In our first reading, from about 2750 years ago,
Isaiah speaks to king Ahaz.
As you can discover from other passages,
Ahaz was judged a terrible, and wicked, king:
he did deals with foreign nations rather than relying on God,
and imported idolatrous religious practices.
Isaiah looks forward to a renewal,
a restoration of values centred on the true God,
signalled by the birth of a child.
Of the four gospels,
Matthew is the one most concerned
to be explicit about how scripture, the Law and the Prophets,
anticipates, and illuminates, Jesus’ birth, life and death.
He wants to illustrate that the scriptures are fulfilled,
that God’s plan is realised,
in the person and work of Jesus.
We just heard the first narrative section of Matthew’s Gospel.
In a few sentences, it sets the scene for the whole gospel.
In this passage, Matthew has four things to tell us about Jesus.
The first is that:
Mary was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.
This is not a normal conception; Joseph is not the father.
God is at work in a profound way.
The second is that: Joseph is addressed as son of David,
so, legally, when Joseph takes Mary home as his wife,
the child is also a son of David.
The Lord’s anointed, the Messiah,
was expected to be of the house of David.
The child has messianic credentials.
The third is that Joseph is told:
You must name him Jesus,
because he is the one to save his people from their sins.
Jesus is the Greek for Joshua,
and one possible sense of the name Joshua is ‘God saves’.
Matthew’s gospel doesn’t say,
name him Jesus, name him ‘God saves’,
because through him God will save,
the gospel says:
name him Jesus, because he is the one to save....
and
he saves from sins: which is undoubtedly a work of God.
The child conceived through the Holy Spirit
is the Messiah – and more –
the child conceived through the Holy Spirit is God saving.
The fourth is that
Matthew sees the previous three as fulfilling Isaiah’s words:
they will call him Emmanuel;
they will call him ‘God-is-with-us’.
Matthew is seeing the deep meaning to Isaiah’s words,
taking them beyond: ‘God is on our side’,
‘God is working through this person’;
taking Isaiah’s words into the mystery of the incarnation:
that the child in Mary’s womb
is a fully human person and is God: ‘God is with us’.
Jesus, ‘God is with us’ is soon be born:
and will be lauded by angels,
and acknowledged by shepherds and magi.
But this Sunday points us to the child in the womb.
We are invited to contemplate, in wonder, that,
laying aside all power,
in an emptying-out that reveals the divine nature,
the God-who-saves is with us,
in weakness and silence, in Mary’s body.