Matthew 1: 18-24 (NLT):
18 This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.
20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
22 All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:
23 “Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’”
24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.
In these opening verses of the gospel, as written by Matthew, Joseph is named five times, and Mary, three times. There is purpose and precision in the writing of the gospels, and this emphasis on Joseph by Matthew is not coincidence. The first seventeen verses of Matthew, in fact, trace the genealogy of Jesus, not through Mary, his biological parent, but through Joseph, his step-father! The genealogy establishes Joseph’s relationship to Abraham, the founder of Judaism, and to King David,the star of Judaism. So, what’s up with that?
It’s called patriarchy and Judaism was a patriarchal religion. Jews were the intended audience of Matthew, so from the genealogy to the picking and choosing of quotes from various prophets, Matthew was nailing down the Jewishness of Jesus. It was important from the start to do that, both for his intended audience, and for the flavor of the story he was about to tell them.
It’s not hard to imagine Matthew sitting with the scrolls of the prophets, a copy of Mark’s gospel, and the other various quotes and vignettes concerning Jesus collectively called the “Q” source. Let’s face it,he was picking and choosing: the first prophetic quote above- highlighted in green- is a compilation of pieces of verses from Isaiah 7:14; 8:8, and 10. And some of Matthew’s later prophetic quotes will be even more complicatedly constructed than that.
Which leads to the point that Matthew, like the other gospel writers, was telling a story, not reporting. A story about an event is a collection of facts with soul, spiced by the storyteller’s own personality and intentions. Think of Woodward and Bernstein’s All the President’s Men, or Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Both are stories, in different genres, about cold, straight-forward facts arranged and presented in such a way that the events they describe can be understood in larger contexts.
Joseph- good man- carries the first part of Matthew’s story of Jesus. Just as a man would have led Shabbat, worship at the temple, and leadership in all family and civic affairs. The story, to have any credibility with Matthew’s readers, had to be begun that way. That Mary was named, and that other women were named within his gospel’s later chapters, is a portent of the status of women that was already beginning to change because of the way Jesus regarded and treated them.
Something stirring and revolutionary was in the air! And Matthew wanted to share the excitement with the people he most loved. Naturally, he told the story in the colors and shapes they would most easily understand.
