A sermon based upon Matthew: 1:18-25
By
Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
Sunday,
Dec. 6th, 2020 Christmas in Quartet: 4 Part-Harmony of the Christmas Story
This
Advent season, we’re considering what each gospel says about Christmas.
They each tell the same basic truth about Jesus, but the details about
Jesus birth can be very different.
As
we saw last week, Mark doesn’t have anything to say about a Jesus’ birth. He starts with John the Baptist, and heads
straight to the cross. Today we want to
consider how Matthew tells the Christmas story.
Matthew
does tell us about Jesus’ virgin birth and there were a couple of mentions of
angels, but there’s still no manger, no shepherds, nor any heavenly hosts
singing ‘Glory to God in the Highest!, nor any wish for ‘Peace on earth.
In
fact, after an opening genealogical introduction, the gospel of Matthew starts
out with a scandal. Joseph is about to
break off his upcoming marriage to Mary altogether. That’s why I suggest, using my music analogy,
that Matthew sings Christmas, a bit off key.
And it gets worse.
Planned
to dismiss her quietly...
1:19
Whereas
Mark tells us nothing, John begins with Genesis, and Luke tells us about John’s
family dynamics, Matthew shows us how difficult God’s interruptions can
be.
In
Matthew’s story, without being married, one day Mary turns up pregnant. In Luke Gabriel warns Mary and, Mary informed
Joseph, but in Matthew, there’s no angel Gabriel and no warning at all. Now, after Joseph was getting ready to
‘dismiss’ and ‘put Mary away privately, an unarmed angel shows up in Joseph’s
dream ‘a day late and a dollar short’, my mother would have said.
It’s
obvious that Matthew has a completely different agenda, in how he is
introducing God’s work in the world.
While Luke’s angels speak ‘peace’, Matthew’s angel is trying to keep the
peace. The work of God in Matthew causes
problems, while the work of God in Luke is trying to solve problems.
Why
the difference?
Well,
maybe part of the answer in in the how Matthew emphasizes the kind of Messiah
or Savior Jesus will be. Matthew is the
first gospel writer to express directly, how ‘this Jesus will save his people
from their sins’. Matthew seems to want
to show us, from the get-go, that when a holy God begins to work among a sinful
people, there’s going to be conflict, misunderstanding, and trouble. I guess you could say, that we can see the
handwriting on the wall’ already pointing us toward the cross.
Of
course, Joseph does not actually ‘dismiss’ or ‘put Mary away’, but he came
close. Had not that angel appear in his
dream, think what might had happened?
But the angel did show up. That’s
how Jesus got his other named, ‘Emmanuel, God with us!’ God was with us, but it was very close to
not happening like it did, or at least that’s the way Matthew likes to tell
it. It almost didn’t happen, but it
did.
An
account of the genealogy 1:1
And
I know that’s how Matthew pictures the work of God, ‘It almost doesn’t happen,
but it does’, because this was his angle already.
In
the Genealogy that opens his gospel, Matthew takes us through a long list of
male names, starting with Abraham, and ending with Joseph and then Jesus. This isn’t exactly ‘Ancestry dot com’,
because some names are left out, while others are added in.
In
fact, the neat way Matthew puts this together, he has 14 generations from
Abraham to King David, and 14 generations from King David to the exile in
Babylon. Then he has 14 more generations
from Babylonian Captivity to Jesus.
That’s very neat, almost too neat.
But then he deliberately colors outside the lines by mentioning only
four questionable women along the way; Rehab, who was a prostitute, Tamar, who
was raped, The wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, with whom David committed adultery,
and Ruth, a foreigner who got frisky to save her life. You actually could add Mary as the fifth
questionable woman, because this mother of Jesus did have a teen
pregnancy. When most people would cover
stuff like this up, Matthew lets it all hang out. And no, I’m not kidding folks, this stuff is
in the Bible, the Holy Bible, I might add.
Why
are all these questionable women, and men too, for that matter—-what are they
doing in this story? Well, besides this
being a true story, made of real people, in real life situations that carry a
lot of baggage, what Matthew seems to be saying about these women,, including
Mary, is that here we have a God who works in mysterious ways. Bad things happen. Good things almost don’t. And know that God is with us, really with us,
because these good things that almost don’t happen, somehow, still do.
That’s
what all these women, and there stories have in common. You don’t notice God is with you, when every
thing is running smooth like a well greased-wheel, no you notice God when it
was close—when good things almost didn’t
happen, but they still did, and they still will, because God is Emmanuel, God
with us.
In
the time of King Herod Matthew 2:1
And
that brings us to the final part of Matthew’s unique angle on Christmas. We find in the dark-side of the story of the
wise men, who were following the star.
It’s also a story about something that almost didn’t happen, or should I
say, it’s the story about a something that almost did, tragically happen. It the story how Jesus was almost murdered,
as a baby, but he wasn’t.
If
you recall, the wise men, (not kings),
bearing 3 different royal gifts, saw the star announcing Jesus’ birth, and
followed it. Now get this. Matthew says they were coming from the east,
following a star they saw in the east, rising, but they ended up going
west. Didn’t I tell you God works in
mysterious ways? I think the point here
is, that this was no ordinary star. The
idea isn’t that the star was in the geographic east, but it was rising like
stars do in the east.
All
this geographical, astrological confusion is warranted, because later, we read
that they find the child by following this star ‘to the place where he
was’. But all this confusion does
explain how they made a wrong turn and ended up at Herod’s house.
And
this was really, a wrong turn. Because,
as you may remember, Herod did not like hearing that a baby was to be born, who
was already being called the ‘King of the Jews’. Herod the Great was the only king of the
Jews, and he was going to do whatever it takes, to make sure of that.
And
that’s where this story starts to take a dark turn, too dark. After the wise men informed Herod the time
they saw the star first appear, they left and finally came to where the child
was. A dreamed warned them not to return
to Herod, and an angel came an warned Mary and Joseph, that King Herod would be
looking for the child, so they fled to Egypt.
Unfortunately,
that’s not the end of this story, because Herod, unable to locate the child,
orders every child in and around Bethlehem to be taken from their parents and
murdered. Again, the point of the story,
is that one of these children could have been Jesus, but it wasn’t. By the time Herod’s soldiers arrived, the
child Jesus was safe with his parents in Egypt.
“Out
of Egypt I have called my son.” Matthew 2:15
Now,
we’ve come to the end of the Christmas story, and where is Jesus. He’s not in a manger in Bethlehem, he’s
headed back home to Nazareth, but for now, Jesus is a refugee down in Egypt,
right where his ancestors were in Egyptian bondage.
This
opens us up to having to make the comparison Matthew wants to make, and will
make, all the way from Egypt, to Nazareth, and to Jerusalem., and everywhere in
between. This Jesus, who is God’s son,
and Israel’s Savior, and is Emmanuel, God with us, is now ready to be cast as
‘the new Moses’. And this Jesus, as the
Savor who is God’s Messiah, is one who is greater than the Law itself. He is the one who will lead his people on a
new Exodus, and he will his redeem his people, not only from sin, but from
the law.
And
that almost doesn’t happen too. It
wasn’t long until Jesus came into confrontation with the most serious keepers
of the law; the scribes and the Pharisees.
You know that story, because it is the story that runs through each of
the gospels, and it’s partly why Jesus is crucified.
But
what you may not realize is that Matthew’s shows us this great difference of
interpreting the law, in his unique detail that gives us the sermon on the
mount. Nothing establishes Jesus
authority and priority over the law, more than his new law, and higher form of
righteousness which was being laid out in the sermon on the mount.
You
know how that goes, ‘You’ve Heard it said, but I say”. Now, that’s the real authority of ‘God with
us’, when he reinterprets his own law.
Now, that’s certainly something that was going to cause trouble, and it
did.
And
here again, we end up where we started.
The gospel of Matthew starts with a scandal, and continues with one
right up to the cross. And it’s at the
cross that is the epitome of it almost didn’t happen, but it still did. And it’s at the cross that we find Jesus leading
his people on a new Exodus, and this time it’s not the waters that part, but
it’s the tomb that rolls away, to open up the way to eternal life.
“They
shall name him Emmanuel,” Matthew 1:23
So,
Matthew still sings Christmas, but he sings it in a dissonant, out of tune kind
of way. He looks at Christmas from the
dark side, which also reflects upon the kind of world Jesus was being born
into.
If
there is one verse, however, that
Matthew uses to sing his understanding of the Christmas story, it’s the words the
angel used to announce Jesus’ birth to Joseph. When an angel is doing the
talking, you should pay close attention, because often points to what God is
doing. Remember, angels are messengers of God.
So,
what’s the message? In our primary text,
in
Matthew
1:21, the angel informs Joseph the reason for Mary’s teen pregnancy, which man
be unwanted by the world, but is still the mighty work of God. The angel says: ‘She will bear a son, and
you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” We can sum up what Matthew sings about ‘Emmanuel,
God with us, in the birth of Jesus, using this one verse.
His
People. Matthew, sings the original message Christmas,
and Jesus’ birth. Jesus came as the
Christ, the Messiah for ‘his people’.
Everything
in his Christmas story points to this;
the long genealogy that begins with Abraham and ends with Jesus, the story of King Herod, and the terrible
political situation in Israel at that time, and also how the Holy Family had to
flee into Egypt, and how Jesus came back ‘out of Egypt’ just like Israel was
rescued out of Egypt.
Finally,
also how Matthew presents Jesus as the giver of the new law, the higher law of
love and faithfulness on display in the sermon on the mount.
In
every way, Matthew sings Christmas, he places the whole event in its original,
local context. As a Paul said, Salvation
is of the Jews first, then the Greeks.
Their
sins. The other part of
Matthew’s tune, is what begins to make the music more universal, for us
too. But let’s not get ahead of
ourselves. Jesus first comes to save
‘his people from their sins’.
Do
you know what the worst sin in Israel was at that time? God called Israel, as
he called Abraham, so that through Abraham, all the families of the earth could
be blessed’ (Ge. 12:3).
Then,
later, in Exodus, as Moses delivered God’s people from Egypt, he gave them the
law, he consecrated them, reminding them, God chose them, among all the
nations, to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation (Ex. 19:6). And that means, as Isaiah reminded them later,
that they have been chosen to be a ‘light to all the nations’ (Isa. 42: 6)
being a holy and righteous people, serving God and taking God’s salvation to
the whole world (Isa.49:6).
Here
is precisely the primary ‘sin’ Israel is found guilty of, which must be healed
and remedied. That’s why God has to come
down, in the form of a man, In Jesus Christ, God is saving his people, so he
can continue his work of reconciling the whole world unto himself.
This
is how Israel’s sin and failure provides the way, for God to address the sin of
everyone. It’s also why Jesus comes to save
his people first, so that through Jesus, God keeps the work of salvation,
redemption, and restoration going. Jesus
doesn’t take Israel’s light away, but he restores that light by picking up the
torch, and becoming the light of the whole world.
And
don’t forget, Jesus also passed that light down to us, saying that ‘we are the
light of the world too ‘. That comes
straight out of Matthew’s Christmas gospel. This is also the reason we light up our world
at Christmas. When you do that God’s
call should come straight to you. When
you light up a tree, you aren’t just saying, Jesus lights up your world, but
you’re also showing yourself what God wants you to do; to pick up the same
torch, and keep running the race, for the prize of the call in Christ Jesus.
He
will save.
So,
finally, Matthew’s tune is sung about the ‘sin’ in our world, and what God has
done, and is doing to heal, save, and redeem us from it. This brings us to the ‘bright side’ of this
dark, melancholy, and someone difficult story.
In Jesus Christ, God comes to save, to heal, and to redeem.
How
Jesus saves is what the story of Christmas is about. God saves through the people he chose. God saves, in spite of their sin and failure,
and finally, through Jesus, and his newly redeemed and restored Israel, which
now, by his grace, includes us, the church, we too become recipients and
participants, in God’s saving love. We
are called to receive the light come into the world , and become light in the
world.
We are all very familiar with the events of
9.11.2001, when terrorist attacked the World Trade Center in New York City. However, four days later there was another
tragedy that didn’t get as much attention, and rightly so.
It
was September 15, 2001 at 2:30 AM, and a group of barges loaded with coiled
steel slammed into one of the pillars of the bridge that leads to South Padre
Island, Texas, causing three 80 foot sections of the bridge to fall into the
water. Because it happened without
warning, and because it was so dark, numerous cars drove off the bridge and
plunged 85 feet to the water below. In
all, eight people died and 3 more were injured.
Following
the tragedy, someone suggested, “If only it had happened during the day time,
when the sunlight would have made the collapsed bridge more visible. Or if only
there had been a big spotlight that could immediately have been shined on the
problem, or warning lights that could have immediately started blinking to warn
the drivers. Then the people would not have lost their lives.”
“If
only”. We all know the importance of
light. We not only love it at Christmas,
there is no life without light. Spiritual
light is just as important. Without spiritual light a great darkness overtakes
our world and people drive off the dangerous roads and broken
bridges into the a great abyss.
We
have the light and we are the light. We
can shine the lights at Christmas, and we can live in the light to show the way
to stay on the right road that leads to life and more light..
Now,
before we close, let’s here return to the most obvious, in Matthew’s, dissonant,
off key sounding tune. God saves through
Israel’s brokenness to include us, and show us the way into the light. When you didn’t think the world could be
saved, God still does it. As the black
church often says, ‘He’s a just in time God’.
And
this often how God works on purpose. God
waits to work through us, because God’s saving purpose has always included us,
you, me, and the whole world.
Jesus
came to save his people to shine and show a light to save all people. That’s why the offer to save the Jews means
also, that today, and everyday, and every year at Christmas, Matthew also sings
and remind us, how God came for them, and for us, because he is still, for all,
Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.
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