A CROSSINGS CAROL
Matthew 1:18-25
Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A
Analysis by Matt Metevelis
18Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. 19Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 20But just when he had resolved to do 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 as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” 24When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife 25but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.
From Wikimedia Commons
“In a glorious reversal what looked at first like sin and shame in an unmarried and pregnant young girl will be the final irrevocable coming of righteousness and salvation.”
Author’s Note: “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens bears an echo with our text for the Sunday. Both Ebenezer Scrooge and Joseph entertain an otherworldly visitor (or visitors) in the night that transforms their lives. Both undergo both law and gospel working upon them. In this text study we’ll look at both these texts side by side to see in both of these stories of transformation the journey from death to life that the entire world takes in this season.
DIAGNOSIS: Ghosts and Spirits
Step 1: Initial Diagnosis (External Problem) – Ghosts of Christmas Past
The past confronts Scrooge from the first sentence of the story. The dead Jacob Marley is just another person cut off from Scrooge in his long list of broken and neglected relationships. Because of Scrooge’s past we find him alone in a cold and drafty room. He is a victim of his poor decisions.
Mary comes on the scene in Matthew only as a woman with a past. She is not the virtuous girl visited by Gabriel in Luke’s telling. Now she is only a girl “found” with child (note the passive voice) who is a potential social liability to her future husband.
Scrooge chose his miserly and solitary life because of his misguided ambition. But poor Mary will face the same fate because a patriarchal society will force it on her.
Our past is often our prison. Scrooge is reduced to tears and begs the ghost of Christmas past to stop torturing him with his memories. The choices we make, no matter how well intentioned, can sometimes cause pain and separation among those we love. But sometimes that pain and separation comes to us from factors beyond our control and things that happened for which we did not plan. We wear our sins as regrets. We bear the sins of others against us as scars.
Step 2: Advanced Diagnosis (Internal Problem) – Ghosts of Christmas Present
The ghost of Christmas present charms Scrooge only to show him that he stands outside the merriment and joy that the season brings. Scrooge is a prisoner not only of his wealth but of his social assumptions. His wealth is not just a source of support. His wealth is proof of his righteousness. He has worked hard his whole life to earn what he has and the poor have not. They are just “surplus population.” But when the ghost gives Scrooge a vision of the Cratchit family Christmas table he witnesses love, humor, warmth and compassion. This is true wealth. And Scrooge has missed out because of the blinders of his class assumptions.
Joseph wears similar blinders. The only detail we get about him is that he is “a righteous man.” This means that Joseph was a careful and zealous follower of the law. He allowed the law to define him and his actions. Rather than risk his own reputation and incur shame Joseph turned to the provisions of the law that would give him an escape hatch from his pregnant fiancée. These same provisions would later be described by Jesus as concessions the law made because of callous and hard hearts. Even if we understand that Joseph was planning to break off the engagement in order to save her from public shame, we have to imagine that he has his own reputation on his mind. He could not risk his own righteousness for Mary. The self-absorption that keeps Scrooge from his neighbors is different in kind but not in quality from the self-righteousness that keeps Joseph from Mary. And it ultimately keeps Joseph (and us) from Jesus too.
Step 3: Final Diagnosis (Ultimate Problem) – Ghosts of Christmas Yet to Come
Scrooge’s nephew has a response to Scrooge that foreshadows the climax of the story. When Scrooge tells him that Christmas is worthless, he responds that Christmas makes people “by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
The final spirit shows his possessions hawked in a pawn shop by vagabonds who stole them. All his wealth ends up in the hands of sinners and the unrighteous. It cannot save him from the grave with his name on it. In the same way Joseph’s righteousness, which is his cloak that hides him from shame and disrepute will eventually avail him nothing. The blessings that righteousness promises in places like Proverbs and Deuteronomy only show up on this side of life (and can’t always be counted upon – ask Job). Scrooge and Joseph, with all that they proclaim and claim about themselves, are both just “fellow passengers” to the grave – and we with them. Under Adam’s curse of death, we are all just surplus population.
PROGNOSIS: What Day is It?
Step 4: Initial Prognosis (Ultimate Solution) – The One who Redeems Our Past
Scrooge’s visions drown him in regret, shame, and terror. He is saved not by his promises to reform himself but by the dawn of a new morning … Christmas morning. The prison of his selfish and arrogant past is shattered and put behind him. He rises as a new man, barely recognized and even a little mistrusted. Instead of clinging to his wealth as virtue he lets it go, lavishing it on his neighbors as a blessing. Seen in the triumphant final scenes Scrooge’s story becomes an Easter story as much as a Christmas story. A dead man is now alive.
The angel promises Joseph that Mary’s child is coming to work this same miracle not just for one person but for all his people. He will be for us “THE fellow passenger” through death and grave and judgment, but for our sakes. And by the end of the gospel, we are told it will be for all nations. “He will save his people from their sins.” In a glorious reversal what looked at first like sin and shame in an unmarried and pregnant young girl will be the final irrevocable coming of righteousness and salvation. This child will turn the page on a lamentable past of idolatry and subjugation for God’s chosen people. Through Him God will choose innumerable others, called from their own pasts into the new day of forgiveness and salvation. Joseph almost missed out on it by hiding behind his own righteousness. But outside of his own desires and plans a promise came of a new dawn and Joseph believed it. People who gather to hear this word will come to believe it too.
Step 5: Advanced Prognosis (Internal Solution) – The One who Frees Our Present
Scrooge in his Christmas morning exultation exclaims “Past, Present, and Future – the Spirits of all three strive within me.” His problem was never wealth. Wealth was just the symptom. Control and self-absorption was the disease. In the new morning Scrooge confesses that the visions he has seen now strive within him and guide him. As he promised in the midst of his terror, he now can keep Christmas “in his heart” He doesn’t just appreciate the day, he lives by it. And does it as good as anyone else.
Joseph upon waking up does this too. He hears a word from the angel; he believes and obeys it to the letter. Not only will he risk his reputation but fleeing from the cruelty of Herod he will risk his very life. Joseph’s life is now led by this word, a force outside him, emptying him of fear. His righteousness is built not only upon his own estimation, but on trust that God is using him, “striving within him”, and Mary along with him, to midwife the salvation that is coming into the world. So too with us. By hearing the outside word of the gospel and trusting it to strive within us we are freed from the prison of trusting only ourselves.
Step 6: Final Prognosis (External Solution) – The One who Promises Our Future
The true wealth that Scrooge could only look in on from the outside in his visions was now his. Strong friendships and goodwill replace the broken relationships that marked Scrooge’s life. Scrooge will still die but gets to experience plenty of life beforehand. “He did it all, and infinitely more … he became as good a friend, as good a master, as good a man, as any in the good old city knew, or any good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”
Someone else came in to this world to “do it all and infinitely more.” Our own broken relationships, shame, sins, inner turmoil, and failure are replaced by one relationship that cannot be broken. This new relationship, sealed in the blood of the cross and the waters of baptism, is our future now. “God is with us” is the name of the one who comes into our lives. With us to stand in between us and all those we love and gather with this season. With us to hold us together even with our enemies in unbroken love. With us to walk with us into the coming year. And with us most of all to claim us and bless us, every one.
Amen.
And Merry Christmas
