YEAR A ADVENT IV Matthew 1:18-25

Genealogy! DNA! We keep hearing a lot about it, especially around the holidays as Ancestry.com tries to get folks to buy their wares. Finding out about our history, tracing the family tree, finding out "who we are" and where, “historically”, we came from, has become an absorbing pastime.

For us, the pursuit of our past is filled with fascination. It’s intriguing and perhaps mysterious; sometimes we discover wonderful surprises as we trace our ancestry. But there are very few, if any, among us on whose family history rests the fate of a group, a village, a nation. Yet today we stand on the brink of welcoming One on whose shoulders alone rests the salvation of the world. Who is He?

For the last few weeks, our lessons have been filled with warnings. Advent is a time of preparation, and we have been cautioned to be ready for the incarnation of He who will judge the world. Today, however, we are only a week away from the celebration of His arrival, the long awaited moment when all the anticipation is over and the event has finally occurred. But for whom do we wait? We are told we await a fierce judge with his winnowing fork in his hand, but also a baby in a manger. Who is this who is coming?

When we go seeking our family tree, we want to know everything we can about our lineage and our ancestors, how they lived, what their lives were like, what they did. We want history. In similar fashion, Jesus’ genealogy was of extreme importance to the writer of the Matthean gospel. In order to certify that Jesus was the true Messiah, it was necessary for the Gospel writer to establish that Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies, in particular, that He was of the House and Lineage of David. Thus the entire first chapter of Matthew is a list of Joseph’s ancestors right back to King David, a list we refer to as “the begats”.

Taken at face value, what we read in that first chapter tells us that Joseph is a prince. However, his family has been deposed, the Davidic kings no longer rule Israel, and Herod now sits on the throne. The important thing though for Matthean community is that this link back to David exists. The only problem is that Jesus isn’t Joseph’s biological son, so more must be explained. Matthew hastens to do this.

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.

And here we have this wonderful little story about Joseph, probably the only real coverage he gets in our Bible. Joseph is engaged to a woman younger than he, a sixteen year old girl, considered a woman in those times, named Mary. Joseph, we are told, was older than she, which back then could have meant he was an old man in his twenties. Like any engaged couple we can probably assume both were looking forward to their marriage, beginning a family and their new life together. Then this terrible thing happens. Mary becomes pregnant.

When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

Jewish marriage customs of the time were very strict, and engagements were taken seriously. There were dire penalties for a woman becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Deuteronomy makes no bones about it – she shall be taken outside of the city gates and stoned to death.

But Joseph is obviously fond of Mary. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. With the choice of public disgrace, public stoning, or divorce, Joseph decides on what would be, were they already married, a quiet divorce. He would break the betrothal and Mary would be left on her own to fend for herself. Then things get complicated.

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.

We’ve heard this story so many times we take it all for granted, but if we put ourselves in Joseph’s shoes, it becomes a lot more interesting. We have a saying in our world, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” For Joseph, God is what happens, just when he, Joseph, thought he had everything worked out. It had to have taken a huge amount of trust on his part to accept the words of the angel, to shift gears and reconsider how he must deal with the situation.

And the angel is very clear as to who this as yet unborn child will be. You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. No wonder the Gospel writer tells us that Joseph is a righteous man, because it would take a great deal of faith to accept this information and to act on it. The amazing thing is that Joseph does both.

But, for us a problem still remains. Long standing Hebrew tradition said that the Messiah had to be a descendant of King David. With all we now know about DNA, how can Jesus claim any kinship to Joseph, who was not His biological father?

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph 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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus.”

And there is your answer. “And you are to name Him Jesus.” In the Jewish culture of ancient times, if a man named a boy as his son, that was formal adoption. No one would question the legitimacy or lineage of a child thus named. Joseph names Jesus, and with that comes not only legitimacy but the entire ancestral line, all the way back to King David.

Joseph is obviously a man of deep faith. In compliance with the will of God, having decided firmly to set Mary aside, he totally rearranges his plans and his life by marrying her.

And how do we react when God steps into our lives and overturns our plans? Not just the small inconveniences He sometimes sends, like a flat tire just before we’re to leave for grandma’s house, or the US postal service delaying the delivery of one of our Christmas gifts, or a snowstorm that cancels church, but the huge things that come, as we say, out of left field and knock us sideways? Do we see such things as a gift of God?

If we’re honest, the answer to that question is seldom, if ever, “Yes.” We do not look for the loving hand of God in the loss of a job, the onset of an illness, the loss of a loved one. We find it difficult to accept that God really does work in mysterious ways and that within ever challenge He sends there lies a blessing.

On this fourth and last Sunday of Advent we consider not just who Jesus was, but who He is and how we react to Him when He unexpectedly enters out lives. Paul tells us today, "On the human level he was born of David's stock, but on the level of the spirit - the Holy Spirit - he was declared Son of God by a mighty act in that he rose from the dead."

Today, we look forward to the birth of a baby on Christmas morning. But there would be no upcoming celebration, if, at the end of his life, Our Lord had not risen from the dead, had not fulfilled His role as Immanuel and our Savior.

For whom are we waiting? We are awaiting Jesus the Messiah, God's anointed agent who once and for all will set right the world's wrongs. We are also waiting for He who will invite us over and over again to join Him in His offering of self, and through our sufferings, great or small, to become part of his sacrifice for the world.

We await the Son of David, a pedigree essential for the Messiah, according to at least one strand of Jewish messianic expectation. His conception is miraculous, the result of the intervention of the Holy Spirit. His name is divinely ordained, not freely chosen, but mandated by the angel of the annunciation, because the child is destined to save his people from their sins (Jesus in Hebrew and Aramaic being similar to "he will save"). And he is Immanuel, God with us.

We are waiting for the birth of our salvation, for the one life that will give all life meaning. We are waiting for the coming of a judge and a friend. There is no genealogy we can draw up, no hidden relatives to uncover, and no anecdotes or family tales, unrelated to His miraculous works, to tell. We are waiting for the birth of a mystery, for a baby who passes all human understanding. On this last Sunday in Advent let us stand in awe of him, and give thanks to God.

Let us pray:

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. AMEN.