On this fourth Sunday of Advent in RCL Year C, we are looking at Matthew’s telling of the Christmas story. Connecting Jesus’ birth to ancient prophecies, we see Jesus as the culmination of God’s plan of salvation. Jesus is God with us, coming into the world to bring salvation.
I found helpful this week Debie Thomas’ essay at Journey with Jesus, as well as chapter three of Adam Hamilton’s excellent book, Incarnation: Rediscovering the Significance of Christmas. Our Scripture readings today are Isaiah 7:10-16, Psalm 80:1-7, and Matthew 1:18-25.
Here’s the audio and video from Christ the King. At Living Hope this weekend, we did a fun interactive Christmas program for the service – you can watch that video here.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our coming King, Jesus Christ. Amen
One of the great gifts of the Bible is that we have four different Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each make editorial choices of how to tell the story of Jesus and why he’s important.
It’s almost like four different camera angles of the same scenes. Luke tells the story for a Gentile audience, for people who are new converts to the Christian faith, rather than the believers coming out of the Jewish tradition.
On Saturday at the Christmas Eve service, the first verse we’ll hear is about the Emperor Augustus making a decree that all the world should be registered and how this happened while Quirinius was governor of Syria. That’s a Roman frame of reference, Luke concretely rooting his story of Jesus in an historical moment familiar to his Gentile audience.
Matthew, on the other hand, is writing his Gospel primarily to a Jewish audience, explaining who Jesus is to people who are already worshiping God, people who’ve heard the prophecies, who expect the Messiah to be coming.
So as Matthew establishes who Jesus is, he doesn’t worry so much about the dates and rulers in Roman history; he focuses on the Jewish prophecies Jesus is fulfilling. Even in the way he lays out Jesus’ genealogy at the beginning of chapter 1, Matthew slips in references to events in Jewish history, like the Babylonian exile and King David.
Both are telling the same story, and they’re not contradicting each other, but they’re coming at it from different perspectives to relate to different audiences.
So today, we’re hearing Matthew’s perspective, which is firmly grounded in what we’d call the Old Testament, the Jewish story of God acting throughout history.
Those Hebrew Scriptures are all about God faithfully working to save God’s chosen people, the people of Israel, the Hebrews. Ever since the Garden of Eden, God has been working to restore the relationship with God’s people, to save them.
And how does God save God’s people? Historically, it’s been by raising up mighty kings and judges, people who lead armies and defeat Israel’s enemies. It’s been by sending rain to end droughts; healing from plagues; calm in storms. God has saved by providing a system of temple sacrifices, ways to receive forgiveness and atone for sins.
God has saved by providing an ark, parting the seas, even once by making a donkey talk. Over and over, the Bible tells of God saving God’s people.
And over and over, the people turn away again. They grow content and complacent, they take credit for God’s work, they turn to idols and foreign gods for help and safety. Things fall apart, they realize their idols and alliances can’t help them, they realize they can’t save themselves, and so they turn to God for help. And God saves them again.
In the reading from Isaiah, we catch a glimpse of one of these situations. For those in the Advent Bible study group, this will sound very familiar – we just talked about it on Wednesday.
The short version is that God’s people are in trouble. Foreign enemies are invading their nation, practically at the gates of Jerusalem, coming to kill King Ahaz and replace him with someone who will make an alliance with them.
Ahaz is in trouble, and he’s terrified. Right before the section we read, in verse 2, it says, “the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.”
In today’s verses, God sends the prophet Isaiah with a message of hope. God will rescue God’s people. Ahaz is too afraid to ask for a sign, unwilling to trust in God’s help, but God promises a sign anyway.
A child will be born, who will be named Immanuel, which means, “God with us.” And by the time that child who represents God’s faithfulness is old enough to know what’s going on, refusing evil and choosing good, the attacking nations will no longer be a threat. Their lands will be deserted. The child is a testimony to the people that God will save them.
Most of us have different concerns today, different situations where we need God’s help, worries about inflation, jobs, health, food insecurity, friends, and family.
We do our best to try to fix things on our own, and sometimes it works for a while, but eventually, we realize we can’t make things right by ourselves. Our world is too broken for our efforts to suffice. We need the salvation that only God can provide.
We don’t know exactly when Psalm 80 was composed, but it’s another situation where God’s people have turned away from God, and now they’re in trouble. And so the Psalmist begs God for help. Verse 2: “Stir up your strength and come to help us.”
It’s a plea of desperation. “God, everything we’ve tried isn’t working. We need your help. Come and help us. Come and save us!” Verse 3: Restore us, O God; let your face shine upon us, and we shall be saved.” That plea repeats in verses 7 and 9.
Matthew, as he’s explaining to his readers and to us who this Jesus is, explains that Jesus is God’s ultimate answer to the people’s plea, God’s ultimate act of salvation. God is going to break this cycle the people have been stuck in for centuries, the cycle of turning away from God towards idols, getting into trouble, repenting, and God sending a leader to the rescue, and then the people turning away again.
God’s going to break this cycle by coming in person. God chooses to be born as a baby, entering personally into creation.
Debie Thomas calls it “a sort of call-and-response that’s separated by 1000 years, [as] the gospel for this week responds to the cry of the psalmist: ‘He will save his people.’ (Matthew 1:21)
Jesus is the answer to Israel’s plea for help. And not just for Israel, but—as will become clear later in the story—salvation for all people, including Gentiles like you and me.
John’s gospel—the way John tells the story of Jesus—focuses more on that as well. He sees Jesus as God’s light for the world, the light of all people.
And of course, John 3:16 – “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
We cry out, “Come and save us, God!” and God responds by showing up in-person. This child named Jesus doesn’t just represent God’s enduring presence with God’s people; this child is God, present with us. This child will save the people not just from earthly enemies, not just from catastrophes, but from the root cause of all their suffering, the root cause of all our wanderings away from our loving heavenly Father. Mary will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, which means “God saves,” for he will save his people from their sins.
There will be no more need for annual sacrifices in the temple to atone for the people’s sins, because Jesus will be God’s perfect lamb of God, who will take away the sins of the world once and for all.
The psalmist cries, “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.” Our cry for help has been answered. We have seen God’s glory, we have seen the face of God, revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
All those details of the Christmas story about the angels and the shepherds and the magi are great, but the important part of Christmas is the meaning of the child’s birth, says Matthew.
This child is Emmanuel, God with us. God has entered into our world to save us. Amen