Texts: Isaiah 63:7-9; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:13-23
Well, it's over for another year. And as we eat our way through the leftovers and return our fridges to something approaching normality, we may want to reflect on how it all went. Was it everything we had hoped for, and more? Was it all rather an endurance test? Did we feast well or unwisely? Did everything go as planned, or did it sometimes seem as though we had somehow been given a part in a Mr Bean movie? Are we now most in need of rest, restoration – or perhaps, repentance?
Whatever it was like, I can't resist the temptation to remind you that I did warn you. Whatever else Christmas is, it's an interruption. And, if the experience of a friend of mine is anything to go by, it is an invasion of reality. She sent us an email on Friday describing her experience of sharing Christmas with her three young grandchildren. She had loved the idea of becoming a grandparent; and when it happened and kept on happening she has enjoyed receiving photos and news, etc. She enjoyed, in other words, the whole idea of grandchildren. But this Christmas it seems, the ideal was invaded by the real. I won't go into detail, to protect the guilty; suffice it to say, her choice of Christmas presents for the little dears was not well received – and as for the outing to McDonalds…!
The romance of having grandchildren can be rudely interrupted by the grandchildren themselves. And the same is true of Christmas. We tend to be all sentimental at Christmas time – it turns it into a romance, in the Church just as much as outside it. Listen to the way in which the story is re-told, in the children's pageants, in the carols, and sometimes, no doubt, in the Christmas sermons, and keep a particular ear open for the bits that have been added, that are not in the original accounts in the Gospels. We've given ourselves a beautiful Mary, not just a young woman, but a beautiful young woman; and, of course, Joseph bears a striking resemblance to Burt Reynolds in his younger days. At Christmas we can't bear to think that Mary might hve had crooked teeth, or Joseph spots!
As for the baby, when he comes – he bears a striking resemblance to the plastic models couples get to practise on at ante-natal classes. No crying he makes! There is never any suggestion of labour pains before the birth, or colic or teething after it. Jesus is to be the perfect baby, and perfect babies do not do anything natural. What is even more amazing is that the strange collection of animals that St Francis tells us also attended the birth do not do anything natural either! There must be no hint of manure, smell or flies in this Christmas story.
So being unreal about Christmas has a long tradition behind it. So, too, does the invasion of the unreal by the real, the romance by the truth, as we see in our readings this morning. They continue the theme of this birth as interruption, disruption: it is a real story of a real birth of a real baby into a real family. And perhaps this is a good place to say one more thing about the so-called virgin birth.
As I said last Sunday, we have St Luke to blame for all our angst on this particular subject. It's just not an issue for St Matthew. St Matthew gives us a much more realist account of the arrival of Jesus than we find in St Luke. In this gospel, we have no trip to Bethlehem, no manger, no angels rejoicing and no shepherds watching their flocks by night or trying to find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths (whatever they may be). Nor do we have the archangel Gabriel frightening the wits out of Mary. All that stuff is left for St Luke to bother about. St Matthew has a different story to tell, because he has different concerns.
He's not bothered by the virgin birth. It was quite a common idea at the time for great men to be born from above, to be both human and divine. What bothered St Matthew was much more mundane than that. For him the great issue was one of pedigree. Jesus could not be the promised Messiah if he were not descended from David. And there was the problem. If he did not have a human father, how could it be said that he descended from David or from anyone else for that matter?
St Matthew didn't duck the question; he faced it clearly in his opening chapter with the genealogy of Jesus. Each generation is begotten, right down until we get to Joseph. Then the long line of descent turns sharply sideways: and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. And there is what we might call the genealogical interruption. Something has happened to interrupt the line of descendants, and every Jew would want to know what. Is Jesus then illegitimate? Is that what is being said?
There is the other problem St Matthew is faced with. The virgin birth is not a problem for him; but the possible illegitimacy of Jesus certainly is. It would be an absolute disgrace in the society at the time. So it is both socially and theologically necessary for St Matthew to assert Jesus' legitimacy, while at the same time insisting that "Mary was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit". How is this to be achieved? By taking the focus off what is happening to Mary and emphasising what Joseph does.
By accepting Mary as his wife when she is already pregnant, and by naming the child, Joseph does what would be expected of him if the child were his own. So any Jew would immediately assume that Joseph is the father of the child, not because it is said, but because it appears from Joseph's actions. That's why the whole of this first chapter of St Matthew's gospel is really about Joseph, and only incidentally about Mary and the baby.
The next chapter is then pure Matthew – St Luke has no equivalent to these two stories. Because of the peculiarities of the Church Calendar we're looking at these two stories in the reverse order. Next Sunday is the Epiphany, when the Magi arrive; today we're looking at the aftermath, when Herod is about to launch his campaign of infanticide.
Once again the story is related from Joseph's point of view. He is warned in a dream to flee to Egypt, taking Mary and the infant Jesus to safe refuge there. Then, in the fullness of time, when the murderous Herod has died, he is advised in a dream that they may now return to Judea. What is this story all about? St Matthew leaves us in little doubt, as he draws our attention to various Scriptures that, he says, are fulfilled in these events.
Theologically, he is surely linking Jesus with the Exodus story. Like the Israelites of old, Jesus spends time in Egypt. Like them, the Lord God calls him out of Egypt. There follows the "wilderness years", until the time is right and Jesus appears out of obscurity to call the people to new life in God. At its heart this story is pure theology.
But it also has a practical side. It's about the real disrupting the unreal. It's about God incarnate entering, not a perfect, Christmassy, tinselled world, but the real world where infants get slaughtered for political purposes. It's a story that defies all attempts at sentimentality. It might be lovely to have the three wise men in the Nativity scene (even if historically inaccurate!), but nobody would want to include King Herod's order to wipe out every child born in the preceding two years in and around Bethlehem.
And just in case we still haven't grasped the point, we have a further does of realism from our second reading this morning. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews is almost dismissive of the angels of Christmas. The real point of Christmas, he says, is that God turned his favour, not on angels, but on humanity. Jesus is, despite our carols, a human baby like every other human baby at birth. His flesh is no different from our flesh. And only because that is true could he be our Saviour, dying in the flesh for us so that we might live with him.
As I have said on more than one occasion recently, Christmas is as much about our salvation as Easter is. When we look at the Christmas tree we are reminded of the Tree of Life AND the Cross of Christ. In the Christian faith the two are inseparable.
I doubt if my friend saw it this way at the time; but maybe her little grandchildren were bringing her a little of the reality of Christmas – a little of the reality of the world into which God chose to enter.
Thanks be to God.
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