“When God joins your family” (St. Luke’s: Friday, September 8, 2017; Mt. 1.1-23)

“When God joins your family”

     The Holy Family.  I have to admit that I was a bit surprised as I read the readings for today’s mass.  Today is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so I assumed that today’s readings would feature texts that had traditionally been interpreted by the Church as referring to Mary.  Two things in particular struck me as I was preparing this reflection.  First of all, (the shorter version of) today’s Gospel reading begins with the words “the birth of Jesus took place in this way…”  So, we’re reading about the birth of Jesus as we celebrate the birth of Mary.  Secondly, today’s Gospel is from St. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, which is told from the perspective of …Joseph!  St. Luke’s version of the story fails to give Joseph even a single speaking line.  Luke lets us know that Joseph is there, but it’s Mary who is visited by the angel Gabriel and, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, sings the unforgettable words of her Magnificat.  Mary is the one who is in the know, while Joseph, for his part, has a passive, supporting role.  So, there we have them – Jesus, Joseph and Mary – the three members of the Holy Family.  The reason we call them the holy family is that this family was visited by God in a unique way.  In fact, this was the family that God decided to join.  St. Matthew tells us that Jesus’ birth will be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy about the arrival of the One who will be “God with us”.  From the perspective of the members of the holy family, they were the family that had to be “with God” in a very particular way.

     The Royal Family (Tree).  St. Matthew, the evangelist who composes his Gospel with a particularly Jewish flavour, begins Jesus’ 42-names-long-genealogy, of course, with Abraham.  The long story of the Creator God’s desire to be “with” his creation, to be close to his creatures, began with the call of Abraham to be the “father” of a new nation, a people who would belong to Yahweh in a unique way and who would be a source of blessing for all the nations of the earth.  How precisely the Creator would accomplish all this remained a mystery, and century after century went by as the nation of Israel waited for the Day when their God would come and be “with them”, not merely in the Jerusalem Temple, but in an even more real and immediate way.  However Yahweh decided to make his presence known, it was believed, it would involve a descendant of David, the archetypal king in Israel’s lore, who would reign as the anointed King (i.e. Christ, Messiah) of the nation of Abraham’s descendants.  For many Jews in the first century, a sure sign that God had not yet arrived was the fact that the throne of David was occupied by the family of Herod – foreign usurpers in the employ of Rome.  What Matthew does is to begin his Gospel in a way that combines both of these dimensions of the Jewish hope for the arrival of Yahweh to rescue his people and establish the kingdom of heaven on earth.  Matthew demonstrates that Jesus is both a descendant of David – in virtue of his “adoption” by Joseph – and therefore the rightful King (Messiah) and also that Jesus is the One who is “God with us”.  And so, all of a sudden, God has a family tree.

     The “Regal” relatives.  And what a family tree it is!  There are several colourful characters in the list, as well as a few shady ones.  Matthew doesn’t whitewash the roster of names that make up the human chain that leads from Abraham the Patriarch to Jesus the Messiah.  Abraham himself was far from what many would consider to be a “saint” – he didn’t hesitate to mislead people if it would serve his purposes, and he fathered a son with his servant-girl only to send both her and her teenage son into the wilderness to fend for themselves when their presence became intolerable to other members of his family.  And yet, in spite of all this, Abraham stubbornly did what God told him to do and to trust that God would keep the promises that he had made to him.  It’s interesting to take note of the 5 female names that appear in the list of Jesus’ ancestors – Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, “the wife of Uriah” and Mary.  Each of these 5 women became a part of the Messiah’s genealogy through, shall we say, “unconventional means”.  Tamar tricked her father-in-law Judah into sleeping with her and she became pregnant with twin boys.  Rahab was a Canaanite prostitute who married an Israelite man after the conquest of the city of Jericho.  Ruth was a pagan foreigner from Moab who, after the end of a childless marriage due to the death of her husband, had the courage to propose to a relative of her mother-in-law, to marry and give birth to a son, thus continuing the family line.  The “wife of Uriah” was Bathsheba, who was compelled to cheat on her husband with King David, and became the mother of Solomon, the next king of Israel.  Finally, we have Mary, who “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit”.  The Spirit of God, who had hovered over the watery womb of creation, had now conceived life in the womb of Mary.

     The best laid plans of mice and men.  And so, God joins the family of Joseph and Mary and thus makes himself a link in this chain of ambiguous ancestors.  Obviously, this not quite happen “smoothly”.  Twice, God thwarts Joseph’s plans.  Firstly, Joseph had planned to be the father of any children that he would raise along with Mary.  Then he discovers that Mary is pregnant and he is not the father.  What is a “righteous man” to do?  Heartbroken, his plans for married life dashed to pieces, Joseph then comes up with a contingency plan – he resolves to cancel the marriage contract in private, and thus spare Mary some of the public shame, and a possible trial on a charge of adultery.  But God once again puts paid to that – Joseph has a dream in which “an angel of the Lord” informs him of the child’s true origins and that Mary’s son will save his people from their sins.  The small-town carpenter with his ordinary plans to settle down and start a family now finds himself to be the guardian of the Messiah, a Messiah the arrival of whom was both keenly awaited and highly unexpected.

     An unprecedented proposal.  When God joins your family, he rearranges your agendas.  Joseph’s plans were turned upside down and inside out.  But certainly Mary was faced with an even greater choice – would she accept to be the vessel through whom God would join not only her family, but the human family?  Would she accept the shame of an unexplainable pregnancy, the likely rejection, not only of her fiancé, but of everyone she loved?  Would she accept to carry the burden of being the mother of a controversial public figure, one who would arouse the hatred of the great and the good of her nation?  Would she accept to be the one through whom God could be “with us”?  Would she accept to be the Mother of God?  I’m sure that those mothers present with us this morning would agree that bringing a child into the world is a matter both of great joy and great pain, at every level – joy and pain that continue throughout the child’s life.  People often say, rightly, that we have to make Jesus “the center of our lives”; well, for Mary, it was literally the case.  She accepted the new life that God was offering her, and gave herself totally towards the fulfillment of God’s plan to be “with” his people.

     To the end of the Age.  Let’s not forget the baby who would grow up to realize that God would be “with” his people as long as he was with them.  The good news is that he said he would be “with us” always, to the end of the age (Mt. 28.20).  This is both a comforting promise and a bracing challenge.  Let’s not forget that we are the body of the Messiah… Jesus is “with” the world through us.