In the Name etc.
On this feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our lectionary readings present us with an interesting challenge: the readings apparently have little to do with the Mother of God, and everything to do with promises of the coming of the Messiah. It is his birth which gets all the attention. The prophet Micah says, “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah...from you shall come forth...one who is to rule in Israel...and he shall be the one of peace.” Micah almost says that Bethlehem is giving birth to the Messiah.
Psalm 131 mentions “a weaned child with his mother” and goes on to compare that weaned child to the writer’s own soul. Paul says in his Letter to the Romans, that “those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.” And Matthew, as we just heard, presents a long genealogy, not of Mary, but of the ancestors of Joseph, starting with Abraham, going through the House of David, through the Babylonian exile and so on down to Joseph, “the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.” That’s it; it’s all about the Messiah and Joseph’s male ancestors. Not a hint about the birth of Mary or her ancestors. It is interesting to note in this connection that Luke’s version of the genealogy starts with Adam, not Abraham, and the names don’t match up with Matthew’s list. We can conclude from this that Luke and Matthew were working in communities who had very different ways of thinking about the story of Jesus and his ancestry. It is worth keeping in mind that Luke, or Luke’s community apparently knew a lot more about Mary’s role in the history of salvation than Matthew did.
What can we do with these readings, which apparently tell us a lot about the prelude to the appearance of the Messiah, but very little about Mary, whose Nativity we are commemorating today? Can we find anything in these readings which illuminates Mary’s role in salvation history, and also illuminates the idea of salvation history itself, and what birth, nativity, has to do with it?
Nativity, of course, as we know, means “birth” and the Church celebrates the Nativity of Our Lord, the Nativity of the Mother of God, the Nativity of John the Baptist. It’s a rather lofty sounding word, at least in English, which we don’t use of our own birthdays. I’m aware of my birthday each year, but I don’t ask my friends to celebrate the Nativity of Alex Martin!
When we celebrate the Nativity of a person important in salvation history, we aren’t necessarily marking a particular day or year, but we are marking the appearance in history of real people responding to the call of God. We know that these people are historical, and that is what we are commemorating, the actions of God in history, and the people God empowered to act on his behalf.
So, how do these readings help us do this? Micah says, “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, one whose origin is from old, from ancient days.” One of the little clans of Judah: no grandeur here, nobody significant, no names at all, no genealogy, apparently nobody important, but from that little clan is to come one who is to rule. And his origin is from old, that is, it has been prepared from ancient days, and is the fulfilment, the culmination, of an ancient plan. There is no regard for conventional expectations, no grand world-shaking publicity, just a promise to a small clan, in an unimportant town that there, there would appear a ruler, who would come into the world in the ordinary way, by human birth, not by supernatural intervention, when the time was right. “And he shall stand...in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.” But it will take generations of preparation to enable this to happen. That is where the majesty of God will appear, in a small town, out of the way, in a little clan.
Psalm 131 changes the tone somewhat, but still emphasizes the small, the ordinary, the humble. “I do not occupy myself with things too great...for me...I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother...O Israel, hope in the Lord…” Hope in the Lord; trust in his working out of our salvation. In other words, the person of a calm and quiet soul is the one best able to hear, to perceive the will of the Lord, and to respond to it. That person, he or she, will be ready for the great things which the Lord has in store, when the time comes for one to rule in Israel, to bring the Messiah into the world. This psalm describes well the spiritual condition, the spiritual readiness of both Mary and Joseph, for the work that God had prepared for them from the beginning of the world.
When we come to Matthew’s genealogy of the Messiah (which is actually Joseph’s genealogy) , and his account of the birth of Jesus, it is notable that Mary is mentioned as briefly and as by-the-way as possible. She says nothing. She is mentioned only as the wife of Joseph, or rather Joseph is mentioned as her husband, and he had to be persuaded by an angel to go through with the marriage. Mary has no recorded genealogy, no apparent status, an obscure origin; she is dependent on Joseph to preserve her reputation. Contrast Mary’s situation, in worldly terms vulnerable, defenseless even, to Joseph’s situation, with that thundering, imposing genealogy and royal ancestry to back him up, and we begin to perceive what God is doing here.
It took generations of great ancestors to prepare Bethlehem, and Israel (and Joseph) for the time when Joseph would be able to hear and see the angel of the Lord and respond to the angel’s command. It took the obscurity of Bethlehem, and its little clan, to be the place where Mary could calm and quiet her soul, down to the depths where she could perceive and accept the presence of the Holy Spirit. The real function of Joseph’s ancestry becomes apparent here: it is meant to exalt, not worldly importance, but spiritual reality. The real use of worldly glory, Joseph’s royal ancestry, is to bring God to earth, so to speak. God is acting in Mary, whom he has prepared for her great work. Mary’s obscurity is essential, if I can put it that way; it reveals our true position in the world, our true relation to God. In relation to God, we are all a little clan, the human race; we are all a little clan somewhere in an obscure corner of the universe. Our location gives us the opportunity to calm and quiet our souls, so that we can perceive what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. Our task, like Mary’s, is to bring Christ into the world. The task of people like Joseph, people of great ancestry, or, to put it in contemporary terms, people of great resources both spiritual and material, is to help that happen, to make the divine reality visible in our world. The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Nativity of the Mother of God, the God-Bearer, is the birth in us of our vocation, to bring knowledge and experience and love of God into the world, today and every day.
In the Name etc.. Amen. (8.IX.19 Adv.)
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