Journey with Jesus #2

Old Testament - Nativity 01/16/09

The Old Testament has many birth narratives – Moses, Samuel (Hannah’s song of praise is the basis for Mary’s Magnificat in Luke), and Joseph, son of Jacob, to name a few. This study focuses on stories surrounding the birth of Isaac (found in Genesis 18:1-15; 19:1-11 & 20:1-7). In Chapter 18 Abraham welcomes the Lord who, with the ambiguity often found in these early stories, appears as three men. The patriarchal narratives – the stories in Genesis before Moses and the exodus – have a more anthropomorphic (human-shaped) description of God.

These stories come out of a specific socio-historical situation - the near east (of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Palestine) 2000 – 1000 BCE. This was a time of city states – often small walled cities ruled by a warrior class – there are thirty one in Palestine alone identified in chapter12 of Joshua. Because of these oppressive city states, in parallel with the great empires, there were many displaced, landless people migrating form one area to another. These people would have been particularly vulnerable, without protection, resources or status. It is some of these landless, rootless people, enslaved in Egypt, that Moses would lead to the Promised Land and give identity as the people of God.

Abraham, Sarah and his nephew Lot are displaced peoples. In Gen 19:9 Lot is described as a stranger by the mob in Sodom. The passage in Chapter 20 where Abraham pretends Sarah is his sister is an example of aliens who have the desperation of the powerless– bartering what they have to survive. In this context hospitality/care for the stranger becomes a matter of life and death. The angels from God (messengers/emissaries - not the Persian winged versions that we think of today) that are protected by Lot in Chapter 19 are another example of vulnerable travelers dependent on the hospitality of strangers. The real sin of Sodom is not the sexual act of the rape of the men – rather it is that they have broken the code of hospitality and protection of the stranger. It is not the sexual sin as such that is at issue– it is the threat of violence to the vulnerable outsider. The fact that they were men indicates only that the sin was greater – men were perceived as more valuable than women.

In this underclass of the dispossessed, women had an even more powerless role. They were the most expendable – bartered and traded . In Genesis, twice Abraham pretends Sarah is his sister (barters her as a prostitute, and in a separate story Isaac does the same thing with his wife). Lot is prepared to sacrifice his daughters to save the lives of the visitors that have fallen under his protection. In this context, women are pawns to preserve or increase the honor/survival of men.

The action of God in these circumstances is to speak for the vulnerable – the widow, the orphan, the stranger. The Exodus was the foundation act – God acting against the mighty of the world on behalf of the powerless. The Torah was a way of trying to say that “you shall not do to others what was once done to you in Egypt”. The subsequent stories of the Old Testament often bear witness to the failure of the people to uphold this Law, but the Torah remained at their center, and the desire was always to return to faithfulness to the Law. But before the Exodus we have the destruction of Sodom as judgment for its offenses against the stranger. Later God tells Abimelech in a dream not to touch Sarah. This is similar to Joseph’s dream in Matthew where the angel urges Joseph to protect Mary and not to cast her out. In the early stories of the Old Testament God acts with violence to bring about justice – it is only as the people experience increasing suffering – the collapse of the kingdoms, the loss of their land and exile – does their understanding of the nature and action of God in the world begin to change. When Mary is mentioned at the end of the three-times-fourteen list of generations in Matthew she stands for all the vulnerable and oppressed women of the Old Testament through whom, paradoxically, God’s purpose will be fulfilled.

Genesis also has the ultimate nativity story – the Creation narratives. In Chapter 1 is the account of the seven days of creation culminating in Ch2:4 “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created”. “Generations” (geneses) here is the same word used in the following lists of the descendents of Adam and Eve in Chapter 5. Humanity, made in the image of God, also has the ability to generate life. In Matthew 1:1 the Gospel opens with “an account of the generation/birth of Jesus the Messiah”. The same word (genesis: often mistranslated as “genealogy”) is used here. In one sense it means that what follows in the next few chapters is an account of the birth of Jesus – his nativity story. But in a broader sense Matthew is signaling the birth or genesis that Jesus brings into the world. The fourteen generations x3 of the ancestors of Jesus are like the seven days of creation doubled up and then multiplied by the holy number three – a symbol of creation perfected in Jesus. In Jesus we have a new beginning, we are born again—not just as individuals but the whole creation.