Isaiah 7:10-16 Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25
Lectionary Link
The formation of "good news" clubs or guilds were occurring in cities throughout the Roman Empire for many, many decades in the first and second century. The Greek word synagogue was the word for gatherings of Jewish worshippers, and synagogue would be a word that might also be called "proto-church" for followers of Jesus who still maintained their ritual adherence to Judaism. As Gentile followers of Jesus became a more common happening, and as tension grew in the Jesus Movement regarding whether ritual adherence to Jewish practice would be required of the Gentiles, the context of Greco-Roman meant that the gatherings became designated as ekklesia, or churches. And these churches became social realities, clubs, or guilds which paralleled such guilds for Greco-Roman local gatherings which had patron deities and gathering places and ritual meals.
The ekklesia or church or churches incorporated Greco-Roman contextual available practices with the scribal and rabbinical traditions of Judaism. How does one generate a teaching program to express the values of these arising "good news" guilds as a way to validate the seeming spontaneous even ecstatic experiential events which were occurring within these effervescent communities? The New Testament writings are evidence of the institutional process of these arising communities of "esprit d'corp" people. They are evidence of scribal people, or people with the wealth and privilege of literacy generating literature. This meant they had the means of production of texts, which was no mean or easy feat of the time. We cannot impose our more widespread notion of literacy and textual production upon the times where literacy was uncommon.
The ekklesia or churches produced texts which might be called mystagogy or mythogogy. Myth and mystery go together and express a deep appreciation of awe and wonder about great truths in which we are over-shadowed because we cannot control them by our limited understanding. The story traditions of the Gospel were generated by scribal people who were committed to teach their mystagogy and mythogogy within communities of people who were energized by their personal enthusiastic experience to the point of wanting to share this enthusiasm with as many as might happen onto the serendipity of such a grace event.
The Gospel scribes were writers in lingua franca of the day which lingered because of the conquering of the world by Alexander the Great, even one who was said to have been a king born with a divinely miraculous birth. Alexander was called the son of god. The Gospel scribes knew about Homer and the Greek literary traditions as it had been received and altered by Virgil and others. The Gospel scribes also knew the scribal and rabbinical traditions and practices of Judaism. The palette of literary models which they had were quite expansive, but they each had their own literary genius to add unique flavors to how they would write their discipleship manual in Christian paideia, Christian education.
The Gospel of Matthew story about the origin of Jesus Christ is an example of the elements of Christian paideia, Christian Education, or being given orientation or catechesis into the mythogogy or mystagogy of the Christian church.
The Matthew story of the origin of Jesus is derived in part from the Hebrew prophet Isaiah but not before being mediated through the Greek language which provided a way to teach the mystagogy of the church regarding the experience of the Christ nature within oneself.
How so? The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible correctly translates the Hebrew word, "almah" as the "young woman with child." However, the Matthew scribe read the Book of Isaiah in the Greek translation, the version known as the Septuagint. The Septuagint Greek word for "almah" was "parthenos," and this word could mean young woman, but it could also mean "virgin." The Matthean scribe used the Greek "word" parthenos to mean exclusively "virgin."
Why was this use important for Matthean mystagogy? The members of the various Christ communities believed that their lives were "over-shadowed" by the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, whereby the life of Christ was known to be within them in a mysterious way, so mysterious, that it was an experience of the extra-human, an experience of the life of the divine within oneself.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is the parable speaker, meaning that the Gospels were written in plain stories which encoded the spiritual meaning for the members of the community who had come to know this new birth. One of the main messages through the oracle Jesus of the Gospel of John, is "don't take words literally, but understand them spiritually."
As we arrive at Christmas this week, we know that we have inherited the infantization or childification of Christmas as many read the story literally rather than literarily. We read for the sheer delight of the plain words of the story, rather than for the mystagogy which the story encodes.
And the story is a great story, but it is the invitation to the mystagogy of the church, as it was stated in Pauline terms, "Christ in you, the hope of glory."
The Advent warning for us is this: Don't throw out the new birth experience, with the story of the birth of the Christ child, or you might miss the point. Amen.
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