Advent Reflections for Intercultural Christians 3 & 4. # 182. 26/11/2024.
Out of Many, One People
Welcome. A change of schedule means that these reflections for the third and fourth weeks of Advent have come out a week earlier. May this Advent fill our hearts with wonder at the arrival that we know so well, and the arrival which will be far beyond anything we can contemplate or imagine.
Advent Reflections for Intercultural Christians 3 & 4.
Advent Reflection 3. From outsider to example.
‘Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David”. (Matthew 1:5,6).
We may not expect to find a woman described as a ‘prostitute’ (Joshua 2:2) on our Christmas cards or in the Christmas story. But as Matthew opens up his gospel by giving us the backstory, the genealogy, leading up to the birth of Jesus, so he takes pain to place four women amongst the list of the forty-two fathers who take us from Abraham to Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and (by implication) Bathsheba: women who either have some sort of scandal attached to them or who have Gentile origins or connections. J Daniel Hays points out that Matthew could have included more reputable forebears such as Sarah or Rebekah, but instead he worked against a standard purpose of genealogies - to express racial purity, and instead points forward to the gospel by highlighting stories that undermine strict moral conventions of ethnic exclusivism. In Rahab’s case, both. Further, as Hays speculates, “Perhaps the subtle theological sub-plot of Matthew 1 is that racially mixed marriages among God’s people are a normal part of the new community that Christ creates in the world” (‘From Every People and Nation’, pp 159, 160). It is not difficult to imagine the sense of shock that Matthew’s first readers must have experienced to find these four seemingly inappropriate women drawn into the sacred story.
Rahab lived on a margin – the edge, the wall of Jericho. So possibly her house served as a convenient way-station for travellers, and consequently a place where respectable conventions could easily be slipped (think of the saloons depicted in old tv or cinema westerns). Certainly she was a woman of independent mind and alert to what was happening in the wider world. ‘We have heard’ she says to the Israelite spies who have come to reconnoitre the land, of the news passed on by travellers indicating that ‘The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below’ (Joshua 2:10a, 11b). In the light of that faith, she protected the spies, and in turn was promised that she and her family would survive and be protected when Jericho was flattened. Later Rahab goes on have Boaz in the line of her descendants. She also features in the even more elevated listing in Hebrews 11of those who lived by faith: ‘ By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace’ (Heb 11:31).
Both Matthew and the author of Hebrews then saw Ruth as someone who deserved to be brought into the story of God’s people. Canaanite or not, prostitute or not, she discerned the hand of God at work around her, and put her trust in him. Matthew’s genealogy tells us of the other women also who were much more than outsiders. Indeed, down through history, outsiders, the despised, have come to play major roles – the people who Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31, the later Christians in Antioch who were dismissed as ‘the scum of the Orontes’, above all Jesus who was despised and rejected, mocked and scourged.
The great church historian, David Newsome, used to comment in lectures that revitalisation movements in the church often emerged from groups that at the time where ignored or under-represented. Down through history, vision and creativity have often emerged from those who have been seen as ‘outside’, often because of ethnicity, class or sexuality. The jazz trumpeter, Wynton Marsalis, explaining how jazz came from Afro-Americans commented: “That’s how it always is. Cinderella, the one you keep out, and you push down, and you kick, that’s the one with the moral authority, with the gift. That’s as old as night and day, as old as dust.”
Most of such people have never left widely recognised legacies. Rahab, by her faithful protection of the spies, was one who did. As we prepare for a birth in a family forced to travel by the dictates of an imperial census, and later to flee from the paranoia of a violent monarch, it is good to ask today what the role is of all those who are ‘outsiders’ in my faith?
To meditate on:
In what ways have those who are ‘outsiders’ to the Christian faith been important in my journey of faith?
The majority of world Christians today are from communities that a century ago were outside the Christian faith? What have you learned from them?
Am I failing to notice outsiders who God wants to use in my life?
In what ways am I an outsider? How is that a resource to help me mature and grow in faith?
Are there ‘outsiders’ who God wants me to pray for today?
A Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, you were not received by those to whom you came. May we welcome you and hear your voice today. May we welcome and hear those we can easily reject. May we be open to unexpected voices. Thank you that today Your Spirit speaks in many different ways through many different cultures. Give us discernment not to reject those you choose and to hear those that the world ignores. May we be humble to hear and welcome outsiders in our world today, and so may our prayer in your name be enriched. Amen.
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Advent Reflection 4. A Supporting Act.
18 Now 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 with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. . . 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife.
Joseph is not one of the heroes of the Christian faith. After his appearance in the nativity stories he is then mainly noted obliquely as the father of the carpenter. Mary’s submission to her vocation has given her a high theological, devotional, liturgical, artistic profile. Joseph also ‘did as the angel of the Lord commanded him’ (Matt 1:25) and takes Mary as his wife. But that’s it, more or less, apart from his anxiety when his son has gone missing after a visit to Jerusalem. It is quite possible he died not much later. The gospels, not focussed on the human interest element that shapes our media today, don’t even think to tell us what became of him.
Yet the brief passage in Matthew 1:18-25 indicates an impressive person. He has a dignified respect for Mary, planning to quietly end their connection and not expose her to public shame. Instead, he obeys the angelic injunction and goes through with the marriage, with the attached risk of mockery and contempt at what other men may have often considered weakness. He accepted a role that he certainly wouldn’t have chosen, but accepted it as God’s calling to him. Like many of God’s servants throughout the scriptures he has to be told ‘do not be afraid’ (2:20). Our regard for him is drawn out from using our imagination as we approach the text. The text doesn’t invite it.
It is an anonymity that Paul knew. ‘As unknown, and yet are well known’ (2 Cor 6:9). It is the paradox that in serving God we are simultaneously not drawing attention to ourselves yet with consequences that may well get the attention of the public. It comes from the self-emptying, the turning away from our own self-interest, that we see in Jesus, and which Paul in turn commends to Jesus’s followers: ‘Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus’ (Phil 2:4,5). The diversity of personalities and attitudes in a church will always require of us that transfer of concern and commitment. Further, it becomes more demanding when the cultural and ethnic reach of a church expands, and the possibilities of different ‘interests’ – modes of expression, priorities, values, assumptions – become ever more complex. Writers on multi-ethnic churches use such phrases as ‘mutual inconveniencing’ (Michael Jagessar) or ‘culture of discomfort’ (Malcolm Patten) to describe an essential requirement of being a part of a multi-ethnic congregation. When the challenge of living that out presses upon us, we do well to remember Joseph’s obedience to the very discomforting command of the angel. Joseph is little remembered. Faithful service to God in difficult, complex situations can also often go unremembered. It is simply obedience to God’s command.
To meditate on:
Has a command of the Lord ever humiliated me or made me lose face? Did good come of it?
Am I content to disappear without trace as Joseph did? And content to be largely unacknowledged in the legacy I leave?
Are parts of me likely to be unused or under-developed through living and worshipping in a multi-cultural context?
In what ways does being part of a multi-cultural church ‘inconvenience’ me? What may enable me to bear that with joy?
A Prayer:
Lord God, thank you that the obedience of Joseph led to Jesus being caringly fathered; thank you that his lowly humility, became the lowly humility of our Lord Jesus. Help me also not to look to my own interests, but to that of others. Help me not only to cherish my background, but also the very different background of others. Give me that lowliness of spirit that enables me to live in harmony with all my sisters and brothers of very different backgrounds. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of all. Amen