Jesus: The Early Years.
Matthew 1-2
I don’t understand the obsessive nature of Jewish writers such as Matthew with genealogies. The Bible, however, is replete with them and another one occurs here at the opening of the New Testament. I’m sure there is also some symbolic significance to the observation Matthew makes that the numbers of generations are 14 from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Babylonian Exile, and 14 from that time to the birth of Christ. A strong part of me wants to do what I always do in situations such as these, and that is to dive for a commentary and unpack all the mysterious truths that greater minds than my miserable matter may have discerned; but my goal here is to interact with the text and not to conduct an online Bible study, so other than noting that for perhaps the first time I read slowly and comprehensively through the list of names, nothing much here leaps out to me.
Of course, the spidey senses in the back of my head want to note the women included in the list. We have Tamar, who got knocked up by her father-in-law by pretending to be a prostitute because Judah, her husband’s father, hadn’t married her off to her dead husband’s brother; Rahab, a whore who betrayed her people to help Israelite warriors escape death; Ruth, who was perhaps the best of all of them and yet was still a foreigner, a Moabitess, no less, outside of Israel; Bathsheba, who doesn’t even rate a personal mention but gets introduced as ‘the wife of Uriah. These women (and in many cases, the men around them) are nothing if not proof that despite our fallible and ‘best’ efforts to derail the messianic line, God rules and over-rules.
Right down to Mary who risks stigma of her own. Betrothed to Joseph, there had been no hanky-panky behind the olive press and yet, she is pregnant! Despite how we choose to interpret the Isaiah prophecy (young maiden vs virgin, etc.), it is the plain and obvious reading of the text that no sexual congress had taken place between Joseph and Mary. In fact, it’s not even that she played about a bit, as he must have no doubt concluded given his desire to ‘divorce her’, even if he did plan to do it quietly and with an eye to her public reputation.
But we see she had been overcome by the Holy Spirit who impregnated her. This interests me as, since Jesus was not of the seed of Adam, he was not corrupted with the stain of Adam; namely, original sin. This placed him uniquely outside the curse of Adam and able to fully satisfy the law through obedience. Here was one guy who did not start ‘behind the eight-ball.’ And yet, born of Mary biologically, he was also fully man; able to identify with our condition; able to suffer as we did; know hunger, want, desire for a woman.
We give Mary lots of credit, and rightfully so, for her obedience to the Lord. But imagine yourself as Joseph. Your beloved’s belly starts to swell and you KNOW it’s not yours. You’re torn. You love this girl. She’s your heart. You can imagine him after a long day at the shop, filled with food after shaking out the sawdust, filled with anxiety about how to divorce this woman and send her away. How to preserve his family from shame and yet not forsake the love he obviously bears for her. You just know he nodded off with these things on his mind. “As he pondered these things”, it says, “an angel of the Lord appeard to him in a dream.”
You have to know that these angels are the cute little cherubs we see peeking out of Christmas Cards and chintzy Victoriana. This guys was the shizznit! One dream was all it took for Joseph to totally get it straight and fall into line with God’s plan. No arguing. No Moses wheedling for a sign. No Dickensian ‘There’s more of gravy than of grave’ about having seen a ‘ghost.’ Nope. One dream, wake up “Oh cool, I’m the father of the Messiah. I wonder if old man Graunbaum wants his chair tomorrow?” Joseph had some chops.
We Three Kings of Orient Are
One On A Tractor, Two In A Car
So runs my recollection of the carol, which I now notice is completely without merit. I guess it just works better as a lyric than “We three magi of orient are.” And there’s no mention of camels anywhere, so if we are making stuff up, the John Deere and Ford Prefect (which I always imagine them in, green by the way. My dad knows why…) are just as valid as camels. And they came to Jesus’ … … house! His House! Not the stable. Not the manger. Not the no crib for a bed where he lay down his sweet head. His house. Ripped off! I found this profoundly disturbing. No wonder Herod wanted all the baby boys under two murdered. Jesus was not laying there with his umbilical cord hanging off, smeared in blood and birth pains. Mary was not sweaty but jubilant and Joseph didn’t give these guys cigars. The family had gotten through the birth, through the census and traveled home again.
No camels, no kings, no baby Jesus in a hayrick. If right off the bat my visions of the New Testament were far more about marketing glitz, a sort of popular culture version of the Bible, what else did I know? Nothing of which I am willing to stake my life on. I knew, of course, as a piece of trivia to appear learned at parties, that the birth was not in December, let alone on the 25th. I know all about sun gods and Roman Catholics and usurping pagan days and shepherds watching their flocks not freezing to death during winter. Even so, I can’t quite divorce the manger scene from snow, winter, and all the trappings we see on the TV during the holiday season.
And not surprisingly, we see Joseph dragging the young family all over the Middle East on the strengths of dreams. I used to want to see an angel. Now, not so much. I don’t think I’m man enough to handle it.
