Advent Call: Lost in Translation
December 23, 2007
Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25
Well, there you have it. The birth of the messiah happened like this, so the story tells us. To fulfill the prophetic word of Isaiah – which we read a few minutes ago and in which we heard these words: “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”
But wait just a second. Didn’t Matthew say, "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."
It was nice of Matthew to translate Emmanuel for his audience – clearly Isaiah did not feel the need to do so for his audience. For them, apparently, that would have been like introducing a woman named Grace to you and saying, “this is Grace, which means grace.” His name will be Emmanuel, which means Emmanuel.
Underscoring that minor internal focus on the question of translation within the text itself helps in understanding the importance of translation in general, and, more to the point, its importance in this seminal passage in Matthew.
For where Matthew insists that the virgin birth of Jesus is to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, in fact Isaiah prophesied no such thing. The underlying Hebrew of Isaiah contains no suggestion of virgin birth, but rather simply a young woman.
Why? Is it merely a case of the author of Matthew relying on a Greek translation that changed the meaning by imposing the Greek parthenos, or virgin, for the original Hebrew phrase? Or was it a case of the Greek translator transposing words to meet the growing messianic expectations of the age, when saviors were often said to have come from miraculous births? Or did it simply meet Matthew’s needs for such a birth story to connect to Jesus’ story? Or was it an effort to cover over some less savory birth story? Or was it simply something lost – or found – in translation?
On such questions scholars have poured barrels of ink. Over such concerns churches have split. Over alternative explanations for Mary’s condition have folks left the church.
At the slight risk of offending some of you, I stand before you this morning to say, in the words of Rhett Butler, “frankly, I don’t give a damn.”
Actually, it might be more accurate to say, I don’t think it matters one way or the other what Matthew meant or why in his way of dealing with the Isaiah text. The story of Jesus’ birth is concerned first and foremost with Mary’s faith life, not with her sex life. The church of our time could learn a decisive lesson from the example of scripture.
It’s about our faith lives – first, last and always.
So we might render the story this way:
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. … Joseph got a text message from his friend Mary, saying ‘test positive – what now?’ Joe IM’d his partner John saying, ‘Mary’s pregnant! We gotta talk.’ John e-mailed back, ‘could this be the one we’ve been waiting for? We’ve got to get ready.’
John and Joe had been talking about wanting to have a child for a long time, but they could not go to the courthouse to be registered – neither church nor state would sanction it.
Mary, who was unemployed, had broken up with her boyfriend two months ago.
Just the week before, Joe had told Mary about this strange dream he’d had several nights in a row. In the dream, Mary was having a baby and Joe was going to be the father, now, in a strange way, perhaps the dream was going to come true.
Could it happen that way? After all, my story has a Mary, a dreaming Joseph, an unexpected baby and even a John, preparing the way. Would it be more or less offensive to the ears of 21st-century Americans than the story as it is traditionally told?
Ever since I was old enough to understand the connotations and implications of the “virgin” Mary, I’ve thought that our hang-ups about that phrase say a lot more about us than they do about Jesus and the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of his family.
Only a thoroughly modern, but at the same time quite Victorian society with Puritanical roots – in other words, America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, would make the literal understanding of this passage from Matthew and its rough parallels in Luke one of a hand full of “fundamentals” of the faith. And only a church movement hung up about sex and equally hung up about defining insiders and outsiders would cling to such fundamentalism for generations.
Such a movement is lost in translation. Such a movement is blind to the light of the Advent story and deaf to its call. And while just such a movement has gained incredible cultural and political power in our society and used that power in damaging, often devastating ways, it is more to be pitied than feared, for ultimately the unbounded, unfathomable grace and love at the heart of this ancient story of Advent will triumph over every effort to domesticate it and fence it in.
Indeed, the unusual biology of Matthew’s account – that is to say, the miraculous birth – suggests precisely that God is in control and that God is about to do a new thing in the world that will insist on working its own new way in our lives.
So, let’s liberate the story and enable it to work its way in our lives.
What would that look like?
It would begin by proclaiming clearly that the way Jesus came into the world pales in significance in comparison with what was coming into the world in him and through him.
What was that? More to the point, what continues even now to come into the world through the Christ of faith?
Recall that the word Advent means coming. What is it that is coming into our world? The story in Matthew, its parallel in Luke, my own faithful recasting of it this morning each underscore a common conviction: that God works in and through the everyday lives of ordinary human beings. And that divine work heralds the coming into our world – into our everyday, ordinary human lives – of an extraordinary divine love that exceeds every human effort to limit it, to assign it according to our terms and standards, to wall it off and claim ownership or power over it.
What came into our world with Jesus, what continues to come into our world through the Christ of our faith, is this boundless and extraordinarily powerful love that beats as a rhythm from the center of all that is.
As it beats, it calls us to join our own lives to its rhythm. While it beats from the center of all that truly matter, this love calls us to recenter our own lives away from the centers of power, influence and affluence that seek demonically to dominate our lives and our society.
This story of Jesus’ birth disrupts the market-driven consumerist idea of Christmas as the season of making ends meet, and insists instead that in this season we meet our end – that is to say, our telos, our purpose, the ends toward which authentic human life points.
As Walter Brueggemann suggests, “The whole passage reminds us that the present world is not locked into a safe or predictable mode. It is open and on the move, precisely because Yahweh is Lord. We must not be so fascinated with the biological as to miss the news that is here, good and bad.”
Don’t miss the news!
Some of it is good, some of it is bad. We’re not used to thinking of the Christmas story as bad news in any way, but that is simply because we have for too long gotten far too comfortable with the domesticated gospel of feel-good cards and carols and forgotten and forsaken the Biblical story itself in which the only carol is Mary’s song heralding the great turning of the world. The powerful brought down from their thrones, the rich turned away from the table to make room for the hungry.
The bad news is, the coming of Christ proclaims the end of the world as we know it.
But, as REM might put it, I feel fine, because the good news is this: in Christ we find the perfect love capable of casting out of our own lives all of the fears and insecurities that lead us to build up the structures, the walls and the barriers of class and color and creed that have come to define our world.
In Christ we are called to create in the way of Jesus a new community that breaks down the old orders of consumerism, militarism, racism, sexism, heterosexism and inaugurates a new order based on compassion, generosity, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation. It starts right here, as we come close round the manger. It starts in our own lives.
Again, Brueggemann, “Advent and the birth are not events that happen and just sit there. They are events with futures. They open new lives and establish fresh vocations. They call baptized folks to live lives as odd, abrasive, and unacceptable to reason as any biological miracles.”
So, don’t just sit there this holiday waiting to open presents. Instead, open your hearts to what is already present in our world and what is, always already, coming again into our lives: Emmanuel – God with us, this day, this very moment, and always coming yet anew. Amen.
Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25
Well, there you have it. The birth of the messiah happened like this, so the story tells us. To fulfill the prophetic word of Isaiah – which we read a few minutes ago and in which we heard these words: “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”
But wait just a second. Didn’t Matthew say, "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."
It was nice of Matthew to translate Emmanuel for his audience – clearly Isaiah did not feel the need to do so for his audience. For them, apparently, that would have been like introducing a woman named Grace to you and saying, “this is Grace, which means grace.” His name will be Emmanuel, which means Emmanuel.
Underscoring that minor internal focus on the question of translation within the text itself helps in understanding the importance of translation in general, and, more to the point, its importance in this seminal passage in Matthew.
For where Matthew insists that the virgin birth of Jesus is to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, in fact Isaiah prophesied no such thing. The underlying Hebrew of Isaiah contains no suggestion of virgin birth, but rather simply a young woman.
Why? Is it merely a case of the author of Matthew relying on a Greek translation that changed the meaning by imposing the Greek parthenos, or virgin, for the original Hebrew phrase? Or was it a case of the Greek translator transposing words to meet the growing messianic expectations of the age, when saviors were often said to have come from miraculous births? Or did it simply meet Matthew’s needs for such a birth story to connect to Jesus’ story? Or was it an effort to cover over some less savory birth story? Or was it simply something lost – or found – in translation?
On such questions scholars have poured barrels of ink. Over such concerns churches have split. Over alternative explanations for Mary’s condition have folks left the church.
At the slight risk of offending some of you, I stand before you this morning to say, in the words of Rhett Butler, “frankly, I don’t give a damn.”
Actually, it might be more accurate to say, I don’t think it matters one way or the other what Matthew meant or why in his way of dealing with the Isaiah text. The story of Jesus’ birth is concerned first and foremost with Mary’s faith life, not with her sex life. The church of our time could learn a decisive lesson from the example of scripture.
It’s about our faith lives – first, last and always.
So we might render the story this way:
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. … Joseph got a text message from his friend Mary, saying ‘test positive – what now?’ Joe IM’d his partner John saying, ‘Mary’s pregnant! We gotta talk.’ John e-mailed back, ‘could this be the one we’ve been waiting for? We’ve got to get ready.’
John and Joe had been talking about wanting to have a child for a long time, but they could not go to the courthouse to be registered – neither church nor state would sanction it.
Mary, who was unemployed, had broken up with her boyfriend two months ago.
Just the week before, Joe had told Mary about this strange dream he’d had several nights in a row. In the dream, Mary was having a baby and Joe was going to be the father, now, in a strange way, perhaps the dream was going to come true.
Could it happen that way? After all, my story has a Mary, a dreaming Joseph, an unexpected baby and even a John, preparing the way. Would it be more or less offensive to the ears of 21st-century Americans than the story as it is traditionally told?
Ever since I was old enough to understand the connotations and implications of the “virgin” Mary, I’ve thought that our hang-ups about that phrase say a lot more about us than they do about Jesus and the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of his family.
Only a thoroughly modern, but at the same time quite Victorian society with Puritanical roots – in other words, America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, would make the literal understanding of this passage from Matthew and its rough parallels in Luke one of a hand full of “fundamentals” of the faith. And only a church movement hung up about sex and equally hung up about defining insiders and outsiders would cling to such fundamentalism for generations.
Such a movement is lost in translation. Such a movement is blind to the light of the Advent story and deaf to its call. And while just such a movement has gained incredible cultural and political power in our society and used that power in damaging, often devastating ways, it is more to be pitied than feared, for ultimately the unbounded, unfathomable grace and love at the heart of this ancient story of Advent will triumph over every effort to domesticate it and fence it in.
Indeed, the unusual biology of Matthew’s account – that is to say, the miraculous birth – suggests precisely that God is in control and that God is about to do a new thing in the world that will insist on working its own new way in our lives.
So, let’s liberate the story and enable it to work its way in our lives.
What would that look like?
It would begin by proclaiming clearly that the way Jesus came into the world pales in significance in comparison with what was coming into the world in him and through him.
What was that? More to the point, what continues even now to come into the world through the Christ of faith?
Recall that the word Advent means coming. What is it that is coming into our world? The story in Matthew, its parallel in Luke, my own faithful recasting of it this morning each underscore a common conviction: that God works in and through the everyday lives of ordinary human beings. And that divine work heralds the coming into our world – into our everyday, ordinary human lives – of an extraordinary divine love that exceeds every human effort to limit it, to assign it according to our terms and standards, to wall it off and claim ownership or power over it.
What came into our world with Jesus, what continues to come into our world through the Christ of our faith, is this boundless and extraordinarily powerful love that beats as a rhythm from the center of all that is.
As it beats, it calls us to join our own lives to its rhythm. While it beats from the center of all that truly matter, this love calls us to recenter our own lives away from the centers of power, influence and affluence that seek demonically to dominate our lives and our society.
This story of Jesus’ birth disrupts the market-driven consumerist idea of Christmas as the season of making ends meet, and insists instead that in this season we meet our end – that is to say, our telos, our purpose, the ends toward which authentic human life points.
As Walter Brueggemann suggests, “The whole passage reminds us that the present world is not locked into a safe or predictable mode. It is open and on the move, precisely because Yahweh is Lord. We must not be so fascinated with the biological as to miss the news that is here, good and bad.”
Don’t miss the news!
Some of it is good, some of it is bad. We’re not used to thinking of the Christmas story as bad news in any way, but that is simply because we have for too long gotten far too comfortable with the domesticated gospel of feel-good cards and carols and forgotten and forsaken the Biblical story itself in which the only carol is Mary’s song heralding the great turning of the world. The powerful brought down from their thrones, the rich turned away from the table to make room for the hungry.
The bad news is, the coming of Christ proclaims the end of the world as we know it.
But, as REM might put it, I feel fine, because the good news is this: in Christ we find the perfect love capable of casting out of our own lives all of the fears and insecurities that lead us to build up the structures, the walls and the barriers of class and color and creed that have come to define our world.
In Christ we are called to create in the way of Jesus a new community that breaks down the old orders of consumerism, militarism, racism, sexism, heterosexism and inaugurates a new order based on compassion, generosity, awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation. It starts right here, as we come close round the manger. It starts in our own lives.
Again, Brueggemann, “Advent and the birth are not events that happen and just sit there. They are events with futures. They open new lives and establish fresh vocations. They call baptized folks to live lives as odd, abrasive, and unacceptable to reason as any biological miracles.”
So, don’t just sit there this holiday waiting to open presents. Instead, open your hearts to what is already present in our world and what is, always already, coming again into our lives: Emmanuel – God with us, this day, this very moment, and always coming yet anew. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
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