Son of Mary, Son of David, Son of God

Advent 4/Christmas 2023; Luke 1:26-38, 2:1-14(15-20), John 1

The fact that the Fourth Sunday of Advent is also Christmas Eve makes for a full and complex couple of days in Church, and perhaps for some confusion about readings. Whatever we do, it means changing Gospels yet again: Mark, John, and now Luke, in three successive Sundays of Advent.

Some may be baffled by the fact that there are three sets of readings for Christmas Day alone. This triad is something the Revised Common Lectionary might have been better off not taking straight over from the Roman Catholic pattern that underlies our cycle, but it is worth noting how it came about.

The Medieval West and the Church of Rome in particular celebrated three different Masses of Christmas, not to accommodate the numbers of churchgoers, but because of the solemnity of the day. Each Mass had a different theme (Nativity, Shepherds, Angels, in some versions), each was set for a different specific time (midnight, dawn, and late morning) and, at Rome where the pattern seems to have originated, each was celebrated in a different Church (S. Maria Maggiore, S. Anastasia, and S. Peter’s Basilica).

In reforming the English liturgy in the 16th century, Thomas Cranmer initially kept two Christmas services (with the Lukan nativity and the Prologue of John as the two Gospels) in the first Book of Common Prayet, but later dialed this back to one. This pattern—with the opening of John read, not the nativity—remained in the enduring 1662 Prayer Book, and thus John 1 became the classic Anglican Christmas Gospel. In 20th century liturgical revisions, a second service and set of readings (usually with the Lukan nativity), was added, largely because the midnight service had gained popularity.

So the overloaded lectionary now reads like a menu, given that the structure of separate celebrations is not widely understood, and practiced even less. The Gospels nevertheless should not be hard to work out this year. On Sunday morning for Advent 4, the Lukan Annunciation is read; then at Midnight Mass, we hear a direct sequel, the Lukan nativity (so this crowded season does at least help make a strong connection between these two Luke episodes). Christmas morning then has John 1.

Luke’s birth narrative material is very familiar, but we tend to read various things into it; and more to the point we may overlook some others. While the other set of infancy stories, from Matthew, gets short shrift in the lectionary, its generally very distinct details tend to be blended with those of Luke in popular imagination: Shepherds and Angels will abound in Luke of course, but Luke has no Magi, no wicked King, and no flight into Egypt. So overall the two sets of stories are actually very different.

Yet taking the two Gospels of Sunday morning and night (as many of us will hear them) from Luke, and putting Matthew beside them, we find that apart from the holy family there is one character very prominent in both infancy stories, but who is generally omitted from creche scenes and our popular narratives: David.

From S. Maria Maggiore, Rome; photo by edk7, Creative Commons

Matthew begins the whole Gospel with David: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1) and then offers a genealogy centered on David, prior to the birth stories. Joseph—who is the center of the annunciation story in Matthew’s case—is addressed as “Son of David” when given his task of guarding the Messiah.

Luke’s announcement story also refers to Joseph’s Davidic lineage (Luke 1:27), and then we hear—in this Sunday’s Gospel— Mary given the promise that her son will receive “the throne of his father David” (v.32). The other readings on Sunday support the Davidic theme too: Nathan assures David that his enduring house is not a building, but his family line, and the Psalmist also celebrates God’s covenant with David and his descendants.

Subsequently in Luke, Zechariah sings of the “mighty savior born of the house of his servant David” (v.69). Then in the next chapter, and hence in the Gospel for Midnight Mass, David again appears as Joseph’s ancestor (2:4), and Bethlehem as David’s city (twice: vv. 4, 11). And there are subtler Davidic elements too, like the prominent presence of the shepherds, echoing the early life of the Israelite shepherd par excellence. David was once of little account like them, but God “chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds” (Ps 78:70). Yet David’s line had fallen on hard times.

Although we may think of the divine parentage of Jesus as the whole point of the infancy stories, the authors seem at least as interested in his Davidic ancestry (even though his Davidic descent is traced through Joseph!). The two kinds of parentage are in fact woven together. While amazing elements like the angels, variously appearing and guiding and promising, may signal a divine purpose in the story, the mere fact of supernatural agency or even virginal conception does not suffice to explain just what that divine purpose is.

Jesus’ virginal conception is affirmed by both of these stories, but not referred to elsewhere in the New Testament (at least not obviously). This is not to suggest it is unimportant, but it might help us focus on what it meant. What we do find right across the NT, as well as in the infancy narratives, is the connection between Jesus and David. For Matthew and Luke, the miraculous nature of Jesus’ birth is less a demonstration of the capacity of God to cause a miraculous birth—which is assumed— than it is to show that this miraculous birth is the sign of how God was providing a new David, a new Messiah.

This connection between these two ancestries, of divine presence and Davidic promise, goes back at least to Isaiah:

Isaiah said: ‘Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel (Isa 7:13-14).

So? The coming of Jesus announced to Mary is not primarily the sign that God can do what we cannot; it is the sign of what in particular God is doing. The God made known in Jesus Christ will be with us as the bearer of a new hope, even for those who, as it seemed then for the line of David, have no future. Mary’s song “Magnificat” (an option for Sunday in lieu of the Psalm) outlines the program of this Davidic Messiah who is her son: it is to cast down the mighty from their thrones and to lift up the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty. We are not merely called to awe at the fact of God’s presence among us, but to courage and joy that what God’s presence means is hope and new life for all the world.