous birth announced by the Lord to Abraham's wife.

Now we have that becoming fulfilled by Mary for whom Joseph is going to have the role of Abraham in some ways.

When Abraham finally gets addressed by an Angel, he is referred to as Joseph son of David so that's the key point.

For Matthew, the whole of creation is coming up to the high point of the revelation of the promised heir to David.

This is centered around a Jewish understandings going way back.

So today's Gospel is the second account where we come down to earth a little bit from the genealogy and start to look at what actually happened.

The descriptions here are very subtle and an awful lot is going on as we will learn to expect everything with the Gospel writers.

The birth of Jesus Christ came about this way: After his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, it was discovered before they came together that she was pregnant from the Holy Spirit.

Much more formal than our understanding of engagement.

Before they lived together - and this would be absolutely standard -, they were betrothed at a very young age - maybe 12 -, but didn't necessarily start to live together, and therefore become formerly husband and wife only much later.

To learn that Mary was pregnant would be exceedingly alarming and frightening thing for her, shocking for any relatives, shocking for the potential husband (if he was assumed to be the one responsible), and certainly shameful for him if he was not thought to be the one responsible.

So the immediate beginnings of Jesus happen in a very precarious and dangerous place.

So her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly.

"Decided" or "planned" is the word it says in our text, but actually the word is "pondered", thought, like mulling, mulled over.

This word we get in Genesis when God ponders over.

God sees all the violence going on with relation to humanity as it has come into being all the descendants of Cain, lamech and so forth and he sees all this and he is so saddened that he ponders what to do and, in his anger, decides to destroy them.

That's when we get the flood.

When God wonders in this way, it's with a view to sorting things out violently.

Later on, we get pondering with the Book of Wisdom.

There, it's the sort of pondering that is to do with fixing your mind upon something, with a positive sort of way.

[!tip] Wisdom 13 Even the eunuch who doesn’t break the Law with his hands and doesn’t think evil thoughts against the Lord will receive a precious gift for his fidelity and a special place in the Lord’s temple.

The traditional understanding of Joseph was that effectively he became a voluntary eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom.

These are different possibilities:

One is pondering something with a view to doing something terrible;
The other is pondering something in different ways.

Joseph has a lot of pondering to do and if you were in his situation and he was wanting to be a righteous man, this is very difficult, because the law of Moses made quite clear what he had to do.

So he meditated on putting her aside to giving her a bit of divorce quietly: in other words, not getting into trouble.

But, if he were a just man in the sense of the law he would know this from Deuteronomy 13.

[!tip] Deutorenomy 13 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to them or listen to them.

Show them no pity.

Do not spare them or shield them.

You must certainly put them to death.

Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people.

Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.

This is not an obscure text for Joseph.

Anyone wanting to be a just man would have known that that was the case.

Each one of these words suggests that trying to work out what is genuinely from the Lord and what a promise from the Lord looks like and whether it is genuinely from the Lord is not an easy thing to discern.

There would have been plenty of reason for Joseph to have pondered on the law and come to exactly the reverse decision than he did come to.

When he had resolved to do this, to dismiss her quietly and that might mean for sending her off to somewhere where things could get very nasty for her.

Even away from home things would not go well for a single mother.

But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying,

Now here's the interesting thing.

The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.

Matthew is the only author in the whole of the Bible or Septuagint and the New Testament to use this word "dream".

It's given as a sign of agency to get away from persecution.

It's quite a direct thing.

It's not the same word as a dream, which we get in the Joseph of the Old Testament.

He was called the dreamer and he had dreams and then he interpreted dreams... that's a different word based on a sleeping dream.

This word is dream with quite a fixed command message.

The only place it appears outside the infancy narratives is at the very end of the Gospel where Jesus is about to be executed, when Pilot's wife comes and says "do not do any harm to that just man, for I have been suffering much in a dream".

The parallel between the beginning of the Gospel at the end of The Gospel is the same.

The just man here, Joseph, wanting to be a just man and thinking of putting someone away and deciding from the Angel not to, and an angel appearing to Mrs Pilot to try and dissuade him from putting this just man to death,

“Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 

She will give birth to a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Matthew indicates here this is the Davidic thing.

And God's plan is going to come in this messy dangerous precarious way.

Moreover, it was probably the "do not be afraid" that tipped Joseph off that this was the Angel of the Lord.

From the Holy Scriptures from back in the in the Hebrew Testament all the way through into the New Testament, the standard presence of the Angelic figure is "do not be afraid".

Why? Because the appearance is something that might frighten.

If Joseph needed a parallel to that, it would have been Sarah having a son when she was too old and here is Mary when she's too young and not yet married.

And the Angel says that Jesus will save his people from their sins, and this is quite a interesting thing, because it's not from their enemies, which you might have expected.

Yahweh saves Joshua.

Curious... the suggestion that actually, maybe, this is a kind of salvation that is going to make people more introspective as they have to work out what we need being saved from.

All this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel which is translated “God is with us.”

This passage comes in the very beautiful reading from Isaiah, which we have in our mass today and remember that that reading is more than merely the young woman is with child.

[!tip] Isaiah 14:10 Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, “Ask the Lord your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.”

So the Lord speaks directly to the King, but actually the oldest version we have of this text, which is the Hebrew version found at the remains of Khirbet Qumran does not have "ask a sign of the Lord your God".

It has "asked a sign of the mother of your God; let it be deep as she'll or higher as heaven".

Within the ancient Hebrew royal understanding, that would make much more sense than it does to us, but:

[!tip] Isaiah 7:14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

There is no question at all that it is talking about the coming forth of the definitive Davidic King, the heir, the one who is to rule over people and be therefore the representative of God amongst us.

When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord’s angel had commanded him. He married her

So Joseph must have been pondering through all these things while he was asleep.

Finally, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

However, he could have gone along with the Law. In fact, there will be a huge argument going on throughout Matthew's Gospel concerning how to live with the Law and how to obey the promised Angel, the prophet who was promised by Moses, who would come after him.

All of that is going to be the work of discernment in Matthew's Gospel.

Joseph did as the Angel of the Lord commanded him.

He received her as his wife, but he did not know her, which might refer to had no sexual relations with her, might refer to her he did not formally sign the marital contract with her until after she had born a son, and he named him Jesus.

In other words, he obeyed.

We see that the mercy of the Lord takes the form of protecting someone.

An immense precariousness, so that that person might become the true fulfillment of all the Davidic and glorious promises and become the light who will Enlighten us all.