The Origin of God-With-Us

22 December 2019 –– Fourth Sunday in Advent

Matthew 1:18-25

This is the passage describing the annunciation of the birth of the Messiah in Matthew. The announcement reaches its climax in the claim that the conception of Jesus represents the fulfillment of God’s promises to be “with us” (Isaiah 7:14). The scene as a whole is part of Matthew’s concerted effort at the start of his gospel to stake out the identity of Jesus.

In Matthew’s story today, the same sign introduced to Ahaz by Isaiah starts out as a potential scandal that the upright Joseph plans to handle tactfully. He is brought to obedient faith by his dream, however, a plunge into the depth of psyche. Joseph accepted the sign and the intervention of the Holy Spirit. It is the same spirit of holiness that out of the scandal of Jesus’ death raises him to life and makes leaves and buds sprout on dead brush. –– David Philippart

Isaiah 7:10-16

Ahaz is at least some kind of a model for Advent people. After all, we prepare for the coming of salvation just as he was losing it. Isaiah came around when the king of Judah was in such a tight spot—invading armies on his soil—that he offered his son as a living sacrifice in a pagan ritual at Hinnom, hoping to assuage the divine wrath that had come on his city. Understandably, Ahaz did not take kindly to Isaiah’s intervention in the form of a symbolic religious solution. . . He didn’t perceive what the prophet was about; he couldn’t be distracted from the external circumstances of his life.

Isaiah’s instruction into Ahaz’s life and the advent of Christ are similar motions on God’s part. Ahaz’s troubles are a setup for the dawn of the transcendent inner reality. That is what Isaiah introduces. And this is how Paul describes Christ: “According to the flesh, Jesus is descended from David, but [he] was made son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead.” –– David Philippart

Romans 1:1-7

Paul may be quoting from an early credal formula here. . . that predates Matthew’s story by a good generation or more. It affirms the widespread Christian belief that as Messiah, Jesus stood in David’s royal line. But it traces Jesus’ status as Son of God to the resurrection, not to the birth. The formula, in other words, attributes Davidic sonship and divine sonship to Jesus, but it treats these attributes sequentially: the one stemming from the start of Jesus’ career, the other from the end.

Various segments of the earliest church understand Jesus in alternate ways. It was only a matter of time, however, given the impact of the virgin birth tradition, before the divine sonship of Jesus would also be traced back to the moment of conception, a move we see made unambiguously in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (early second century). Still, for all the diversity of nuance we can observe in these christological affirmations, the underlying conviction remained: the coming of Jesus represents the movement of God to the people. –– David Philippart

David Philippart is the liturgy director at Old Saint Patrick’s Church in downtown Chicago and a past editor of several volumes of Liturgy published by The Liturgical Conference.

Homily Service 38, no. 1 (2005): 29-35.