A look at the gaps in the lectionary.
This week: the gap between Advent 1A and Advent 2A.
Now that we’re out of Ordinary Time and into the season of Advent, the lectionary gets clever. We all take this for granted. Much like starting Advent 1 with an apocalyptic freak-out usually then leads us to a John the Baptist warning.
But for anyone actually concerned with the narrative arc in our gospel stories, skipping around thematically does something weird to our understanding of the story. Something much different than skipping over stuff we want to shove into the director’s cut.
We are presenting the story at the beginning of the church year as the beginning of the story. Of course, not everyone is a church nerd like we are. They don’t get that our church year really started this past Sunday.
But we do get it this week. We get that we’re waiting and anticipating the arrival of Jesus. There is something really beginning about that.
And I usually point out that these next three Sundays, the second, third, and fourth Sundays of Advent are the only weeks in the whole year the gospel story isn’t centered on Jesus (with a couple of exceptions). Instead, we’re focused on Mary, Joseph, John the Baptist, and angels. These are stories which point toward expectation.
So the narrative we create each Sunday is a rhythm of beginning: the pre-Jesus time of anticipation.
And to do that in Year A, we skip over the birth of Jesus to tell a story from after he is born. Which, I gotta say, messes with the narrative flow of the original story.
Going all the way back
Yes, I know that we cover these very passages later. You’re missing my point.
Just because the lectionary skips this story doesn’t mean we all shouldn’t remember it as we prepare for Sunday.
So Matthew has probably the worst opening of the four canonical gospel stories. He goes full-on genealogy. Straight back to Abraham. Three parts, fourteen generations each, holy lineage, kingly lineage, blessing lineage.
It’s easy to see this as shoring up Jesus’s bonafides. Or perhaps a means of shoring up your love of monarchies. Sure.
More importantly, though, is that it sets the tone of rebellion, connection, intimacy, and community in the relationship between God and these people. The genealogy includes women, not just men. Women who provided a vehicle for hope when the men were screwing up.
And let’s not forget, some of this is pretty X-Rated material.
While we’re here, let us not ignore what Matthew does here. He shows the patriarchal lineage—it’s all about the dudes for the legal attribution of bloodlines—but the women reveal the nature of the story. Even down to that last line:
“and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.”
No, not even Joseph gets the last word on Jesus. It’s Mary. Joseph gets to be “the husband of Mary,” not the big dog himself.
This is not a feminist writing the gospel, but the defenders of patriarchy are rarely so eager to highlight both the limits of men and the unique wisdom of the incarnate one being born. That in the end of this long list of men (and two other women), the last one out, the one from whom Jesus ultimately comes, is Mary.
The Actual Birth of Jesus
I make a mental note every year that the story we tell in Christmas pageants is an amalgamation of both Matthew and Luke’s stories. I revisit them both each year to keep them straight.
Matthew’s is shorter and less interested in the birthing moment. And when I say less, I mean it. It’s told in a passive form, like an oh, by the way, it then happened.
What Matthew focuses on instead is the politics of the moment. What should Joseph do (Mary’s point of view is in Luke)? Kill her, I guess? He doesn’t really want to…
Then an angel comes and encourages him to marry her anyway. Don’t be afraid to they say to him. Do this and she will have a son. Name him Jesus. He’s important.
He does, Jesus gets born and named.
End Chapter 1.
No travel, no census or inn or animals or angels or shepherds in fields. Just Joseph chatting with an angel and then we’re done.
Wise Men and the Holy Innocents
As Chapter two begins, we jump forward a year or two. Some astrologers from the East come looking for a baby in Judah who is to be a great king. Something about this is alluring to them. They aren’t Jewish. Perhaps Zoroastrian. Or some version of a scientific-spiritual astrological prediction. Something profound enough to bring them a long way from home to pay an infant homage.
So they go where you’d think they’d go: to the capital. They ask around. And word bubbles up to the King that some foreigners are looking for the kid who would be king of Israel.
So we all know how that’s gonna go.
Herod tries to trick them into feeding him intel on it. These guys don’t know any better, so they continue their search until they find him. And there, they bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
I think Matthew undersells what happens next, but we shouldn’t. God warns them in a dream: don’t trust Herod. They don’t pass on the info. Instead, they sneak out of the area.
Now, let’s get down to business because we’re in the middle of some really dark stuff.
We tell the first part of this story and ignore the second half. We dress up ten-year-old boys in bathrobes and fake beards and shove them into our Christmas pageants. But we don’t deal with any of the geopolitical realities of their being there. Especially when matters of immigrants crossing borders persists in the zeitgeist.
We’re talking about these wise foreigners coming to town and ignoring the part where a homicidal maniac wants to use them to kill a baby. And when they get the hint? They wipe their hands and go “not my circus” and skedaddle.
Then the King of Israel murders a generation.
He has all the boys of a certain age range killed. Not the handful born on a particular day or in a particular month. But all the boys two and under. Thousands. Brutally murdered.
Fleeing political persecution and threats of violence, the holy family escape to Egypt (the country, by the way, to which God told the people to never return). They reside there as refugees for years until Herod dies.
Joseph receives two dreams: the first is a call to return home. Herod is dead. Now it is safe.
Then a second: perhaps to clarify. Herod is dead, the big threat is over. But his son, Archelaus is king. Better not move back home. Go to Nazareth instead.
Why so much about Joseph?
Honestly, I don’t really know why. In part because the way Matthew tells the story highlights the women. So the idea that we get none of this from Mary’s perspective is more fascinating and curious than it is demonstrable of how things should be.
What the narrative focuses on, however, is the interventions. How Joseph receives multiple encounters with the divine and the three strangers discovered a sign and then had one of their own.
It also highlights the patriarchal rage over genealogy, as the tyrant king of dubious background felt threatened by a true king of genuine origin. And his response to this is not only fear of loss, but rage and murder.
I’m reminded of our own age, when people who describe a deep sense of loss feel justified in vocalizing their rage and even committing acts of violence. They hope we would accept this as inevitable and justified, of course. We didn’t want to do these awful things, but our way of life was threatened.
But rage and violence and murder and genocide are never justified. There’s literally a fundamental disconnect between the excuse-seeking cause (our way of life may be threatened) and effect (I’ll take it out on those people).
- I got a C on a test so I slashed the teacher’s tires.
- My neighbor got a bigger box from Amazon so I stole it.
- Other people are happy when I’m not so I must make them sad like me.
Cruelty is unjust.
Against the extreme image of the terror king is humble Joseph, protecting his family, whisking them away to safety, trusting that he’s not going crazy.
This is the image of a father God wants us to see.
John the Baptist arrives
Chapter three begins decades later; perhaps a quarter century. A different place and people. Now it’s John, a prophet from the wilderness.
The set up we’re getting involves way more than what happens in Jerusalem. It’s found in foreign countries and countrysides and even small towns like Nazareth. These are the places God is intervening and appearing and stirring things up.
Returning one last time to the nature of gender, this last part stirs up the nature of the lineage Matthew uses to justify Jesus (and imply and condemnation of Herod in contrast), but it is in the exceptions that we see God’s most significant activities.
And this is why I so strenuously reject using the traditions embodied in scripture for justifying present bigotry or differentiation. Because God shows up in Tamar, Bathsheba, and Mary. And not so much in Nahshon, Asaph, and Abiud (do you even know these guys?).
God shows up to Joseph to protect the holy family and to the astrologers who could give up the goose.
These guys aren’t the point of the story. It isn’t about them, their maleness, or their stations.
It’s about God. And God is conducting a really beautiful experiment with all of humanity.
And I want to be thinking about that when we get to John the Baptist.