Isaiah 7:10-17

Psalm 24:1-7

Romans 1:1-7

MATTHEW 1:18-25

A NEW SCRIPT

“The Queen is pregnant.”

It all would have started with that whispered rumor, which would have delighted some in the court and deflated the king’s nephews, who were currently the heirs to the throne. And then the rumors would be confirmed by the official proclamation that all loyal citizens of the realm were hereby commanded to pray daily for the queen’s health and the safe delivery of an heir. Masses were said with this in mind all over the kingdom.

This announcement would have been made, of course, several months after the royal wedding, to which all of the right people (and none of the common people) had been invited. And the royal engagement, of course, had only been announced after the king’s bride had been certified as a virgin by the royal physician. (This was also done only a quarter of a century ago in the case of a certain Lady Diana Spencer). One had to be sure, after all, that any child she bore was the king’s for him to be the proper heir.

And then the birth announcement – trumpet fanfares – fireworks over the castle – official rejoicing – letters of congratulations pouring in from the rich and powerful – Robin Leach arrives to cover the festivities for “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”. The peasants look up for a few moments to enjoy the spectacle and then return to their lives of grinding poverty, relentless toil and early death, sure in their conviction that this birth would make no difference at all – for them.

That’s how the script read for royal weddings and births, as they were hoped for in medieval Europe or in “Far, Far Away”, and the script wasn’t much different in the First Century – minus the fireworks. Surely all royal conceptions and births were like this.

Imagine, then, the most important birth in history – and the one of the King of Kings himself. Would it not have been like this, only grander, more impressive, more pretentious?

But suppose the Queen who would bear the King of Kings was a teenaged Jewish peasant girl from a town so obscure it was never even mentioned in the Old Testament and whose parentage, never mind ancestry, was not worth mentioning?

And suppose the King, the official father of the royal child, was someone whose most illustrious royal forebear lived a thousand years before, and whose ancestors had not sat on the most modest and insecure of thrones for 587 years since one of them was blinded and led away in chains into exile by his conqueror?

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And suppose this current “royal” father was now working in a little village, hundreds of miles from the center of political power, as a carpenter?

And suppose he finds out that his fiancée is pregnant and knows he’s not responsible, and he decides to divorce her – that’s what it took to break off a betrothal in First Century Palestine – quietly, so that she would not be stoned to death for adultery by the religiously vigilant?

That sure doesn’t sound like the usual script at all.

And suppose this heir of King David, whose lineage is the only thing this kid would have going for him according to conventional thinking, realized that he had no biological connection to this child but accepted that the conception was a divinely-designed miracle and then he, Joseph, legally accepted the child as his? In an extremely chauvinistic male-dominated culture, Joseph’s acceptance of the miraculous conception of this child – and his acceptance of the fact that God had talked to Mary first – ranked as nearly as big a miracle as the conception itself.

And suppose Joseph agreed to name his first-born son the name he had heard in a vision, not whatever name he had had in mind for the first-born son he expected to father since he himself had hit puberty? And suppose Joseph had “gotten it” that being a Dad is about a lot more than biology?

Script? What script?

And suppose this Son of David named Joseph accepted this Mary as his wife – she with the miraculous pregnancy, she, the first woman in history to be spoken to by God ahead of her husband – and then Joseph refrained from consummating the marriage until after the child was born so as to make absolutely sure (to Mary and himself, the only ones who knew) that the child was not biologically his? This turned “the usual script” upside down.

And suppose the only people to receive birth announcements were the local shepherds working the third shift, and some mysterious foreigners with Middle Eastern passports who managed to get some very curious gifts through Customs?

And suppose the only actual, ruling King in the country sent his army to murder this child and merely slaughtered all the little boys two years old and under in Bethlehem, something the royal Press Secretary called “acceptable collateral damage inevitable when pursuing a matter of national security?”

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And suppose the real newborn King, sheltered by this carpenter and his wife, spent his toddler years as a refugee in Egypt, and then relocated to a polyglot region in northern Palestine and never saw his birthplace again?

And suppose, when he was revealed to his people as an adult, the peasants looked up from their lives of grinding poverty, relentless toil and early death and found that this King was the one who had come for them – and for women, and for foreigners, and for the sick, the disabled, the penitent sinners, even for a criminal condemned to death? Even for the dead – for even they were not beyond hearing the voice of this King and being raised to new life.

This is indeed a very, very, very different script indeed. This is revolutionary.

So if the Christmas story sometimes seems so familiar that it’s a little boring, think again. Realize how profoundly radical Christmas is. Realize how this royal birth was for all those who had not been comforted by other royal births, or other royalty. This was a King who experienced stress from the moment of his conception to the moment of his death on the cross. This is a King who understands our lives and our stresses. This is a King who was born for us, and for all people, to be with us and all people in life as it is, that all people may have a chance to experience life as it should be and will be when designed and managed by God.

This is a whole new script. And we are invited to be in it.

O come, O come Emmanuel: God with us.

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

December 19, 2004

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, New Jersey