‘A story of trust’ by Owen Lynch, 1 December 2024
What does the story of Jesus' birth tell us about God? Owen Lynch looks at this and shares his own reasons for having faith in Jesus. Do we want the stories which define us to be God's stories about us, our value, and how much we are loved and filled with his love, joy and peace to share this year?
Transcript
If you know me, you will know that Jesus is everything to me. My self confidence and sense of purpose is entirely built around some simple principles - that Jesus is God who loves me unconditionally, that I am made in God’s image (so I am very cool), and that unconditional love is my primary value.
This is so central to my mental and emotional health, that if I abandoned these simple principles I would have a complete breakdown.
The unconditional love of God for me is my whole psychology, my philosophy, my politics, my economics, my ethics, and my behaviour.
There is no person I would rather base my life upon than Jesus. Just think for a minute if you didn’t have Jesus? Which philosopher, which influencer, which famous person would you follow? Who would you put your trust in?
The Dalai Lama, Mandela, Blair, Trump, Oprah, the Queen, Brian Cox? Perhaps your Mum, your Dad, your spouse, a friend, yourself?
But is that enough?
Not for me! Jesus is sublime: his humility, sacrifice, courage, wisdom, compassion, above all his unconditional love. His resurrection, however implausible, speaks something of a deep awareness that you cannot end such love - it is eternal and mysterious. What a hope? What a great way to live!
Why would anyone give up the comfort and security of of being loved by the divine Jesus? He doesn’t require anything of me - nothing I can do would make Jesus love me less! I can be as badly behaved as you can imagine and whilst no one else may like or love me, Jesus still would!
There’s no pressure to perform, because there’s nothing I can do to make Jesus love me more! So I’m completely relaxed around Jesus - I don’t spend my life trying to impress him.
I have not found a better set of values to live by than that described by Paul in Galatians 5 of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Sadly, I don’t always behave like that as those with whom I share life can testify, but I do believe in second chances, I do believe that redemption is always possible, because of Jesus.
Would I ever give up my faith in Jesus - not for a minute! I know which side my bread is buttered and am not giving that up for anyone! My big story is built firmly on Jesus and no one can take that away from me.
What’s your big story? What foundation are you building your life upon? Today is the first Sunday in advent and I want us to take a look at the life of Joseph who adopted Jesus as his son.
Let’s turn to our Bibles - Matthew 1:18-23
18 This is how the birth of (Jesus) the Messiah came about: his mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’
22 All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’).
24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Now this part of the story is unusual in that it focusses mainly on Joseph, rather than Mary. Now let’s be honest and acknowledge that Mary rightly deserves and gets much kudos for her role in Jesus’ birth!
But here in Matthew’s account Joseph gets a some attention for his role.
Notice that Matthew has just recorded the ancestors of Jesus in a genealogy that appears to be Joseph’s line. Scholars don’t think it is a complete genealogy, rather Matthew includes key figures like David, Judah, Jacob, Isaac and Abraham to place Jesus fully in the line of Jewish history and connect him to the royal family.
So although Matthew wants us to understand that Joseph wasn’t the birth father of Jesus, Matthew is keen to help us understand that Joseph was the legal, adoptive father of Jesus.
Even the divine conception of Jesus is related only as it affected Joseph. This is in contrast with Luke’s account of the birth, which barely mentions Joseph.
Perhaps Matthew was talking to Joseph and Luke spoke with Mary?
That would be about right eh? Ask me about the birth of my children and I’ll tell you how much I was involved, ask Claire about the birth of our children and you might wonder if I was there?
Now it’s clear that Joseph was at pains to make it known that he was not involved in the conception of this baby!
Matthew says:
his mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
OK, so a bit of explanation. In Jewish society, a couple would first be betrothed to each other. This was legally binding in a way that our engagement process is not. Betrothal lasted about a year, during which the woman stayed in her father’s house, whilst the husband built an extension to his father’s house for them to live in. The betrothal was binding and could only be broken by death or divorce.
The marriage was completed when the man took his betrothed to the new extension in a public ceremony. Only then would the couple consummate the marriage with sexual relations.
So you can see why Joseph might have been angry and confused when Mary told him that she was pregnant!
I’m almost certain that his first instinct would have been to believe that she had conceived this baby with another man. What would you have done?
After his anger eased a little, it appears that he was willing to divorce her quietly to avoid drawing attention to her infidelity.
But after he had given some consideration to this, Matthew says:
an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’
So Joseph tells Matthew, that he had a weird dream, where a messenger speaks to him about the situation and explains that Mary is still a virgin and that she has not been unfaithful to him.
Notice a couple of things here.
According to Joseph, the angel addressed him as Joseph, Son of David. Matthew is clearly showing his readers that Jesus would have the legal status as being adopted into the line of the great King David!
Second, the angel tells Joseph to call him Jesus which is actually the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, a common name at that time that meant “Yahweh is salvation”.
The angel says, call him “Yahweh is salvation” because this baby will save his people from their sins.
We need to remember that the nation of Israel has existed in some form for 1500 years prior to the birth of Jesus. The Israelites had survived as an identifiable tribe, because they have a culture with its traditions and because they have a legal code set out in the time of Moses.
During those 1500 years, they tended to believe that if they kept the law, then things would go well for them, but if they broke the law (which they called sinning or transgressing the law), then things would go badly for them.
Things had not gone well for the Israelites for centuries before Jesus was born. Israel had been invaded and conquered repeatedly by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. Israel was a small nation on a geographically important piece of land that connected the continents of Africa, Europe and Asia. It is no wonder it was invaded so often.
For 1500 years this tiny nation clung on faithfully to Yahweh, longing for deliverance from the superpowers that repeatedly invaded.
Jesus was born into a period when the Romans were brutally imposing their rule and reign. There was much suffering and hardship, and the Israelites, specifically the tribe of Judah were looking for Yahweh to rescue them from the Romans.
When Matthew reports that the angel said Jesus would save people from their sins, he was talking about Yahweh swooping in and rescuing the Israelites from the Romans. The phrase saving people from their sins, was part of the enduring hope of the Jewish people.
And to drive his point home, Matthew says that the birth of Jesus fulfils a prophecy given by Isaiah 7:14
23 ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’).
In other words, Matthew is saying that this boy Jesus was Yahweh in the flesh! Yahweh being born as a human being to deal with the mess that Israel is in!
Whilst this might sound outlandish to us, to the Jews this was not too difficult to imagine. Prior to Jesus, leaders had emerged who were thought to be the fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies. They were people who were noted to have the Spirit of God and who were called anointed - or in Hebrew “Messiah!” This would have included prophets, priests and kings as well as a number of revolutionary leaders in the 100 years prior to Jesus’ birth.
So to Matthew’s Jewish audience, it was not outlandish to claim that this baby born to Mary could be the Messiah. Matthew is writing to persuade them that Jesus is the Messiah and he begins with a claim that Jesus is the fulfilment of Isaiah 7:14.
Joseph wakes from his dream and does as he was instructed by the angel.
It’s interesting to note that Matthew records Joseph having three dreams where an angel speaks to him. This one, then another in 2:13 where Joseph is instructed to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt and another when an angel tells him to return to Nazareth from Egypt.
Again, to Matthew’s Jewish audience, this would not have been weird. The Old Testament is full of stories about angels interacting with humans, this would have been considered normal and a sign that Yahweh was directing events around Jesus’ birth.
So back to where we started.
Joseph’s grasp of his place in the big story of his nation and tribe, meant that he was able to find his place in history. He was able to trust Yahweh, when he could not necessarily trust his wife.
I think this story as presented from Joseph’s perspective is about trust. The trust that Joseph placed in the angelic dreams, the trust that Joseph placed in his wife, and above all the trust that Yahweh placed in Joseph to adopt and raise this baby who was not his own, as his own!
As we reflect on this story, you might want to ask yourself these questions:
What story are you living in?
Who are you putting your trust in?
What values characterise your life?