A Christian Ancestry (Dec 21)

Readings, Isaiah 7:10-16 and Matthew 1:18-25
Image, Elizabeth Catlett, Mother and Child, 1956. 

Matthew commences his gospel with a very intentional genealogy leading up to the birth of Jesus. Mirroring the kind found in Genesis, he tracks fourteen generations from Abraham to David, David to the Exile, Exile to the Messiah. It is, for the most part, a patrilineal line concerning fathers causing sons to be born, which is why it naturally comes to a close on Joseph. However, at this moment, something less natural happens. Listen to this little run up and see when you hear the pattern break: Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
 
There’s a common form of journalistic laziness or malpractice which will list couples where one (predominately the man) will be named, while the other (regardless of their own achievement) will be referred to simply as “and wife.” Strangely enough, it is the reverse that occurs here in Matthew’s account. When we get to Joseph the pattern of father to son breaks, for Joseph is the husband of Mary. Because it is of Mary, not of Joseph, that Jesus was born. As we heard: 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. ­­
 
But this insistent detail of whom Jesus was born, raises some perplexing questions. Because, while the genealogy Matthew provides seems to be intended to link Jesus to the line of David, and from David all the way back to Abraham, this ending wipes that lineage away. By insisting that Joseph makes no biological contribution, that he does not father the one to be called Jesus, Jesus is not the next link in the chain stretching back 42 generations. Jesus, indeed, Matthew’s account stresses, has no father’s father. Born instead, of Mary, who does not know Joseph, but was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
 
With this bait and switch, Matthew undercuts the presumed story of Jesus’ birth as the typical begetting of fathers to sons, with the reveal that God done something totally new and surprising, something unparalleled and unprecedented… though not, we should note, having heard also that reading from Isaiah, unpromised.
Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
And they shall name him Emmanuel.
 
However, given this, we might wonder: wouldn’t it have been more important to establish that Mary belongs to the line of David? That if Jesus should be the son of David, the son of Abraham, it should be done through the grand reveal that Mary, the only human involved in his birth, belongs to this line? Let’s hold those questions just over here a moment. I want to say a little word on the question of word choice.
 
A lot of attention has been paid over the years to whether the word parthenos in Greek, or almah in Hebrew should be translated as young woman or as virgin. Some camps stress that both words explicitly refer to a young woman (and almah in particular can even be a married young woman), and that neither word stipulates virginity. Others will suppose that the venn diagram could be almost a circle and so both words remain valid choices – particularly when, in Matthew’s case, he takes pains in the narrative to stress Mary had no marital relations with Joseph until she had borne a son (although in the more patriarchal tone of the account, the emphasis is on him having none with her).
 
But such debates can miss the mark on two diverging fronts. At one level, emphatically overriding the reality that the word may indeed mean young woman and not imply virginity doesn’t obfuscate or blur the point Matthew is making – Jesus is born of Mary and the Holy Spirit, he is not fathered by Joseph, he does not descend as others do. His birth is something outside of the usual order of things and by this we may trust that as fully divine and fully human he is able to fully unite humanity with divinity. At another level, the increasingly complex attempts in some corners of the church to construct a Mariology where even she is immaculately conceived, where even she is born without paternal ancestry (and so without sin), and where she never has marital relations, also misses the point that Matthew is making: that with Jesus something radically new, something altogether unique, something tremendously mysterious is happening. Both views – that Jesus could be fathered by Joseph but nonetheless made holy, and that Mary must be fatherless, are both based on particular views of the genealogy and sin which generate a set of logical and philosophical rules that are presumed to bind God – but God is boundless! God is not beholden to any system or quandary of human logic. The emphasis of the prophecy of Isaiah that is repeated here in Matthew, lies not in the descriptor of the young woman, but on the one she bears: Emmanuel, God is with us.
 
The very claim that God takes on flesh, that God is born of woman (in some backwater manger, with dubious lineage no less) is all we need to recognise that no human rules or expectations apply to what God is doing to rescue humanity.
 
Which brings us back to that parked question from earlier. If Matthew is so determined to demonstrate Jesus as a child of David, should not Mary be the one at the end of the genealogy? Remember a couple of weeks ago when we read John the Baptist warned the people not to presume too much just because they had Abraham for an ancestor – because God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Well, so too we might say, God is able to raise up from this young woman a child of Abraham. After all, from the calling of Abraham, through the favouring of David, and all the way to the promised return from Babylon, God has been in covenant with the people of Israel (I will be your God, and you will be my people). And so Jesus does not need Joseph to be his father in order to be child of Abraham. Because the father of Jesus is the Father, who is the God this whole line – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – and the God of the whole people: and so Jesus would be of this line no matter of whom he was born.     
 
What I love about all these strange twists and turns, particularly when we start to consider what it means for our part in this story, is that what makes Mary and Joseph exemplary or venerable, is not bloodline or ancestry. It doesn’t end up mattering that Joseph comes from this long and illustrious line: what counts is that he listens and obeys, that he does not expose nor even dismiss Mary, but hears the word of the Spirit and takes her as his wife, and Jesus as his son. He does not fall prey to pride or crumble under societal expectations, but does what the Lord requires of him. So too Mary: her brilliance is not based in being some figure of purity, but is because she is an exemplary disciple. We’ve talked about this previously, so I won’t go into it much now, but Mary’s veneration should be based in her great faith to hear the word of God and say let it be so.
 
And so we do not need to presume that because we lack any particular ancestry, or great lineage, we are somewhat precluded from playing meaningful and joyful roles in this ongoing story of Emmanuel. We don’t need to be able to trace our own lineage to David (and indeed as Gentiles we cannot) but nor do we need to be able to trace it to Peter, or James, or John, nor to any towering figure of the faith, nor even to someone whose name is on a plaque around the church, nor even to someone who crossed the threshold of one. Because the same Spirit who was responsible for Mary’s conceiving of Jesus, is the Spirit of adoption we have received. This same Spirit which makes us co-heirs with Christ, children of God. This is the proper ancestry of the Christian – indeed this is why Jesus did no begetting himself (no father but the Father, no bride but the church, no child but humanity). As John writes in his gospel, Jesus gives those who believe power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. It is this shared ancestry of adoption in faith which makes us siblings to each other, members of Christ’s body, and faithful disciples of the Living God.