December 21st, 2019

This is an extremely unusual Sunday. This Sunday is very near to the beginning of the three-year series of texts, and we have a lot of other beginnings before us.

Obviously, with the coming of Christmas, on the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Jesus is about to begin as a baby. And so, we make a big jump to the first chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew [verses 18-25]—since last week’s text was in chapter eleven. But that is not all. The epistle text is the first few verses of Romans, and that is the first of all the epistles. And, if that were not enough, the Old Testament reading is from Isaiah, chapter seven [verses 10-17], and Isaiah is the first of all the writings from the prophets.

Chapter seven may seem like a significant distance into this book, but it really is not. One of the teachers at Concordia Seminary was known for pointing out that Isaiah 7:14 is at the exact middle of Isaiah 2-12 (For many more details, see Andrew Bartelt’s The Book Around Immanuel: Style and Structure in Isaiah 2-12, published by Eisenbrauns, 1996.). There is a beautiful structure surrounding this text that points to the importance of the verse that we find within our Matthew text: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel (1:23; ESV; the centrality of this verse within Isaiah may also be the reason for the appearance of several unique Old Testament fulfillment passages within the rest of this gospel account).’

For the third Sunday in Advent to have the epistle text from the fifth chapter of James, and then, on the next Sunday, to be at the very beginning of Romans, that is another very big jump. Obviously, the focus has always been on Jesus. But, actually, any of the first four epistles would be very good at directing us toward the gospel, since they all deal with various groups of Christians who are in the midst of dealing with that all-important good news. Since Paul was not yet in Rome, he gives that congregation the very basics. (It may be worthwhile to note that some ancient Greek manuscripts do not have that this letter was written to those ‘in Rome’, but it is definitely to those who are loved by God and called to be saints; see verse 7. Ephesians has a similar characteristic with its manuscripts, and this could be expected since it begins a different section within the epistles and has a slightly different focus.) Here is the work’s beginning, essentially a description of the one sending the letter:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ (Romans 1:1-6; The Lutheran Study Bible, page 1908).

Jesus is certainly mentioned a lot within the text. (And it is amazing that all of that is just ONE sentence.) And it seems that Paul cannot get away from talking about Jesus. (If you would like to see a reason for Paul writing ‘Christ Jesus’ rather than ‘Jesus Christ’, as well as a look at the structure of the epistles, you might want to see ‘A Cinderella Story: The Role of Galatians Within a Gospel Canon,’ in Galatians As Examined by Diverse Academics in 2012 (St. Andrews, Scotland), Hermit Kingdom Press, 2013.)

This Jesus-focused structure may literally be seen in the text from the Gospel according to Matthew. Later in this gospel account, we find out that Matthew has the occupation of a tax collector. That should make him good with numbers. And there are some interesting numbers within the text.

In the Greek text, after the first mention of Jesus (the third word of the text), there are seventy-eight words. And then there is the name of Jesus. And then, after seventy-eight more words, Jesus is the very last word of the text.

Of course, that could be a coincidence. But I have brought up before the point that, when we look at Adam’s first words (at Genesis 2:23), they have a special structure as well. In the Hebrew, there is the word for ‘this (woman)’, then five words, then the word for ‘this’ again, and then five words, and then ‘this’.

Sometimes I can imagine some of the pressure that Matthew had with writing a gospel account. No doubt he felt like he needed help. And there is no doubt at all in my mind that he received some.
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Sometimes, when the four living creatures are depicted, the man (who is connected to Matthew) is seen as having a paper in his hand, and this is probably a reference to the fact that he had something to start with; he had a genealogy. (The ox sometimes has a paper too, and the Gospel according to Luke also contains a genealogy. All of this is probably why Clement of Alexandria called these two accounts the earliest, because they both had genealogies that were written out and distributed long before the other accounts were written; see Eusebius, Church History, book 6, chapter 14, sections 5-7.)
Matthew started with a genealogy because that is what he already had, and then he continued with a structure that is literally as ancient as man and woman. But, this time, the focus is definitely on Jesus. You might say that Jesus was there present both at the beginning and the middle, and he will certainly show up again at the end.