God’s Sense of Timing
THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT
Isaiah 7:10-16 • Romans 1:1-7 • Matthew 1:18-25
“An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” That’s how Matthew starts his gospel account—with a genealogy. It’s a pretty dry place to start. Luke, on the other hand, begins with a dramatic visit from the angel Gabriel to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. John, of course, starts with the poetic prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Mark skips all of the introductory fluff and launches straight in with John the Baptist’s call to repentance. But Matthew? Matthew starts with a list of forty-two generations, winding all the way from Abraham down to Jesus.
If you have the patience to get through all forty-two names, you discover that Matthew is actually trying to make a significant point. He summarizes that genealogical introduction in the verse right before today’s gospel reading: “So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.” It is perfectly symmetrical—from the calling of Father Abraham as the patriarch of God’s people to the devastation of Jerusalem in the Babylonian Exile to the birth of Jesus, the son of Joseph, who was God’s Messiah—the Anointed, the Christ.
But if that’s the point Matthew is trying to make—that the birth of Jesus came at just the right time—he has a funny way of doing it. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. 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.” Think about that for a minute. Matthew bothers to trace Jesus’ earthly ancestry all the way down from Abraham to Joseph, but then he tells us that Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ biological father after all. What a strange way to start his account of the good news! What is Matthew trying to tell us?
It turns out that God has everything planned perfectly—even down to the forty-second generation—but Matthew also wants us to remember that God’s perfect plan doesn’t always fit our earthly expectations. If human history were the only thing that matters, Mary could have given birth to Joseph’s son the good old-fashioned way. That’s how God had always brought anointed rulers and inspired prophets to the earth before. Remarkable human beings, graced with God’s power, filled with the divine Spirit, had served God’s people in admirable, even miraculous, ways throughout the generations. As a descendant of King David, Joseph’s son would have had a natural claim to that earthly throne. There is no reason to expect that God would intervene in the course of human affairs in any other way. But, for some reason, this time was different.
“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.” Even though we still place great emphasis on Mary’s virginity two thousand years later, I still think we underestimate how significant God’s activity was in this birth. This year, in our Christmas pageant, the youth who are playing Mary and Joseph are seventeen years old. That is shocking enough, but the real Mary was probably only eleven or twelve, and Joseph was likely just a year or two older. Back then, families arranged marriages for their children even before they were old enough to have children of their own. Those betrothals were as significant as a marriage and could only be dissolved through divorce or death. After she was engaged to Joseph, Mary would have stayed at home, under the protection and control of her family, until she was old enough to have a child, at which point the entire community would celebrate the fulfillment of the marriage promise. So, when Mary was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, it upset the natural course of things in a way that would have threatened to tear not only their families but also the whole village apart.
This pregnancy was God’s way of doing something that history both anticipated and yet never could have seen coming. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said to him in a dream, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” God’s messenger began to disclose what God was up to in this unplanned pregnancy. “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus.” Jesus or Joshua or Yeshuah—they’re all the same—is a name that means “God saves,” an appropriate name for the child who will grow up to claim the throne of his ancestor David and deliver God’s people from their imperial occupiers. But no sooner had the angel revealed the name of the child than it gave voice to a kind of salvation that could not be achieved through an earthly king: “…you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
This was not the sort of savior that could be born to Joseph, the son of David. This child was truly Emmanuel, God-with-us. God had not brought God’s people to the forty-second generation since Faither Abraham to raise up for them a mighty ruler who would save them from their Roman oppressors. God was giving them Jesus, the one who could save them from their sins. Although this child would inherit the throne of David, he would not rule over an earthly kingdom but establish God’s everlasting reign upon the earth. He would deliver his people from the forces of evil but would accomplish that not through military might but by suffering for the sake of the world. All that the prophets had foretold would come to pass but not in the ways that human history expected yet still as the fulfillment of God’s perfect plan.
That’s a beautiful thing, but it can also be disappointing. Sometimes we want God to come and rescue us from the trouble we face here and now. Sometimes we get frustrated that God doesn’t show up and fight our earthly battles for us. Sometimes we feel like giving up because the savior we want—the one we’ve been expecting—isn’t the savior we’ve got. And I think that’s ok. I think it’s ok to feel like giving up because the salvation we desperately want in this moment isn’t the salvation we’re offered by God. How do you think Mary felt? How did you think Joseph felt?
That’s the wonderful thing about how God works. The salvation God gives us doesn’t depend on us or our sense of timing, and it isn’t defeated by our disappointments. It’s bigger than what we can see. It’s more significant than what we can imagine. It’s even more perfect than the most perfect timing we could orchestrate. We want God to come and save us from this moment, but God’s plan is to save us for all time.
In Christ, we have been saved from our sins. Why does that matter? Because now nothing can keep us away from God’s saving love. Freed from the power of sin, we are no longer subject to anything that would stand in the way of God coming to us and saving us. The struggles we face here and now are real, but they have no real power over us. Because of Christ, they cannot win. If the victory we had been given through David’s son had come in the form of another king, another prophet, another ruler, then no matter how perfectly timed that person had been, once that chapter in human history was over, we’d be right back where we started. In the birth of Jesus Christ, God has given us a savior. In him, our Emmanuel, God is with us. We need not wait for anyone else.
© 2022 The Rev. Evan D. Garner
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas