Musings: Notes From My Daybook

We think that the birth story of Jesus begins in Matthew 1.18, but taking another look at things a few days ago I came to a different point of view.  The story really begins in Matthew 1.1.  The word translated in 1.18  as "birth" is really the same word translated genealogy in 1.1--both times the reference is to the "beginning" of things.  Matthew  wants us to understand just how big a thing God is up to!

Of course there are signs that something unusual is going on.   Matthew takes great pains to demonstrate that Joseph is truly of the line and linage of David.  Yet in so doing, Matthew also signals a few shockers along the way.  It isn’t just father begat son, father begat son.

Matthew includes four women in this genealogy—and none of them are Jewish!

• Tamar was a Canaanite
• Rahab was from Jericho
• Ruth was a Moabite
• Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, was a Hittite (well she might have been a Jew?).

Normally such genealogies take great pain to show how pure the family tree is.  Why does Matthew take such strategic care to include women—women who are not even Jewish?  He could have used Sarah and Rachel, Rebeckah and Leah—good Jewish women?

Maybe Matthew is signaling something about the nature of God’s work. Perhaps there is a message about God’s mercy and grace being said, even in the middle of a recitation of the family tree?  Maybe Matthew is letting us in on a secret?  And the secret is that God works out his actions powerfully, in his own way.

Or maybe his genealogy prepares for what is to come.  If it is scandalous to think that David had a Moabite for a great-grandmother, then we might not be quite as surprised at what is about to happen to Joseph and Mary.

Of course, it is surprising, but Matthew is resolute.  God is the source of this remarkable event.  The birth of this baby comes as a result of God’s activity, not human initiative.  Twice in our story Matthew has been careful to state that it was “by the Holy Spirit.”  No doubt in his mind.  God is active on and on the move--as God has always been!

- It is God's Spirit in Genesis that creates a new world, a new heaven and a new earth.
- It is God's Spirit that separates the waters in the Red Sea and lets Israel depart from Egypt.
- It is God's Spirit that calls prophets, apostles and martyrs to bear witness to the truth.
- It is God's Spirit that launched  a new community on the day of Pentecost in the book of Acts.

That is what Matthew is telling us, that God's Spirit has stirred and caused something utterly new in the world. God has caused this new baby who will change everything among us.  God does the impossible.  “With human beings this is impossible; but with God everything is possible” (Matt 19.26)

So Matthew does not seem to be all that stirred up about the virgin birth.  Maybe that is because Matthew, having witnessed all that Jesus did—including his death and resurrection—finds the idea of a virgin birth to be completely within the realm of reason.  Reason, that is, reason lodged in the dynamic of a God is does new and remarkable things.

Maybe it is because once you have received the life-transforming grace of God in your life, it is not difficult to think of God initiating life in the womb of a woman.  The historical reality of Jesus’ birth finds credence in our own experience of God’s work in our own lives.  Frederick Bruner tells the story of the incident “of the converted miner in the Wesleyan evangelical revival in eithteenth-century England.  Asked by his mocking co-workers if he really believed that Jesus had changed water into wine he replied, “I don’t know if Jesus really changed water into wine; but I know that in my house he changed beer into furniture.”

The miner’s experience of God’s power suggested to him the capacity of God to do the things that are claimed in Scripture.  Our own faith comes to bear witness to the meaning and power of Christmas