Lineage of Faithfulness – Matthew 1

A text – Matthew 1:18-25

¹⁸ Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. ²⁰ But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²² All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

²³ “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
    and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” 

²⁴ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife ²⁵ but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.

A reflection:

New Testament scholars believe that the Gospel of Matthew was written for the specific audience of faithful Jews who wanted to know more about this Jesus, the Messiah. Matthew begins Chapter 1, verse 1, telling the genealogy of Jesus’s earthly father, Joseph, all the way back to Abraham. It is a long genealogy filled with memorable names. Verse 17 says “Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.” Jesus is the first child of the 7x7th generation from Abraham, who walked and talked with the Lord and to whom the Lord promised generations of descendants as many as the grains of sand or as the stars in the sky.

Matthew is careful to point out that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but Matthew wants his Jewish readers/hearers to know that Jesus’s earthly father Joseph was a direct descendant of King David’s son Solomon. Luke’s gospel draws Mary’s line of descent from King David’s son Nathan. So this family, both parents of the house and lineage of King David, fulfilled all Jewish prophesy about the Messiah God had promised coming from that family. And both Joseph and Mary were obedient to God’s will. God couldn’t have found two more willing humans to be the parents of Jesus, the Christ, the promised one. These two courageous young people took on the problems of unwed parenthood that could have resulted in being ostracized or even killed. God was with them. They were ministered to by angels. They took their given roles, knowing they had become players in God’s unfolding story for the benefit of the whole world, in the great turmoil of hard times, vividly nasty politics in church and state, and personal upheaval.

Our love of the manger scenes and friendly beasts in a stable yard, accompanied by beautiful carols, often removes any trace of the extreme drama of God intervening in real lives in complicated times. We probably should think big, as Matthew does, to remember always that this birth was the fulfillment of generations of waiting in a nation that has seemingly forever been at war from within and without. And despite all the controversy and disruption and pain, the child laid in the manger became for every human being the Prince of Peace. God with us. Human and God born of generations of humans. Our Lord Jesus.

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for keeping your promise to Abraham and David, Joseph and Mary, so that we might always be able to be your adopted children. Help us to remember that suffering and confusion and pain have always been part of earthly life, and that you love us and walk with us, God with us, to the end of the age. Amen.