Fourth Sunday of Advent
“Stay true to the dreams of your youth.”
—Herman Melville
Isaiah 7:10–14
Romans 1:1–7
Matthew 1:18–24
Today’s gospel reading, unique to Matthew, raises many questions. What shines out, however, like the Star of Bethlehem, is the faith of St. Joseph. I thank God we have four gospels; Luke’s gospel highlights the faith of Mary, while Matthew directs our attention to Joseph.
If I were St. Joseph, I would be hurt, or angry, or depressed, or maybe some toxic combination of all three if I discovered that Mary, my betrothed, probably a young teenage girl, was pregnant before I ever slept with her. Maybe Joseph was, but Matthew makes no mention of it. Instead, Joseph takes the sober, kindhearted, mature, even “wise” approach of planning to divorce her quietly.
Joseph’s initial plan adheres to Jewish Law, but his compassion leads him to avoid exacting upon Mary the full penalty. Mary should be stoned to death according to Deuteronomy 22:20–21. This reality underscores the tremendous faith-based courage of Mary in her agreeing to become the mother of God by the Holy Spirit. She risked her life and the life of her child by her decision. But Matthew’s account is about Joseph.
Jesus’s mission will transcend the Law and the Prophets, the beautiful and sacred tradition of Israel. How perfectly appropriate that even before he is born, he is challenging his parents to do the same!
This complicated, even ambivalent relationship with Israel’s history is revealed in the genealogy that immediately precedes our verses. In fact, Matthew calls his gospel “the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” As if the book is only about genealogy! Matthew traces Jesus’s ancestry all the way back to Abraham and through King David to St. Joseph.
One problem with this genealogy: Joseph was not Jesus’s father. Matthew is very clear on this point in our reading today. Hilary of Poitiers resolves this issue by pointing out that Mary and Joseph belonged to the same kinship line.[i] If this is so, the focus on Joseph’s bloodline rather than Mary’s is an example of ancient patriarchy. Perhaps Matthew is also telling us that Jesus is both deeply connected to his Jewish ancestors and essentially cut off from them.
Joseph hears the call to go beyond his compassionate mollifying of the Law. He takes the pregnant girl into his home and marries her. This astounding act of generosity and love would be remarkable at any time or place. It would have been almost unheard of in first-century Palestine. Does not Joseph’s love and faith here contradict the Law of Deuteronomy?
Matthew tells us Joseph heard this message from an angel in a dream. I wonder how Matthew, writing many decades later, would know such a thing? It might be his best guess, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Assuming Joseph did have such a dream, it is still not so clear to me why he would allow a mere dream to lead him to make such a life-altering decision. Would you?
When St. Joseph had this dream, he must have still been a relatively young man, about to start a family. He must have thought long and hard about that dream in the cold light of morning. He was not risking his life, as Mary had, but he was risking his reputation as a law-abiding Jew, his future happiness, and his heart. That’s a lot. I believe the dream must have been confirmed by many long hours of prayer and discernment. Joseph’s decision to stick with Mary is so out of the ordinary that it can be seen as a miracle. Matthew clearly sees it this way, and that’s why he explains the decision as the result of an angel’s message in a dream. In the end, St. Joseph followed his dream, and his life changed forever.
The angel in Matthew tells Joseph the same thing he told Mary: “Do not fear.” Faith casts out fear. But the angel’s reasoning is one that could provoke still more fear, at least to my mind: “for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” What?! he probably thought. What kind of girl am I marrying who is carrying a Holy Ghost child? Of course, we cannot know everything going through St. Joseph’s mind as he made his fateful decision. What we know and believe is a) he was not the father of the unborn Jesus; and b) he took Mary into his house anyway.
It is easy this week to connect the first reading with the gospel because the gospel quotes it as a prophecy that was fulfilled. But was it? When Isaiah predicts that “a virgin” shall conceive and bear a son, the word he uses means “young woman”; it is not the technical term for a virgin.[ii] Even if we read it as “virgin,” however, Isaiah is not suggesting the virgin will remain a virgin after she conceives.
Even more striking is that the prophecy says the child shall be named Emmanuel (“God is with us”), but Joseph obeys the angel’s command to name the child Jesus (“savior”). This prophecy—“They shall declare his name to be Emmanuel”—from Isaiah is repeated by the angel in today’s gospel reading. What is going on here?
St. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) offers an answer that makes sense to me.
“Why then do they not call him Emmanuel instead of Jesus Christ? Because the text says not “you shall call” but “his name shall be called.” This means that the multitude and the outcome of the events themselves will cause him to be called Emmanuel. For here he puts the event as a name. This is customary in Scripture, to substitute names for the actual events. Therefore to say “they shall call him ‘Emmanuel’” means nothing else than that they shall see God among us.”[iii]
This is an ingenious way to resolve the dilemma. I have another one. We have already seen Joseph’s connection to and break from the Law. By not naming him Emmanuel, Joseph follows this up by aligning with—yet breaking from—the Prophets as well. This is an example of how the Bible’s inconsistencies point us to a deeper truth. In addition, both names are necessary for the truth of each. Jesus is our savior because he is God with us, the incarnation of God.
The Gospel of St. Matthew ends with one of my favorite passages in Scripture, a reference to how the gospel begins. Emmanuel, the name Jesus is not given but lived out: “I am with you every day until the consummation of the age.”
[i] Ibid., 1a, 4.
[ii] NJBC, 235.
[iii] ACCS, 18-19.
The Jewish law that a woman who committed adultery should be stoned to death shows us how barbaric life was before Jesus’s teachings. But when you say that Mary was very brave, we should consider what people say after they have been visited by an angel or by God through a vision or even an out-of-body experience. The effect of such an experience is so mystical and profound that people who have had it say they are not afraid of death–not afraid of anything. I would imagine that after the annunciation, Mary felt so uplifted and holy that her faith was multiplied tenfold and out of the league of fear. Of course, Jesus, who had the most faith, questioned God when he was facing torture, so Mary might have been frightened, too.
I did not know that Matthew was about Joseph. Was Joseph seeking a divorce because Jewish law mandated this if he rejected stoning?
I like the distinction between what Jesus “shall be called” (Emmanuel) and what name he is given (Jesus). And Joseph’s insistence on the name “Jesus” gives everyone additional information about who this child is, both the “God with us” and the “savior.”
That’s a good point I had not considered, that Mary would have been forever altered by the Annunciation. The primary message the angel delivers is “Do not be afraid.” Fear is the opposite of faith. The fact that Mary did indeed risk death and exclusion is evidence that she experienced something extraordinary. Still, Mary must have had some dark moments of questioning and worry about her future. The situation also calls to mind the time in John’s gospel when Jesus intervened to prevent the stoning of a woman caught in the act of adultery, “Let he among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.” I wonder if he was thinking about the risk his mother faced. I think Joseph sought a divorce because he believed, quite reasonably, that Mary had slept with another man and become pregnant while they were betrothed, which was something in between modern engagement and full marriage. It was a kind of adultery, and this is grounds for divorce even in Christianity. Joseph would presumably have had to believe Mary that it was the Holy Spirit, not a man, who had impregnated her. That is not an easy thing to believe.