Seeing what God has done

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

There’s a reason why church Christmas pageants use the story of Jesus’s birth as told by Luke, only including from Matthew the part about the magi at the end. There aren’t enough characters, for one thing. No angels other than Gabriel, no shepherds, no sheep, no innkeeper, no donkey or dove or lowing cattle. Not even a manger or swaddling clothes or singing amid the midnight stars. 

The Luke story invites us into a kind of participation. We know the songs that go with the action - The Angel Gabriel from heaven came (to Mary); while shepherds watched their flocks by night, O little town of Bethlehem, hark the herald angels sing and angels from the realms of glory, it came upon a midnight clear, away in a manger…..  And we literally learn to enter into the story first as children in sheep or shepherd costumes, and then as singers of the favorite carols we eventually come to know by heart. 

The story as Matthew tells us, by contrast, is rather spare. And almost all the focus is on Joseph. It is to him that the angel speaks, and it is his action, or inaction as it were, not to break it off with Mary despite her evident transgression that is praised. I used to joke that Matthew often seems like the Gospel for Guys and this is a big part of why I call it that right here.

But all joking aside, today we have the opportunity to look at this story in a new way, without the frills of the Lukan account, as much as we love them, and see just how strange and mystifying and singular this all is. Without all the other characters and multiple plot lines and the words about feelings, the story today makes clear that this is a narrative that is all about God’s action, without the “advise and consent” part that Luke portrays through the interaction of Gabriel and a highly favored lady, and instead a strange passivity runs through the short and rather thin telling of the birth of Jesus. Joseph’s betrothed was “found to be with child” and Joseph is instructed in a dream without conversation. And so it is not Mary who ends up perplexed, but us.

In Matthew’s story, God didn’t ask. But God did act. And so, in a way, what we are invited into through this version of the story is to simply watch, and wait and see what’s going to happen next. We’re invited to consider and anticipate that God is going to show us something new - that God is going to show us what it means for God to be with us, and it is our job to watch and to see with eyes that have been primed to recognize Emmanuel, God with us.

I’ve been reading the marvelous new novel by Barbara Kingsolver, who lives here in Virginia, called Demon Copperhead. You may have heard of it - it’s showing up on all kinds of “best” lists. It’s not an uplifting read, in fact it’s a pretty grim portrayal of life in Appalachia, but it is very compelling and beautifully written. It, like our story today, starts out with a birth narrative that indicates what kind of life this is going to be. The narrator and a few other characters often speak to one another with great compassion and a frankness that comes from having already lost pretty much everything and thus have nothing else to lose. In one scene, the narrator, an orphan who has lurched from deprivation to disappointment to disaster has now dropped out of school to support his addict girlfriend, goes back to school one day to talk with his old art teacher, one of the few who encouraged him and told him he was somebody. He goes back to say he is sorry that he wasted her time. She said he had never been a waste, that he been a joy to her, and that teachers are always glad for the kids who showed them a spark.

She said, I don’t teach for the money. The money’s not that good anyway. I like helping kids see what they are looking at.

That line has really stuck with me. We all need help seeing what we are looking at sometimes. Even as grownups, maybe especially as grown ups, sometimes we do indeed need help seeing what we are looking at. 

Maybe that’s because in this post-Enlightment, post-christendom age we simply are not primed for mystery any more. We are not primed to recognize when God is among us because we have other explanations for everything in the whole world. And we have so much to look at, so many images coming at us from our tvs and computers and phones and other screens, not to mention what’s happening live, all around us, how can we really see much of anything besides the blur of life going by at 110 mph. How can we look for God amid such constant distraction? And what do we even expect to see?

Maybe that’s why the story as Matthew tells it is so compelling. It’s totally pared down. No distractions. No song and dance. No going from place to place and scene to scene. Just one scene. Just one scene.

Look at this, Matthew says, and see what God can do. See what God has done. Look at this and get ready for what God is going to do with this child who is the Messiah, the savior of the world. Watch and wait and see how Jesus will change everything. Watch and wait and see what it means that God has come to be among us and use us for God’s own purposes, despite our own evident transgressions - to use us to bring new life into the world.