Excerpted from Keep Awake, an Advent Guide for Lectionary Year A from the North Carolina Council of Churches.
Matthew 1:18-25
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 pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.
I don’t know when it happened or at least when it became one of the first things I do when reading or hearing a story. I don’t know why it feels so urgent. When hearing or reading any story my first question is to ask, “Who didn’t get to speak? Whose voice do I not hear?”
Matthew 1:18-25 is the first story in Matthew that tells us about the circumstances surrounding the irregular conception and birth of Jesus. In the first few verses we get a genealogy that includes other irregular births, so by the time we get to verse 18, this irregularity is still surprising, but in a way that falls into a pattern. The first thing that captures my attention is that Jesus’ conception and birth story were irregular and unexpected for particular people. Under these circumstances, there were rules to be followed because pregnant, unmarried women weren’t supposed to happen if you followed the rules. Joseph found himself in the middle of the irregular and unexpected and then he made a choice that didn’t follow the rules at all. No quiet divorce, no rejection of Mary. What captures my attention though is that this first narrative is about the irregularity of Jesus’ birth and what his father had to do; not his mother, not the one who would be most adversely affected by being pregnant and not yet married; not the woman/child who Joseph felt the need to protect by deciding that a quiet divorce would be best.
I think we have a lot of rules about church and religion and how to be faithful. Sometimes the rules don’t fit. Sometimes the rules are not big enough for God’s grace. I am not anti-rules, but maybe God isn’t so much about rules either when the rules don’t fit. When the unexpected happens, God speaks something new throughout the stories of the Old and New Testament over and over and over again. Unmarried woman with child: don’t divorce her; create a world with rules and processes: let us make human beings imago Dei; a man paralyzed unable to walk: pick up your mat and walk. We call them miracles when the unexpected happens, when the rules aren’t followed, when a new thing happens. Maybe ministry needs to look like that, working in the unexpected and embracing the irregular when the rules of society aren’t big enough for God’s grace and love. Fight for the oppressed when the rules would keep them oppressed, open the doors and our hearts when rules would have us reject those who are different, stand with those who are marginalized when the rules create barriers between “us” and “them”, change the rules when we have built systems that continue to perpetuate conditions that would have us reject the imago Dei in every human being. Keep Awake.
