Matthew 1:18-25<\/font><\/strong><\/font><\/h5>\n\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\nOur text for this week begins, \u201cNow the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this<\/strong> way\u2026 and the story is launched.<\/font>
<\/font>This story, as told to us by Matthew, ushers us into a world full of power and its use.<\/font>
<\/font>As we listen to this story we will hear about the power of Hebrew genealogy and patriarchy, the power of a violent and disturbed King Herod and the power of Jewish prophetic hopes for a messiah. \u00a0<\/font>
<\/font>Into the midst of all this power its use and abuse \u2013 a baby is born \u2013 dependent, in danger and without power – welcome to Christmas.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>I want to be very clear from the start that this morning\u2019s sermon will be about the story of Jesus\u2019 birth as told to us by Matthew and not by Luke and there are some pretty significant differences.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>The story I grew up with, the one that my father insisted on reading (or having one of his six children read) before we were allowed to open Christmas presents, was Luke chapter 2:1-20.\u00a0 In this story, Mary and Joseph find a stable in crowded Bethlehem for the birth of their child, shepherds watch their sheep in the fields, angel choirs sing in the sky and announce peace, the shepherds visit the newborn infant and his parents and Mary ponders these things in her heart.\u00a0 At a recent Christmas gathering when my parents\u2019 grandchildren, my nieces and nephews, took turns reading this text in my parents home before we shared a few small gifts with each other, I got pretty choked up as I recalled all the years that I heard this text as a child while waiting in barely disguised impatience, if disguised at all, to get to those shiny, colourful packages under the tree.\u00a0 The story itself brought back the memories of anticipation, excitement and eventual joy at discovering what feat of magic my mother would have accomplished in demonstrating that she knew not only what I wanted, but surprised me with things I didn\u2019t realize I needed, but loved just as much anyway, like fuzzy pajamas with feet that she had probably finished sewing at midnight the night before.<\/font>
<\/font>The Luke story in its usage and memories like this is wrapped in the warmth of angel choirs echoed in well-known Christmas carols, rugged shepherds, really cute lambs and a stable (which, by the way, having grown up on a farm \u2013 and knowing the warmth and familiarity of the straw and the animals on cold winter evenings I couldn\u2019t figure out why this was supposed to be such a bad place for a baby).\u00a0 That young mother and father who provided security for the baby in that stable \u2013 I understood that too.\u00a0 I knew security, stability and love as a child and I assumed much the same for this new baby.\u00a0 And nothing in the way I heard this Luke story and the context that surrounded its telling made me hear anything differently.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>But Matthew is different.\u00a0 When I listen only to Matthew\u2019s version of events \u201cthe birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this<\/strong> way\u2026.\u201dand reflect on some other bits and pieces of life experience and a few expanded horizons since my childhood, the story of the birth of Jesus is not comforting, warm or consoling.<\/font>
<\/font>Matthew\u2019s story disturbs, causes me to worry and wonder and be amazed at the precarious context of this new life. There are powers at play in this story that make this child\u2019s life uncertain and precarious before he is even born let alone afterwards.<\/font>
<\/font>There is the power of patriarchy \u2013 and how that affects both Mary and Joseph.<\/font>
<\/font>There is the power of Jesus\u2019 Jewish heritage and royal lineage that affect certain expectations for him and his life. He was a baby born to be king of the Jews whether he and his parents knew it or not.\u00a0 The power of this expectation attracted to him the wise men from the East, ignited prophetic hopes and terrified and threatened the current ruler, King Herod.<\/font>
<\/font>And there is the undisguised power of terror and violence perpetrated against the infants and their families in Bethlehem that led to a refugee flight for Jesus and his family.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>Each of these powerful forces weave themselves throughout the story in predictable ways and I will attend to each of them briefly in turn, but what\u2019s not predictable in this weaving of a story is the golden or silver threads throughout that interrupt this power. <\/font>
<\/font><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/font><\/div>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let\u2019s begin with the patriarchy in this text and its affect on Mary and Joseph and their unborn child.<\/font>
<\/font>Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy that designates Jesus as the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.\u00a0 Throughout this genealogy, fathers beget sons and in general mothers, wives and daughters are not mentioned.\u00a0 No wait, a few of them are mentioned.\u00a0 Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah are mentioned.\u00a0 Uriah was that soldier whom David had killed so he could take Bathsheba to be his own wife.\u00a0 What threads are these? <\/font>
<\/font>Let\u2019s begin with Tamar. Tamar was dismissed from Judah\u2019s family because she was unable to provide children to his sons who were her husbands one after the other before they died.\u00a0 Tamar reclaims her rightful place in the family when she tricks Judah into fathering children with her.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fascinating story and if you\u2019re curious about the details you can read the full story in Genesis 38.<\/font>
<\/font>Rahab is known as a prostitute and so has no real claim to legitimate protection in a patriarchal society. Ruth is a foreigner and also bereft of husband and land and so is unprotected until with the help of her mother-in-law claims her place among her deceased husband\u2019s kin when she uncovers Boaz\u2019 \u201cfeet\u201d, and finally Bathsheba is a woman who is unprotected from the amorous attention of King David.\u00a0 David and Bathsheba\u2019s first child dies, but later they become parents of King Solomon.\u00a0 To be honest, it\u2019s impossible to tell exactly what Matthew intended by including these threads in his genealogy.\u00a0 As I catch sight of their glimmer and shimmer among the muted hues of the other threads, I sense that they are important for showing us the work of God and yet that work and its precise meaning is still hard to und
\nerstand.<\/font>
<\/font><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/font><\/div>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But when we get to today\u2019s verses, \u201cthe birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this <\/strong>way\u2026 and we find out about a pregnant unwed mother who, in a patriarchal society, has no say over her fate should her betrothed choose to divorce her\u00a0 – quietly or otherwise, we catch sight of something familiar.\u00a0 In this society Mary is an unprotected young woman who has found herself in a horrible predicament.\u00a0 Her pregnancy before marriage, and a child not conceived with her betrothed is the type of shame for a family that in patriarchal societies of today still in some places results in stoning.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t just ancient history.\u00a0 In a patriarchal world Mary and her unborn child should not live because of the shame that has been caused to the family.\u00a0 And even if Joseph wants to divorce her quietly (because he doesn\u2019t want something like stoning to happen) she still won\u2019t be protected.\u00a0 Where will she go?\u00a0 Will her family of origin keep her and take care of her taking the shame upon themselves?\u00a0 Divorcing her only frees Joseph from his own responsibility in this matter, but really does her no favours.<\/font>
<\/font>This is the power of patriarchy as it affects both her and Joseph.\u00a0\u00a0 Matthew lets us in on a good man\u2019s dilemma in the face of powers neither he nor his young \u201cwife to be\u201d created but live within.<\/font>
<\/font>Where is the thread that interrupts this power?<\/font>
<\/font>It comes in the form of a dream.\u00a0 A messenger of God tells Joseph not to be afraid of these powers for what has been conceived in Mary is Holy and has a Holy purpose.\u00a0 This child is destined to save others and be Immanuel, \u201cGod with us\u201d.<\/font>
<\/font>Joseph receives this news and does as the messenger of God has told him and takes Mary as his wife.<\/font>
<\/font>But the powers that surround this child\u2019s life have only begun to appear.<\/font>
<\/font>Next there is the power of his Jewish heritage and royal lineage that affect certain expectations for him and his life.\u00a0 Jesus the Messiah is the son of David and the son of Abraham.<\/font>
<\/font>It is time for a moment to look at the back story of this gospel story, the gospel that Matthew has written.\u00a0 With this statement Matthew wants his beleaguered and persecuted minority community of Jews (the first recipients of Matthew\u2019s gospel) who believe that Jesus is their long awaited Messiah to know that they are in line with the best of the hopes of Israel. Matthew the writer of this gospel also lived in a powerful and violent world.\u00a0 His community of Jewish believers in Jesus as Messiah had within their life-time experienced the crushing blow of Roman domination and obliteration during the Jewish Revolt of 66-70 AD.\u00a0 The atrocities experienced during the siege of Jerusalem are too terrible to recite. The only thing comparable in our life-time might be the Rwanda massacre.\u00a0\u00a0 During the Jerusalem Revolt, there were 100\u2019s of crucifixions a day, starvation and deaths of men, women and children.\u00a0 Once again the temple had been destroyed and Jewish synagogues were struggling to define how they would survive.\u00a0 Matthew wrote as a shepherd to his struggling and persecuted community pressed by the Roman Empire on one side and by fellow Jews who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah on the other.\u00a0 His community knew in their bones the precariousness of their situation. And so in his gospel he assured them that the Jesus they believed in was a Jewish son of Abraham and a royal son of King David \u2013 thoroughly Jewish and thoroughly royal and therefore thoroughly qualified to be the fulfillment of their Jewish prophetic hopes for a Messiah. \u00a0<\/font>
<\/font><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/font><\/div>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And now getting back to the story that Matthew is weaving and the powers at play there, Jesus\u2019 regal identity was great when Magi from the East arrived with presents for the young family. It was not so great when a paranoid King Herod demanded the death of all children in Bethlehem under the age of two so he could eliminate any threat to his kingship and power.\u00a0 \u201cRachel shrieks for her children and will not be consoled,\u201d Matthew quotes from Jeremiah.\u00a0 Matthew tells a frightening and disturbing story if we let it in.<\/font>
<\/font>Where is the silver thread of God\u2019s work that interrupts this power?\u00a0 Again it arrives in the form of dreams and messengers of God.\u00a0 A messenger of God appears in a dream of the magi, telling them to go home another way so as to outsmart Herod.\u00a0 A messenger of God appears in another dream to Joseph, telling him to flee as a refugee to Egypt to protect his family. And finally another angel appears in a dream and tells Joseph when to return to the land of Israel and the young family finally settles in Nazareth.<\/font>
<\/font>The birth of Jesus told in this <\/strong>way is the story of God\u2019s incarnation according to Matthew.\u00a0 God became flesh and dwelt with them amid powers they could barely define. God becomes flesh and dwells with us amid powers we can barely define.<\/font>
<\/font>\u2013\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0God dwells with Us. \u00a0<\/font>
<\/font>Is our world so unlike the world that Matthew describes or lives in?\u00a0 What powers hold sway over us?\u00a0 We generally believe that we have moved beyond patriarchy at least in the North and the West, but here men and women continue to struggle with the power of media and other cultural messages that tell us we don\u2019t have enough and we are not enough if we don\u2019t subscribe to some picture perfect ideal of body image, or household image or dare I say work ethic.\u00a0 And the power of terror and violence in our world seems not to have abated either.\u00a0 The cries of modern day \u201cRachel\u2019s\u201d who will not be consoled can still be heard throughout the world \u2013 after genocides and revolutions and children lost to war.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>What is it that interrupts this power? <\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>Two Millennium ago God sent a child into a powerful and dangerous world completely vulnerable and dependent on <\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>people \u2013 of all the crazy ideas. <\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>Initially God depended on Mary and Joseph, a young couple completely ensconced in a challenging world.\u00a0 If incarnation, Immanuel, \u201cGod with us,\u201d continues to be a vulnerable undertaking and depends on people and if Mary and Joseph are our guides then it is clear that God does not depend on perfect people or powerful people and maybe not even very good or remarkable people.\u00a0 What did Mary and Joseph have going for them that allowed them to survive amid the powers? \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>Mary and Joseph were receptive people.\u00a0 God depends on receptive people.\u00a0 Joseph received a dream and listened and responded.\u00a0 The wise men received a message from God in a dream and listened and responded. Matthew received the strength and inspiration to compose a gospel message that he wrote and shared with his community in order to sustain them amid powers that sought to overwhelm them.<\/font>
<\/font>What is it that allows the silver and gold threads of God\u2019s work in the world to shimmer? <\/font>
<\/font>Receptivity.<\/font>
<\/font>And receptivity is not something that we are automatically good at or at least not since we were children. As adults it is something we need to cultivate.\u00a0 And our best teachers for learning to cultivate receptivity live among us \u2013 they are our children \u2013 the ones who depend on us.<\/font>
<\/font>So here we are soon to be upon the eve of Christmas where the shimmering of the threads of God\u2019s work among us will be most evident in our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews and the children in our congregation and their receptivity to the gift of God\u2019s love in the birth of Jesus.\u00a0 May this vulnerability and receptivity be the gift that will interrupt all powers.\u00a0 And may we open ourselves to receive it.\u00a0 Amen<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n<\/font><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 View Archived Sermons\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 NEW! Listen to this Sermon Matthew 1:18-25 \u00a0 Our text for this week begins, \u201cNow the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way\u2026 and the story is launched.This story, as told to us by Matthew, ushers us into a world full of power and its use.As we listen to this story we will hear about the power of Hebrew genealogy and patriarchy, the power of a violent and disturbed King Herod…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-a-worship-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3986,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/3986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}