The Son of David

Each year in the course of our Sunday readings, we follow one of the Synoptic Gospels in our lectionary. At major festivals, the lectionary readings jump about a bit, but Sundays, we tend to follow one particular gospel. Last year, that is before the First Sunday of Advent and the beginning of the new liturgical year, we followed the gospel according to St Luke, all those parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost sons. But this year, we follow St Matthew’s gospel, and some different themes begin to emerge.

St Matthew shares much material with St Luke – both are longer than St Mark’s gospel and most scholars recognise that these later gospel writers were aware of the brief and pithy tradition associated with St Mark. Of course, scholars have argued about which of these gospels was written first. Since 1924 and the work of the distinguished Oxford New Testament critic, B.H. Streeter, most scholars have agreed with his view that Mark’s gospel was written first. But the tradition that Matthew was written first goes back to Augustine of Hippo, among others. Because the gospel is attributed to one of Jesus’ first disciples, Augustine wants to place Matthew first. This claim serves to authenticate its apostolic authority. And given the consensus about this question in the early church, this is the reason why Matthew comes first in the canon of the New Testament. But I think I will stick for now with Streeter and the priority of Mark. Mark was written first, and then Matthew and Luke added some further material each in their own way.

There are some striking differences between Matthew and Luke. And when we read the passage set for today, it is perhaps striking that Joseph takes centre-stage. In Luke, it’s all about Mary. Luke records the story of the Annunciation, the Visitation to Elizabeth, the Magnificat. But in Matthew, Joseph is not simply to be dismissed as a spare part. It is intriguing to note that Matthew begins with a genealogy starting with Abraham and then on to David before finally mentioning ‘Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah’(Matthew 1.16). These early chapters of Matthew are all about the fulfilment of prophecy. Matthew’s genealogy serves to demonstrate that all the prophecies in the Old Testament will be fulfilled in this Son of David. 

Matthew confronts us with a question, ‘Who is the true Son of David?’ And note that Matthew describes Joseph as ‘a righteous man’.  A contrast is being drawn by Matthew between Joseph and the rather wicked and Machiavellian character of Herod. It is Herod who sits on the throne, but his rule is characterised by cruelty and insecurity. So an angel appears to Joseph in a dream, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife’.

In Matthew’s gospel, Joseph is the recipient of Gabriel’s annunciation. And yet this revelation all takes place in a dream. Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus is a story of dreams. The Magi, the wise men, are told in a dream not to return to King Herod when they have found the child. Later again, an angel appears to Joseph to tell him to flee to Egypt to avoid Herod’s attempt to destroy the child. Of course, these dreams remind us of that other Joseph, the great interpreter of dreams in the Book of Genesis. We know that most dreams occur during the period of waking from deep sleep to wakefulness. In our dreams, our imagination may run wild. Our dreams are also the place where our fears and terrors become most apparent to us. In our dreams, we discover what lies in the depths of our hearts. It is no accident that during the season of Advent, when we seek to be awake and alert and attentive to Christ’s coming, we find ourselves contemplating a world of dreams, those first stirrings of consciousness.

And yet, Matthew goes on to drive home the point that he has been making from the very beginning. ‘All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us’(Matthew 1.22-23). The prophet is Isaiah, and it is worth attending to the context of this passage from the Old Testament, which was our first reading. It records a moment of crisis. A foreign coalition is being mounted against Jerusalem, and Ahaz, the King, is terrified and all Jerusalem with him. The king goes berserk. He sacrifices his son to the gods and prepares for armed conflict. He is completely demoralized. He refuses to listen to Isaiah’s message. He refuses to trust in God’s promises. Instead, he chooses to trust in the sword, to give himself to that tale of restless competition and anxious self-defence, which characterises so much human experience. Ahaz, just like King Herod, responds to a situation of insecurity, by imagining that he will only hold on to the trappings of power by using all the tricks of the trade: manipulation, cruelty and violence. He imagines that he can only be safe at the expense of others. But Matthew, again and again in his gospel, shows that our security, our salvation, lies not in denying our insecurity and closing our hearts to one another. He has a particular care and concern for the ‘little ones’, the people who lie on the margins. Matthew does not deny the fragility we all share. He does not make light of the cost and the pain of it. He invites us to confront our shared fragility with honesty and compassion, to recognise that our security lies in acknowledging our need of one another, our need for our neighbour to be well and safe. But Herod, like Ahaz, cannot see this. Seduced by the trappings of power, perhaps he refuses to see this.

The contrast with Joseph, a righteous man, could not be more marked. ‘Righteousness’ is one of the great themes of Matthew’s gospel. The meaning of the equivalent word in Hebrew has a number of resonances: justice, mercy, forgiveness. These are the qualities we see in Joseph in spite of the extraordinary demands placed upon him - and Matthew hints at the disgrace and opprobrium that Joseph risks in caring for Mary. Joseph is willing to embrace the risk of being truly human, a risk which is embodied completely and compellingly in Mary’s child, the true Son of David. Matthew challenges us to reflect on whether we are willing to embrace the way of ‘righteousness’ like Joseph, and to embrace the risk of being truly human.