4th Sunday Advent A - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2004

Matthew is not interested in the details of Jesus’ birth.  He is not telling a story to satisfy our curiosity.  He gives no details.  What, then, is he doing?  Basically he is introducing the reader to the themes that will be developed at length in the body of the Gospel (like the melodies in the overture to an Opera).  He is alerting us.  Even in the short passage we have today, he is making a number of points.

Jesus is unique.   He has been conceived through the Spirit of God in the womb of a young unmarried woman.  He will be the human embodiment of God at work in the world.  He will indeed be Emmanuel: God with us.  He will be the human embodiment of God saving the world: he will be called Jesus: a name which means God saves (as the Gospel says: he is the one who will save his people from their sins).  After centuries of preparation, promise gives way to fulfilment.  There is something wonderfully reassuring in the way Matthew sees what is happening in the world.

Yet God’s action is not magical.  It occurs within the millions of human interactions that make up history.  Matthew quotes Isaiah.  Isaiah was speaking to King Ahab at a time of imminent national disaster, assuring him that the royal Davidic bloodline would continue: his young wife would give him a successor who would live on to tell the tale.   A virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel. Nothing miraculous, but to those with eyes that can see, a confirmation that God is always faithful to his promises whatever be the threat.  For Matthew, with the birth of Jesus, the faithful God moves decisively once more.

Matthew underlines the fact of God’s faithfulness to his Chosen People.  Joseph is to accept the child, to give him his name, and thus to situate him within squarely within the ranks of the Jewish People.  (It seems that this emphasis was important for Matthew’s own Christian community.  It was a mixed Jewish/Gentile community, wrestling with tensions as assumptions were gradually recognised, sorted out and let go of.  It was a community where Jews felt themselves being pushed aside by the more numerous Gentile converts, and where Gentile converts felt welcome only under sufferance.  In this segment of the story, Matthew insists that Jesus was the fulfilment of the promises made to the Jewish people.)

Matthew says that Joseph was a man of honour.  His fiancée was pregnant, but not by him.  The Law required that she be stoned to death.  Joseph chose to ignore the Law, and simply to divorce her informally. While deeply respecting the Jewish Law, Matthew makes it clear, right at the beginning of his Gospel, that Law is not an absolute.  As the Gospel will unfold, Jesus will be condemned for his breaking of the Law.