January 1, Christmas 1A (Matthew 2:13-23)
Before Mary can cut the tags off the brand-new frankincense, the weeping starts.
“An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1). Before we’ve read 20 words of Matthew’s Gospel, we think we know exactly what we’re going to get. We already know that the main character is the Messiah, the promised Savior, here to fulfill the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures and to establish God’s realm on earth.
To make things even clearer, before the end of the first chapter Matthew quotes Isaiah: “‘Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us’” (1:23). God with us! It would be reasonable to expect that from this point the story will be one triumph after another, with everlasting peace and love only pages away.
But it is not to be. Immediately after the Magi’s visit, before Mary can cut the tags off the brand-new frankincense, the weeping starts. Rachel begins to cry, and the sound of her sobbing drowns out everything else.
