Sunday 23rd December 2007ADVENT IV
Fr David Cherry
Isaiah 7 : 10 – 16 ; Romans 1 : 1 – 7 Matthew 1 : 18 - 25
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel”
“Come share in my life as I come to share in yours.”
The New Testament opens with a genealogy - remember : Abraham
was the father of so-and-so... There are 42 fathers from Abraham
to Jesus; and four women named. From the beginning of the New
Testament a note of subversion, of inclusivity, is sounded to
scandalise the purists.
These women – Tamar, Rahab (the harlot) Ruth the Gentile,
Bathsheba - were regarded as of dubious character of sexual impropriety
(of course the men were guilty of no such thing – it was the
women’s fault. Remember Adam, “it was the woman you
gave me….”); it was either sexual impropriety or they were
just not representative of, or proper Jews.
Exceedingly odd
are the means by which God
has provided our path to the heavenly shore.
Of the girls from whose line
the true light was to shine,
one was an adulteress, one was a whore.
There was Tamar who bore
- this we all must deplore -
a fine pair of twins to her father-in-law.
And Rahab the harlot;
her sins were as scarlet
as red as the thread which she hung from her door.
But alone of her nation
she came to salvation,
and lived to be mother of Boaz of yore.
And he married Ruth,
a gentile uncouth,
in a manner quite counter to biblical law.
And from her did spring
blessed David the king,
who walked on his rooftop one evening, and saw
the wife of Uriah
from whom he did sire
a baby that died - oh, and princes a score.
A genealogy designed to send Cranford into mayhem.
The Gospel reveals, uncovers the myths, the truth of the stories we
tell about ourselves and live by. Jesus can only be of
David’s line. Well have a look at it. Great King
David was a sinner. Solomon built the temple, but he was the son
of Bathsheba the wife of Uriah the Hittite and he also proved faithless
to his God. Jesus must be a perfect Jew, but was Abraham when he
received God’s call out of Ur of the Chaldeas to be a wandering
Arimean? The perfect pedigree, if you are willing to see, is
beginning to collapse round your feet and begins to look remarkably
like a myth, propaganda.
And into this rather chaotic line-up, Mary is the fifth woman to be
mentioned. She’s not proper either for she is unmarried and
pregnant.
And a mother unmarried
it was too, who carried
God's Son, whom she laid in a cradle of straw,
that the upright might wait
at the heavenly gate,
while sinners and publicans go in before,
who have not earned their place,
but received it by grace,
and discovered a righteousness not of the law.
In last Sunday’s gospel, Jesus sent the disciples of the Baptist
back to John in prison: “The blind receive their sight, and
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are
raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” And
then he adds, “And blessed is the one who is not scandalised
- by me.”
The New Testament starts here with an uncovering of a myth and the
proclamation of tremendous inclusivity, buried in the pedigree of
Jesus. Inclusivity is not just a modern buzz word or about being
PC, it is a deep vein, the life-blood of the gospel.
What we usually do when we are scandalised is ignore it, pretend it
isn’t there – it doesn’t fit in with what we think or
how we would like it to be. St Ignatius talks about those who
wish God would come to their point of view or to what they desire the
truth to be. [#154]
Joseph isn’t scandalised. In effect, he has been told by
the angel to drop his self-righteouness. He is able to welcome
and stick by Mary and to live out his calling as the foster-father of
God’s Son.
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel”
The doctrine of the Virgin Birth and the Virginity of Mary is
scandalous to some modern theologians. Rene Girard writes of the
Virgin Birth: “The complete absence of any sexual element has
nothing to do with repression – an explanation thought up at the
end of the nineteenth century and worthy of the degraded puritanism
that produced it.”
It has nothing to do with guarding Mary from anything sinfully sexual.
For Girard, the lack of a sexual element in the conception and birth of
Jesus is in contrast to myths of the Greek Pantheon of gods with which
philosophers like to compare the conception and Birth of Jesus.
In contrast to them, there is an absence of violence or force, it is
not wrung out of anyone.
Rather, the Virginity of Mary and the Birth of Jesus shows the direct
intervention of God from the outside – as it were – into
our world; into our very natures. We need to be saved by Another,
a Creator. Any penitent coming to confession knows that this is
true.
It is the true God, the Creator of all that is and without whom nothing
can come into existence, who takes flesh of Mary’s flesh without
human agency. The God who comes to us, has nothing to do with the
human culture of reciprocal violence we have created for ourselves
– there since Cain and Abel.
The New Testament from its first verses sounds the joyful, inclusive
and disturbing note. He enters into our humanity, to be Immanuel,
one with us, and redeem us. He comes into our culture of
violence to show us the way out of it by including us in the culture of
God’s forgiveness.
So here in these last days of Advent we open ourselves to receive this
God who comes to us, confessing our sin, longing to return and receive
what God wants to give us, without being scandalized, without trying to
fit God into our perceptions.
We find ourselves included – yes, even the likes of you and
me. Here every Sunday, every mass, God communes with us,
scandalously, not violating who we are, infinitely in reverence for you
and me, freely offering himself to us in the Sacrament of Holy
Communion. “Come share in my life as I come to share in
yours.”
May your heart and mine resonate with joy : “Behold, a
virgin is with child, and shall bring forth a son, and we call his name
Emmanuel, which means God is with us.” Amen