This is the last Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of love. We’re one week away from Christmas now, so we begin to move from the longing and waiting of Advent, to the familiar nativity story. We expect shepherds in fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. We expect innkeepers with stables full of soft, sweet-smelling hay. We expect a pregnant Mary moments away from delivering her child. We expect it all to be wrapped up in wonder, beauty, and nostalgia. Look at the Nativity scene we have here: it’s clean and crisp. Angelic rosy faces, resting animals, a clean stable.
Look at these pictures of other Nativity scenes around. Peaceful smiling faces, calm, and quiet! Even one of our Christmas worship songs this morning, “Away in a Manger” claims that baby Jesus didn’t cry. I believe our familiarity with this story often removes the messy humanity of it. No one wants to talk about birth fluids and the shrieks through the night as Mary delivered baby Jesus. No one wants to talk about swollen feet and the pains of pregnancy. No one wants to talk about the noise of the animals and the mess of the animals…and the smell of the animals.
We also tend to remove the messiness of the family dynamics that Jesus was born into. We read the story in Matthew 1 and we only focus on the shepherds and the hay, but there is much more there. In fact, Matthew 1 immerses us in the midst of drama, full of messy family dynamics. Like you think your family is messed up…you’re in good company because the Savior of the world was born into a messy family, too. An engaged virgin ends up pregnant. The man finds out, it’s not his baby. This mess could have been resolved by stoning Mary. This is a difficult place for a man to walk the line between love and compassion, but also righteousness and dedication to his faith. And this is the story that reminds us of what love looks like.
I don’t want to talk about the nostalgia of Christmas. I don’t want to talk about shepherds and angels. This passage is about the love of God for us being so great that He entered the world in a stable and into the humanity of a messy, and imperfect family. So, if you have a messy, imperfect, broken family, this message is for you.
We’ll be in Matthew 1:18-25 this morning, but in the first 17 verses of this chapter, we get the family lineage of Jesus, from Abraham all the way down to Joseph. This is another thing that we usually try to clean up and remove the messiness from. We want to forget that Abraham tried to do things his own way instead of waiting on God’s timing and ended up making a big mess by getting his wife’s maidservant pregnant. We want to forget that Isaac cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright and inheritance. We want to look over the fact that Joseph was a spoiled brat. We want to forget that even though he was a man after God’s own heart, David was an adulterer and complicit in murder. We want to forget that Solomon was a bigamist. We want to forget that Rehoboam was responsible for the splitting of the kingdom.
We usually want to just focus on the fact that Jesus was born into the royal lineage of David, it’s a king’s line, majestic and powerful. No! This line was one big, scandalous mess! And that was just some of the men! We have five women named in the lineage of Jesus as well, and they’re not any better. Tamar was involved in an incest scandal. Rahab was a prostitute and a foreigner. Ruth was a Moabite, which the Jewish people would have considered almost as bad as a prostitute. Uriah’s wife, BATHSHEBA, was trapped in a scheme of adultery with David that ultimately ended in the murder of her husband, and Mary is a case of unmarried teenage pregnancy.
Though this is the lineage of Joseph’s direct family, both Mary and Joseph are named as Jesus’s parents. Mary’s direct family lineage can be found in Luke. And what this helps us understand is that both parents are from the line of David, which fulfilled prophecy given about the Messiah in Jeremiah 23:5, “A new day is coming,” announces the Lord. “At that time I will raise up for David’s royal line a godly Branch. He will be a King who will rule wisely. He will do what is fair and right in the land.” (NIRV) This was written some 600 years before Jesus was actually born! So on both sides, even though Joseph was not Jesus’s biological father, both sides are descendants of David, a messy, imperfect, and broken family.
It’s also important that Joseph is named here, not just to fulfill prophecy completely, but because it tells us something amazing before the story even starts. Adoption worked differently in ancient Jewish culture than we might expect. If a man claimed a child as his own, that was it. That’s his child, and that child, regardless of biology, is entitled to all the legal standing and inheritance as a child of that man. Period. End of story. So for Joseph to appear here in the genealogy, what Matthew is telling us before the story even starts, is that despite all the drama of this family, despite the scandal of Mary’s premarital teenage pregnancy, Joseph is going to claim Jesus as his child. This offers a glimpse into what God was doing through the mess of humanity, to do something holy.
Look at Matthew 1:18-25, “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, since he was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. 20 But when he had thought this over, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a Son; and you shall name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” 22 Now all this took place so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled: 23 “Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and they shall name Him Immanuel,” which translated means, “God with us.” 24 And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, 25 but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he named Him Jesus.” (NASB)
Let’s look more at the miraculous mess of Jesus’s birth. We’re told that Mary was betrothed to Joseph. They were engaged. When Jonny and I got engaged, it was pretty much between he and I. I mean, we had our parents approval, and they were a part of the wedding ceremony, but that was pretty much the extent of it. Jonny and I paid for the ceremony and reception. My parents didn’t give him a dowry for me. A betrothal then wasn’t, “let’s plan to get married”, but actually, it was the beginning of their marriage. It was a contract between families and money or goods, or both, were usually exchanged in the betrothal stage of the marriage.
Because it was a contract, it would have been difficult to cancel. Since the engagement was actually the beginning of marriage, it took a divorce to break it. This would usually mean that the woman was disgraced and dependent on the mercy of her family to care for and provide for her.
During the betrothal, even though they didn’t live together, they were still expected to be faithful to one another. The husband would often use this time to build a home for his new family, or find a home to live in. He was responsible for setting up the home to prepare for his wife to move in after the ceremony and celebration. If the woman was found to be unfaithful during this time, it was grounds for stoning.
When Mary became pregnant, she would have been seen by Joseph, her whole family, his whole family, and the entire community as unfaithful. None of them, except Joseph, had any reason to believe she hadn’t been unfaithful, or any way to know of the involvement of the Holy Spirit. There were other women in the Bible, even in Mary’s own line, who had become miraculously pregnant, Sarah, Hannah, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, but they still got pregnant by their husbands. What a mess Mary had on her hands. She gladly accepted the gift God was giving her, the honor He was placing on her, but it sure wasn’t what she planned or expected for her life. Maybe you can relate to Mary, that there’s something God has allowed to happen in your life that you didn’t plan, and you didn’t expect, and it feels like a mess. You’re in good company.
Look at verse 18 and 19 again, “when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 And her husband Joseph, since he was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.” There was no angel or even the Spirit to tell Joseph that Mary was pregnant. We just read that he knew somehow. Maybe Mary told him, or maybe he heard a rumor. But he found out somehow, and thought she had been unfaithful.
Can you imagine how devastated Joseph may have been? He was in the process of building a home for her, of providing a place for them to grow a family, and here she is…pregnant and the baby isn’t his. What a mess! Again, placed in the middle of something he hadn’t planned for or expected. But his righteousness is important here, especially because his righteousness is seen in his loving actions toward Mary. What does he decide to do about this mess he’s in? He plans to send her away secretly, that is, divorce her quietly, because he does not want to disgrace her. He could have her stoned for her perceived infidelity, but he doesn’t. He was righteous, and his righteousness is shown through a loving and compassionate choice to just leave her quietly.
What a mess! But God…God enters the mess, and He does something amazing with this mess of a family, He makes it holy. We see this in the angel’s message. In verse 21, we read the announcement of the new day coming, the day Jeremiah prophesied, “But when he had thought this over, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” And with that one simple message, God took the mess of Mary’s premarital pregnancy and made it holy, set apart for God to allow God to do something incredible! He took the mess and made it holy.
Because God entered the mess, and the angel proclaimed God’s message, Joseph married Mary. He married Mary, and he named Jesus, which was what they were told to name the baby, which tells us that rather than go the way of his culture and community and be persuaded by his fear of what the community might do, Joseph trusted in the Lord. He was obedient to God, and receptive to what God had told him. He entrusted his and his family’s reputation to God. His faith in God was bigger than his fear of his community and culture. God used Josephs’ obedience to make the mess of the pregnancy, holy.
The incarnation of Christ is all about God entering HUMANITY. Jesus came into the world, born from ordinary human beings with ordinary and messy human struggles. This was not the perfect, pristine, unblemished family, but that’s often how we portray them in pictures and songs. We want to remember their faithfulness and ignore their humanity. And they were faithful, but their path was not easy, and their lives were not free of unexpected burdens, and unplanned messes.
So, Joseph knew the baby was conceived of the Spirit, but did the angel appear to Mary’s family, or Joseph’s family, or the rest of their community? We don’t know. Maybe they had fodder for gossip for all of Jesus’s life. The benefit of hindsight of history allows us to look at the big picture and see their faithfulness and to see that God turned the mess into something world-changing, but I’m sure it didn’t feel like that to Mary and Joseph as they struggled through the mess to walk in a way that was pleasing to God. The story of Christmas is about God entering into the messiness of humanity and working in our messes to do something holy.
When we look at these beautiful nativity scenes, we see that the love of God does not run from our humanity or our messes, but enters and embraces them, and…if we let Him, will make our mess into something holy for His glory. If He can do that for Mary and Joseph’s family mess, He can do that for your messes too. Our messy situations are not too much for God, and there is no distance that God won’t go to demonstrate His love for humanity.
Reflect on the love and light of Christ this week:
Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Read Ezekiel 34:15-16, how does He show His love for us? How then should we show our love for others?
Rejoice in John 3:16, and add verse 17 to it. What great love He has shown you!
Reflect on Romans 8:35-39. What comfort does that bring you in your current trials and challenges? How can God make your mess holy?