How do you live when wrath is no longer an option?
By Sonja Olson
Gospel Reading: Matthew 1:18-25
For Sunday, December 19, 2010: Year A – Fourth Sunday of Advent
It’s strange when the Bible misquotes itself. But it is really good at it. I have gone for what seems like, well, all my life not even noticing how Matthew takes a common pregnant woman who gives birth to a common boy named Immanuel and turns it into a prophecy about a virgin giving birth to the Christ child. I have heard it year after year, yet never noticed.
Clever Switch-a-roo?
Matthew takes a sign Isaiah gives to Judah about her salvation/destruction and twists it into a promise of a Messiah coming for the forgiveness of sins. In Isaiah the mother will name him Immanuel (“God with us”). In Matthew, the father does the naming and calls the boy Jesus (“Yahweh Saves”). Jesus is not Immanuel. That’s two different names.
Either Matthew is not well-versed in Jewish prophets, or he is getting at something more when he writes that this birth occurs to fulfill what the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah. Perhaps this idea of “God with us” being revisited was part of the plan all along.
New Testament Genesis
We know something is up from the very first verse of the first chapter of Matthew. What is translated as the “genealogy” of Jesus Christ is actually the Greek word “genesis”.
Matthew is bringing us a new beginning, a brand new creation of which we have never seen before. It continues on with the genealogy, which typically is very patriarchal in nature. Yet Matthew flips that on its head and includes women. The four women included aren’t even virtuous. Not only are they Gentiles, they are also involved in incest, prostitution and adultery.
Mary, pregnant with a child conceived of the Holy Spirit, is included in the genealogy as well. Being pregnant with anything other than Joseph’s child would be grounds for stoning. Although Jesus is linked to Joseph and therefore born in the line of David, it is not by blood relation but by legal adoption only. So what may be at first glance seventeen boring verses, proves to be rather revolutionary and revealing as a backdrop to the birth of Jesus.
In the Margins
The genesis/genealogy of Jesus subverts the social norms.
Yahweh, the God who causes to be, is not bound to man’s structures. Yahweh is now and always has been operating in the margins. The new Immanuel that is about to be birthed is not conceived in the old paradigms of wrath, doom and destruction. This new Yahweh is entering into creation through a revisited Immanuel who saves his people from sins.
In order to bring us such a Savior, God restarts a beginning, not with fire or flood, but with a little tiny naked baby with embryonic fluid still clinging to the creases and folds of his little toes, knuckles, elbows and thighs. His small pink mouth searching for Mary’s breast to feed his hungry belly.
Yahweh is Helpless
This new Yahweh, in a very real way, reaches out to his people, empties himself and becomes helpless needing his people to take hold of him in order that we may see, smell, touch, kiss him. Immanuel is very much with us and of us.
The last verse of the book of Matthew ends with the resurrected Immanuel promising “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Salvation remains among us. Always.
The Hardest Question
How do you live when the wrath of God is no longer an option? Allow the new Immanuel to grasp his tiny, helpless, hand around your finger and listen.
Sonja Olson is a trained sculptor working as a preschool and elementary art teacher. An amateur theologian, she is learning to love the Old Testament as much as she loves her table saw. She lives in Saint Paul with two recovering barn cats.
