A New Way

For all my years of Advent reflections, I haven’t thought much about the difference between each Gospel writers’ Nativity account. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all different people, with their own literary agendas and gifts of observation. But something I recently re-read in Kelley Nikondeha's The First Advent in Palestine drew my attention to one of God’s providential parallels.

Nikondeha argues that Luke’s Gospel account gives us a “window into the Advent economy and environment”—the Galilean world in which Mary, Joseph, the shepherds lived. On the other hand, “Matthew shows us what that economy looked like through an understanding of one person's rule: that of Herod.” (p. 100).

If you know anything about King Herod, he was essentially a puppet king. Probably not even Jewish by birth, he was appointed by Rome to preside over all of Judea. As such, his reign was marked with heavy taxation, for the sake of Rome’s infamous infrastructure and his own private coffers.

This is the economic and political power into which infant Jesus would be born. But before we get to that, Matthew paints a picture of another power structure—the patriarchs and revered forefathers of the faith, the ones whose lives all pointed as archetypes of Christ. Over and over again, God referred to these greats and said: One is coming who is greater than he. Greater than Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; greater than Moses or Joshua; greater than Joseph, Jesse, David and Solomon. And so much greater than Herod.

It had been millennia since God’s people walked solely by faith and trust in an economy of love and goodness. Not since the Garden of Eden had humans been free from transactional grace with God. But Matthew shows us that a Messiah is coming from the very line that began in Eden. Not only that, but He would come to make all things new. God’s people would not need to answer to the Roman/Herodian economy of tyranny and wealth as the highest authority much longer.

Not only was God’s plan to bring a new “ruler” into the mix, but the ways of connecting, encouraging, loving, and following Him were about to change.

Isaiah prophesied about it in chapter 43:

16 Thus says the Lord,
    who makes a way in the sea,
    a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings forth chariot and horse,
    army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
    they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
18 “Remember not the former things,
    nor consider the things of old.
19 Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.
20 The wild beasts will honor me,
    the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in the wilderness,
    rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
21     the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.

We will talk more about the dashed Jewish expectations for the Messiah later, but for now I want to focus on the ways that Jesus courageously humbled Himself for the sake of God’s new economy. Indeed He made a way in the wilderness of death and decay—all for our sake. 

In his book, Low: an Honest Advent Devotional, John Pavlovitz quotes, “Jesus didn’t need to live here. He could have shown up, tossed out another stone slab or a rolled parchment filled with black-and-white religious do’s and don’ts, and then disappeared into the ether—leaving a neat and tidy, easily navigable religion to delineate our every decision. Instead, he chose to live life alongside flawed human beings, in messy and meandering trips into wheatfields and lepers’ homes and leaky boats.” (from Week 1 Tuesday: This is Not a Test)

Jesus, the antithesis of highly seated King Herod, came to the lowest of places, in one of the lowest forms, to show us a new way. A new way of loving God and others. A new way of living out our faith. And best of all, a promise that one heavenly day, all things would be made new.