It takes two to make a baby. Except, of course, in the case of Jesus, which was rather special.
John, when writing his gospel, had no problem at all with this – he situated Jesus in his cosmic position at the beginning of time: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” – so explaining Jesus’ parenthood wasn’t an issue for him. For Matthew, however, the Jewish culture in which he was operating required a very different perspective. Here family, family origins, are central to identity – family makes us who we are. (I would note that’s a perspective shared by many Americans.) So Matthew starts his gospel: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
The genealogy that he then gives us finishes with Joseph – the link back to David and to Abraham is drawn via the father, even though Matthew recognizes Joseph is not a biological father to Jesus. For us, if we are going to consider Jesus’ human origins then we are probably more comfortable with Luke’s perspective. He focuses his nativity story around Mary, as Jesus mother – which may seem rather more appropriate to us. In Luke’s account, the angel comes to Mary and she makes the crucial decision to accept God’s plan for her (and for humanity). But in Matthew it is Joseph who is called to accept God’s plan, and any decision made by Mary is completely ignored (Mt 1:18-24).
So what are we to make of the apparent importance given by Matthew to Joseph at the beginning of Jesus’ life?
The first and maybe obvious answer is simply to ignore it, particularly since it comes with such huge baggage of paternalism and a patriarchal society. But that may be to miss the point, which is not the importance (or not) of Joseph as an individual, or the relative significance of mothers vs fathers in the identity of their children. The message that Matthew is delivering lies in the fact that he starts his gospel with a genealogy. He is positioning Jesus in relationship to his “roots” – as we now tend to refer to it. Many people today have an interest in genealogy, some verging on an obsession. Even those of us not drawn to our own genealogy can get caught up in TV shows like “Finding Your Roots” or “Who Do You Think You Are?“. Understanding “where we are from” as individuals in relation to our history and society is important. If Matthew were writing now he might even turn to Ancestry.com as one of his sources!
Jesus’ link to Jewish history and specifically to the prophecies of that tradition is hugely important, and may be so obvious that we don’t even consider it. But the incarnation doesn’t mean that Jesus just appeared in human form at some arbitrary time in some arbitrary culture. His human reality means he lived at a particular time, in a particular place, with particular parents, and particular roots. Those characteristics are part of what makes him human, and makes him one like us. Of course he is different from us, just as any other individual born of different parents in a different time with different roots is different from us. But just as all those people are different, so they are also the same in our shared humanity. In recognizing Jesus’ roots, Matthew is calling us to recognize our shared humanity – and that is what we mean by “incarnation”.