The Family of Jesus
Category: Advent
Speaker: The Rev. Dr. Robert W. Prichard
This is the 4th Sunday in Advent, and Christmas is just around the corner. People are preparing to travel and to entertain travelers, and families are coming together in preparation for the celebration. It is a fitting time in which to hear about Jesus’ family in our lessons.
This is one of the few times when we can do so, for the New Testament does not tell us much about Jesus’ family. Paul, the earliest and most prolific of the New Testament authors, refers to only one member of Jesus’ family by name—his brother James (1 Corinthians 15:7, Galatians 1:19, 2:9, and 2:12)—and it is clear that Paul did not get along with him particularly well. There is an epistle attributed to James, but outside of that the other authors of New Testament letters add nothing to the information that Paul has already supplied.
Mark, the earliest of the Gospel writers, indicates that Jesus had multiple sisters, but he does not name them. He provides names for 3 more brothers and for Jesus’ mother and father, but he adds little information beyond those names.1 It is only from Matthew and Luke that we hear very much in depth about the family.
One of my responsibilities as a faculty member at an Episcopal seminary is to lend a hand in writing annual letters to bishops and commissions on ministry about the progress of students preparing for ordination. Those letters usually often do not mention anything about parents and childhood, but there are times when such references are very helpful in explaining the talents and character of a student. Why does this student from an American diocese speak Irish Gaelic? It has something to do with where he and his family have lived in the past. Why does this student seem to know so much about the day-to-day of parish life? Her mother is a priest. Why is this student so interested or uninterested in Christian Education of children? He is the oldest child in a large family.
Matthew and Luke have something similar in mind as each in this own way writes about Jesus’ family and childhood. They tell the story in such a way as to fill out the portrait of Jesus that the earlier Gospel of Mark has provided. They also wrestle with two question that Mark has politely side-stepped. Why is it that Jesus grew up in Nazareth of Galilee rather than Bethlehem from which Jews expected a Messiah to come? And how is one to reconcile the deeply held conviction that Jesus was of the house and lineage of King David through his father’s line with the equally deeply held conviction that he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and therefore had no father’s line in the ordinary way of speaking? Luke and Matthew seek to answers these questions in their accounts of Jesus’ family and childhood, but they do so in different ways.
Luke, who will provide our Gospel reading for 4 Advent next year, builds his story around the character of Mary, whom he portrays as devout, and brave, and faithful. He is the one who will later tell us that Mary was an active participant in the early church. Luke explains the change in location by blaming it on the government. He says that Joseph and Mary were required to leave Nazareth and travel to Jerusalem in order to participate in a Roman census. He deals with the conflict over parentage by recounting an appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary to explain that she will conceive through the power of the Holy Spirit, and then following it with the recitation of a long genealogy that connects Jesus to King David through his father Joseph’s family line.
Luke is often believed to be an early physician. From the early chapters one might well guess, however, that he was parish musician as well. He builds on the birth narrative of Samuel the prophet in the Old Testament, whose mother Hannah broke into song, to create a narrative for Jesus that resembles a Broadway musical. When Mary hears that she will have a child by the Holy Spirit, she breaks into song. When her cousin Elizabeth gives birth to John the Baptist, Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah breaks into song. A band of angels visit the shepherd who were keeping watch over their flock by night, and the angels break into song. Devout Jews by the name of Anna and Simeon witness the presentation of the baby Jesus in the Temple, and they break into song. Luke’s narrative is a joyful, song-filled account of the circumstances of our Lord’s birth. It is the stuff of a parish Christmas pageants.
Matthew, from whom we have heard today, tells, in contrast, a darker, more troubled story. Rather than focusing on Mary, Matthew builds his account around Joseph, whom he portrays as a sensitive, righteousness man, who seeks to do no one harm. Joseph is a working man; only Matthew tells us that he is a carpenter.
My wife and I named our youngest son Joseph. There were not any Josephs in our extended families, but it is a good strong Biblical name, and we liked it. I can’t vouch for what Marcia would say, but I have never had a good answer to the question of which Joseph of the Bible we had in mind, when we selected the name. There are 12 different figures by that name in the Bible, with major characters in both the Old Testament and the New. For some it is a very important question, because names are often given or commented upon in the expectation that some of the characteristics of the previous holder of the name will somehow rub off on the later name bearer.
Matthew was apparently of this mind, for his built his description of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by drawing on the story of the most famous of the Old Testament Josephs—Joseph of the book of Genesis, one of the 12 son of Jacob, the one with the coat of many colors, the one whose dreams so infuriated his brothers that they sold into slavery in Egypt, the one who ended up in prison there but was able to rise to prominence by his ability to read the dreams of a butler, a baker, and the Pharoah, the one who foresaw 7 years of famine and was appointed by Pharaoh to prepare for it, the one who saved the people of Egypt and his own family from starvation. Matthew’s Joseph is, like his Old Testament counterpart, a dreamer.
So there are no musical numbers in Matthew’s account, only the dreams of Joseph and the steady beat of prophesy and fulfillment, a rather ominous beat because we recognize that it will lead to the cross.
Because he focuses on Joseph, Matthew deals with the pregnancy of Mary in a different way from Luke. He puts his genealogy list first, tracing Jesus through Joseph back to King David, but in the process he slips in four names not found in Luke’s family list. There are four mothers--Tamar, Ruth, and Basheeba, and Rahab—tucked into the list of fathers. The first three are all important in the history of Israel, but all had sexual relations outside of marriage. The fourth is not so well-known but shares the name of a woman of risqué reputation in the Book of Joshua.
Matthew recognizes that Joseph may not be entirely happy about the fact that the woman is to planning to marry is pregnant, and he is not the father. In Matthew’s account we hear that Joseph was “unwilling to expose his wife to public disgrace.” He planned to put her away privately, perhaps sending her out of town for a 9 month stay with relatives.
That is where Joseph the dreamer kicks in. Joseph dreams, and in his dreams he is visited by an angel, who tells him to take Mary as his wife. Matthew also uses dreams to explain how a child who grew up in Nazareth could be born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem seems to be the family home in Matthew, but another dream warns Joseph of King Herod’s plan to kill all male children under the age of two in order to remove any future competition from a Jewish messiah. Joseph, follows the example of his Old Testament forebear, and seeks safety for his family in Egypt. When Herod, dies a further dream directs Joseph to move his family to Nazareth.
This is the time of year in which all of us are remembering Christmases past. As I look back on my own history, I recall many happy celebration, but strangely it is the one troubled year of which I have the strongest memory. That was the year of Arthur and Floretta, two children from a divided household in Philadelphia who were kidnapped by their father on the 24th and taken away on a car trip intended for Florida. When their father stopped for gas in Virginia and visited the men’s room, the kids took off, following the first sidewalk they saw until it ended in front of my childhood home. They stayed outside huddled in the cold, until someone spotted them and invited them in. We had drop what we were doing to track down their mother on the phone, find more places at the crowded and carefully set table, and changed sleeping arrangements so that they could rest as they awaited the late arrival of their mother. It was chaotic and unplanned, and it was Christmas.
I think that it is a good think that Matthew and Luke present us with very different pictures of Jesus’ birth and family. Those with perfect celebrations of Christmas that look like television specials and involve constant breaking into song can find themselves in Luke’s account. Those who are troubled, and worry in their sleep, and know something of fear and conflict can find themselves in Matthew’s story of a dreamer. But they are both true, for this child, this child whose birth draws near, was born for us all.
Now Joseph was a righteous man and unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace.
1. This large family became something of a problem for 4th and 5th century Christians who began to esteem celibacy very highly. Some authors would begin to suggest that the brothers and sisters of the New Testament were actually cousins. The large family does not seem to be a problem for Mark or for Matthew, who includes the same list of names.