Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2019
Is 7:10-14; Rom 1:1-7; Mt 1:18-24
Longview
Today’s first reading comes from the eighth century BC, after Israel had split into two kingdoms. Ahaz was the king of Judah, the southern kingdom, and at the time of our reading, he was in serious trouble. Judah was at war with the northern kingdom, and the northern kingdom was winning. Ahaz wanted to get the powerful king of Assyria to help him. This meant that Judah would have to pay tribute to Assyria and Assyrian gods would be worshipped in Jerusalem. Isaiah warned Ahaz to avoid this alliance and trust in the God of Israel.
In today’s first reading, Isaiah tells Ahaz to ask for a sign from God, but Ahaz claims that would be putting God to the test. Then Isaiah says God will give Ahaz a sign even if he doesn’t want one. In our text, the sign is that “a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel,” which means God with us. In Hebrew, the meaning is that a young woman, probably one in Ahaz’s harem, will have a son, who will succeed to the throne because God is with Judah.
Of the four Gospels, only Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus’ birth. The two stories are actually very different. Luke tells the story from the point of view of Mary; the annunciation takes place in Nazareth; Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem for a census; Jesus is born in a stable; and angels announce the birth to shepherds. By contrast, Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s point of view, as we see in today’s Gospel passage. In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph and Mary live in Bethlehem, not Nazareth; Jesus is born at home; and magi arrive with gifts when Jesus is a toddler.
So these are two very different stories, but both of them insist on the virgin birth. They insist on the divine origin of the Christ child. Because Christmas is about the Incarnation, when God became human and united heaven and earth.
When I began my study of theology, I made a list of questions that I wanted answers to. The first on the list was: Why did God become human? It turns out that there is no cut-and-dried answer to that, but over the ages many different theories have been proposed. Three answers have been around since the early church. The first is that God became human in Jesus as the ultimate revelation. God had of course revealed himself through prophets and the Bible, but the best way we could get to know God was to see what God would be like if God were a human being. It turns out that if God is like Jesus, then God is compassionate, merciful, patient, forgiving, more interested in healing than punishment, invested in love, not vengeance. “What would Jesus do” is a way to ask what God would do.
But there is an even older theory. Already in the first century Saint Paul wrote that Jesus was the new Adam, the new prototype of a human being. The original Adam wanted to be like God and so he disobeyed God’s command. Not Jesus. In Philippians 2, Paul says that Christ did not cling to his divinity but emptied himself to become human; he was obedient unto death, even a horrible death on a cross. The new Adam is a model for how we should be. As Paul says, “Have in you the same mindset as Jesus.” Jesus was on earth as a model for us, showing us what we should be like. And surprise! We should be compassionate, merciful, patient, forgiving, more interested in healing than punishment, invested in love, not vengeance.
So the first theory of why God became man is to reveal God to us, and the second is to show us how we should be. So the third theory shouldn’t be too surprising. The great church father Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote a book on the Incarnation in which he said, “God became human so that human beings might become divine.” Sounds shocking, doesn’t it? But this is bedrock teaching in the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches. We are supposed to become like God, so earth will be like heaven. Jesus even said it: “Be perfect, in the way that God is perfect.” Which means that we should allow God’s spirit to grow in us and make us compassionate, merciful, patient, forgiving, more interested in healing than punishment, invested in love, not vengeance.
So today’s Gospel is not telling us that virginity is better than marriage, or that Mary is very special (though she is), but it is pointing us forward to Christmas, the great feast of the Incarnation, that celebrates the union of heaven and earth and calls us to be like God, so that God’s kingdom can be realized on earth.