Christmas Journey: Advent Readings and Reflections from the Nativity Stories

By Douglas Wirth

The Nativity Stories were hidden gems in antiquity, and they remain largely unexplored today. Though they appear first in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, they were among the last pieces of the puzzle of Christ’s life to be revealed to the public. The evidence shows that during the three-year ministry of Jesus none of his followers knew about the extraordinary events related in the birth narratives. The claim of his virginal conception, the most highly charged and hardest to substantiate of all the assertions made about Jesus, was held in reserve until decades after his death and resurrection. The publication of the Nativity Stories around AD 80 helped to complete the church’s portrait of Jesus Christ.

Today the Nativity Stories are usually saved for Advent, but since this is such a busy time of year these scriptures are seldom explored in depth. This engaging study takes readers on a journey of daily Readings and Reflections in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2. The spiritual riches of the Nativity Stories are revealed through a survey of issues about their impact on our understanding of the divine/human nature of Jesus. Also highlighted is the influential role of the birth narratives on the church’s theology in the period prior to the emergence of Christmas in the fourth century. With a wealth of enlightening discoveries awaiting readers, Christmas Journey is sure to become a meaningful part of their yearly Advent tradition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973655398

Douglas Wirth

Doug Wirth has previously authored Christ the Suffering Servant: A Lenten Study of the Atonement, and Shivering Babe, Glorious Lord: The Nativity Stories in Christian Tradition. His writing focuses on recovering the ancient Christian heritage of Easter and Christmas.

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Copyright © 2019 Douglas Wirth.

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Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-5538-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5537-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5539-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019902872

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/26/2019

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Matthew’s Genealogy and Mary’s Role in Christ’s Birth

First Week, Sunday (Luke 1:5-7)

Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s Faithfulness and

Childlessness

First Week, Monday (Luke 1:8-13)

An Unexpected Answer to Zechariah’s Prayer

First Week, Tuesday (Luke 1:14-17)

John’s Commission as a Prophet

First Week, Wednesday (Luke 1:18-20, 24)

Zechariah’s Encounter with Gabriel

First Week, Thursday (Luke 1:26-28)

The Lord’s Unlikely Choice of Mary

First Week, Friday (Luke 1:29-33)

The Prophetic Commission of Jesus

First Week, Saturday (Luke 1:34-38)

Mary’s Daring Response to

Gabriel’s Announcement

Second Week, Sunday (Luke 1:39-45)

The Visitation

Second Week, Monday (Luke 1:46-53)

Mary’s Song of Praise

Second Week, Tuesday (Luke 1:57-66)

John’s Birth, Circumcision, and Naming

Second Week, Wednesday (Luke 1:80)

The Childhood of John the Baptist

Second Week, Thursday (Matthew 1:18-19)

Joseph and Mary

Second Week, Friday (Matthew 1:20-21)

The Angel’s Message to Joseph

Second Week, Saturday (Matthew 1:22-25)

The Virgin Shall Conceive …

Third Week, Sunday (Luke 2:1-3)

The Census under Quirinius

Third Week, Monday (Luke 2:4-7)

The (Home) Birth of Jesus

Third Week, Tuesday (Luke 2:8-14)

The Angelic Announcement to the Shepherds

Third Week, Wednesday (Luke 2:15-20)

Mary’s Silence

Third Week, Thursday (Luke 2:21-24)

The Presentation in the Temple

Third Week, Friday (Luke 2:25-32)

Simeon Greets the Long-Awaited Messiah

Third Week, Saturday (Luke 2:33-35)

Simeon Warns of Coming Troubles

Fourth Week, Sunday (Luke 2:39-40)

The Return to Nazareth and the "Lost

Years" of Jesus’s Childhood

Fourth Week, Monday (Matthew 2:1-2)

The Magi Seek the King of the Jews

Fourth Week, Tuesday (Matthew 2:3-6)

The Prophecy of Christ’s Birth in Bethlehem

Fourth Week, Wednesday (Matthew 2:7-12)

The Star Leads the Magi to the Christ Child

Fourth Week, Thursday (Matthew 2:13-15)

The Flight to Egypt

Fourth Week, Friday (Matthew 2:16-18)

The Death of the Innocents

Fourth Week, Saturday (Matthew 2:19-23)

Jesus of Nazareth

Conclusion

Luke’s Genealogy and the Hidden Glory of

Christ’s Birth

For Further Reading

About the Author

Preface

Few passages in the Bible are as beloved or sentimentalized as the nativity stories. Just as the gritty biblical account of Noah and the flood has been simplified to make it accessible to small children, the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke have sometimes been rendered innocuous in order to reach a wide audience. Though the two evangelists did not set out to write children’s stories or scripts for Christmas pageants, their birth narratives have proved to be readily adaptable for those uses. The problem is that this simplified version is the only one many of us ever learn. Because Advent is such a busy time of year, the nativity stories are rarely studied in depth, making them perhaps the most neglected passages in the New Testament.

Today the nativity stories are thought of primarily as the basis of Christmas celebrations. But Matthew and Luke did not compose them with that idea in mind, and the early church never used them for such a purpose. In the first centuries of church history, believers were too busy just trying to understand the implications of these birth narratives. One conundrum facing early readers of the nativity stories was the striking juxtaposition of Christ’s divinity with his vulnerable humanity. The one who was called Son of the Most High by Gabriel (Luke 1:32) was the same helpless child in his mother’s arms as the holy family fled from the wrath of King Herod (Matt. 2:14). The fact that these sorts of extremes were so contrary to Jewish messianic expectations and so far beyond anything imaginable at the time meant that the nativity stories were received with a mixture of wonder and perplexity. We tend to view the Christmas story in terms simple enough for young children to comprehend. But historically, the narratives of the virginal conception and birth of Jesus were as weighty and difficult to grasp as the events of Passion Week. In the second and third centuries, the nativity stories were subject to misunderstanding and even apocryphal knock-offs.

This interpretive confusion was checked in the early fourth century when Emperor Constantine presided over the first ecumenical Council of Nicaea. The Nicene Creed acknowledged the importance of the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke by including a statement affirming the miraculous conception of Jesus. A year after the Council’s conclusion, the emperor sent his mother, Helena, to the Holy Land to scout out sites for future churches. In 327, Constantine commissioned the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which would give the faithful a place to commemorate the event chronicled so memorably in the nativity stories. By the time this church was completed, the birth of Christ was being observed in Rome on December 25.

Matthew and Luke each refer to a journey that Joseph and Mary undertook, one before and the other after the birth of Jesus. In Luke, the Galilean couple traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem in obedience to the Roman census. In Matthew, they fled from Bethlehem to Egypt to avoid Herod’s dragnet. The hardships and dangers of these trips are never mentioned. Later writers filled in these gaps in the narratives with imaginative details, most notably that Mary gave birth to Jesus on the very night of their arrival in Bethlehem. The journey that unfolds in this study is the slow transition from the reception of the nativity stories in the late first century to the emergence of Christmas in the middle of the fourth century.

Since the mid-second century, astute readers of the nativity stories have realized the two evangelists’ narratives were so dissimilar that they resisted blending into one composite story. Even at that early date, the way the two accounts were harmonized was by arranging them into chronological order: Luke 1; Matthew 1; Luke 2; Matthew 2. That is the order used here in the readings and reflections for each of the days of Advent. May your journey through these four chapters of the Bible help you grow in understanding and deepen your faith.

Introduction

Matthew’s Genealogy and Mary’s Role in Christ’s Birth

Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar,

Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab,

Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth,

David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,

Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born.

—Matthew 1:3, 5, 6, 16

Matthew precedes his brief account of the events leading up to the birth of Jesus (Matt. 1:18–25) with a partial record of Christ’s ancestry (Matt. 1:1–17). The primary aims of this genealogy are to demonstrate the Christ child’s descent from the patriarch Abraham and to establish his legitimacy as the long-promised Davidic Messiah. An unusual feature of this list is Matthew’s inclusion of four Old Testament women: Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba, and Ruth, in addition to Mary. In contrast, Luke’s genealogy (Luke 3:23–38) contains no female names, not even Mary’s. The inclusion of these four women is remarkable since the sons they gave birth to resulted from highly unusual, even scandalous, unions with their spouses. For centuries, scholars have tried to unravel Matthew’s perspective on the role these women played in salvation history and to understand how the evangelist intends their stories to serve as an interpretive key to Mary’s extraordinary role in the nativity story that followed.

A brief survey of the unorthodox circumstances that resulted in these women becoming a part of Christ’s lineage reveals how daring Matthew was to draw attention to them in his genealogy.

Tamar (See Genesis 38)

Under the Old Testament provision of levirate marriage (instituted to preserve the lineage of a man who died without a son), Onan should have married his brother Er’s widow, Tamar. Not wanting to father a child who would not be considered his own, he declined. Tamar’s father-in-law Judah then refused to allow his third son, Shelah, to marry her either. In desperation to produce offspring, Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute and seduced Judah into impregnating her. When Tamar exposed Judah as the father, he confessed, She is more righteous than I (Gen. 38:26). She gave birth to twins, Perez and Zerah, the former of whom Matthew named as an ancestor of Jesus.

Rahab (See Joshua 2)

During Israel’s early foray into the Promised Land, two spies entered Jericho and lodged in the house of Rahab, a prostitute. When the authorities demanded that Rahab send out the two men, she falsely reported their escape while sheltering them on her roof. In return for her help, Joshua spared Rahab and her family when his forces conquered the city (Josh. 6:23). Despite her unsavory occupation, Rahab became a heroine in both Jewish and Christian tradition. She was commended in Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25 for risking her life to save the Jewish spies. Nothing more is reported of her in the Old Testament, but according to Matthew’s genealogy, Rahab was the mother of Boaz, whose story appears in the book of Ruth.

Ruth (See Ruth 3 and 4)

Ruth was a descendant of Moab, the offspring of Lot’s incestuous union with his older daughter (Gen. 19:37). There had been centuries of animosity between Israel and the Moabites, beginning with the latter’s refusal to help the Israelites on their way to the Promised Land. Because of this refusal, Moabites had been excluded from Jewish fellowship for ten generations (Deut. 23:3–4). This exclusion would have still been in effect in the time of Ruth. Hence, her ethnicity made her a despised outsider. She was nevertheless graciously accepted by her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi, during the latter’s brief sojourn in Moab. After Ruth was widowed, she accompanied Naomi back to her hometown of Bethlehem (Ruth 1:19). Even more explicitly than Rahab, Ruth identified with Naomi’s faith when she famously declared, Your people shall be my people, and your God my God (Ruth 1:16). Following Naomi’s instruction, Ruth enticed Naomi’s kinsman Boaz, who (in contrast to the story of Judah and Tamar) agreed to marry her. Their child, Obed, was the grandfather of King David, thus placing Ruth in the ancestry of Christ. The wording in Matthew’s genealogy matches very closely that at the end of the book of Ruth (Ruth 4:21–22).

Bathsheba (See 2 Samuel 11–12)

In his genealogy, Matthew does not refer to Bathsheba by name, instead calling her the wife of Uriah. This may reflect his unease about touching on her scandalous and tragic affair with David. As the wife of Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba is assumed to be a non-Israelite, although as the daughter of Eliam, she may have been Jewish if she was the granddaughter of Ahithopel (2 Sam. 11:3, 23:34). After Uriah’s death and Bathsheba’s remarriage to David, the prophet Nathan arrived and pronounced judgment on the king for