Sunday, December 22, 2013: Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25

The Christmas story includes the very sordid tale of an engaged young woman who is apparently cheating on her fiancé. She’s carrying somebody else’s baby. She says that God did it, which adds blasphemy to the infidelity. Ancient law allowed for the jilted Joseph to stone Mary, but preferring to keep the scandal out of the papers, he decides to break it off quietly and save everybody any further embarrassment.

The whole thing was a miserable mess. And as Joseph would eventually discover, it was all God’s doing. So then why make everything look so ungodly? Why all the secrecy? Why not a blaze of public, visible Holy Spirit glory following a pregnant Mary? That way her neighbors could have thrown her a baby shower with swaddling clothes from Baby Gap. Somebody could have made sure there were posh accommodations at the Bethlehem Hilton. Better yet, why not just skip the whole birth process entirely? Spare Joseph the painful humiliation and Mary the painful labor. Spare Jesus the hazardous temptations of adolescence. It’s not like he did anything for his first 30 years anyway. Better yet, show up on earth on Good Friday and you’re back in heaven by Sunday.

Instead, the church insists that the death and resurrection of Jesus be contingent on his obedient life. Jesus takes away our sins, but he also gives us his hard-earned righteousness. This insistence on Jesus’ obedient life relies on some dicey math. Christians believe that Jesus was totally God and totally human. As the Nicene Creed affirms: “Jesus Christ . . . true God from true God . . . incarnate from the Virgin Mary . . . made man for our sake . . .”