Homily 5 — Matthew 1, verses 22 to 25

“Now all this was done so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, which says, ‘Look, a virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel.’” [a]

I hear many people say: “While we are here, enjoying the privilege of listening, we are filled with awe. But once we have gone out, we turn into different people again, and the flame of our zeal goes out.” What, then, can be done to keep this from happening? Let us look at where it comes from. Where does so great a change in us come from? From spending our time in ways that do not fit, and from the company of bad people. As soon as we leave the service, we ought not to plunge into business that does not fit with it. As soon as we get home, we ought to take the Bible in our hands and call our wife and children to join us in putting together what we have heard — and only then, not before, turn to the business of life. After the bath you would not choose to hurry off to the marketplace, in case the business there should undo the refreshment you had gained. How much more ought we to act on this principle after the service! But as things are, we do the opposite, and in this very way we throw everything away. For while the benefit of what has been said to us is not yet firmly fixed, the great force of the things pressing on us from outside sweeps it all clean away.

So that this does not happen, when you leave the service you must count nothing more necessary than putting together the things that have been said to you. Yes, it would be the height of folly for us to give up five and even six days to the business of this life, and not give even one day to spiritual things — or rather, not even a small part of one day. Don’t you see our own children? Whatever lessons they are given, they study them all day long. Let us do the same. Otherwise we will get no profit from coming here. We will be drawing water every day into a jar full of holes, and we will not spend on keeping what we have heard even as much effort as we plainly show over gold and silver. Anyone who has been given a few coins puts them in a bag and seals it. But we, who have been given oracles more precious than gold or costly stones, and who receive the treasures of the Spirit, do not put them away in the storerooms of our soul; we carelessly let them slip out of our minds at random. Who will pity us after all this, when we plot against our own interests and throw ourselves into such deep poverty?

So, to keep this from happening, let us write down an unchangeable law for ourselves, for our wives, and for our children: to give this one day of the week entirely to hearing, and to going over again what we have heard. In this way we will come to what is to be said next better prepared to learn. The work will be less for us, and the profit greater for you, when you remember what was said recently and listen to what follows in light of it. It contributes no small amount to understanding what is said when you know exactly how the thoughts connect, the thoughts we are busy weaving together for you. Since it is not possible to set everything out in one day, you must, by remembering continually, make the things laid before you over many days into a kind of chain, and wind it around your soul, so that the body of the Scriptures may appear whole.

So let us not go on to today’s subjects either without first calling to mind what was said recently.

But what are the things set before us today? “Now all this was done so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, which says…” In a tone worthy of the wonder, with all his strength, he has raised his voice: “Now all this was done.” He saw the sea, the bottomless depth, of God’s love for humankind. He saw happen what had never been hoped for: nature’s laws broken, reconciliations made, the one who is above all come down to the one who is below all, “the middle walls of partition broken,” the obstacles removed, and much more besides. So he put the miracle before us in a single word, saying, “Now all this was done so that what was spoken by the Lord might be fulfilled.” It is as if he said: “Do not think that these things have only now been decided on. They were sketched out long ago.” This is the very thing Paul, too, works everywhere to prove. [c]

And the angel goes on to send Joseph to Isaiah. That way, even if Joseph, once awake, should forget the angel’s own words, since they were newly spoken, he would be reminded of the prophet’s words, on which he had been raised all his life, and so hold on to the substance of what the angel had said as well. To the woman the angel mentioned none of these things, since she was a young girl and unschooled in them. But with her husband, a righteous man who studied the prophets, he argues from them. Earlier he says “Mary your wife”; but now, once he has brought the prophet before him, he entrusts him with the word “virgin.” For Joseph would not have stayed so unshaken on hearing the angel speak of a virgin unless he had first heard it from Isaiah too. What he was about to hear from the prophets was nothing new to him. It was familiar, and had long been the subject of his meditation. That is why the angel brings in Isaiah, to make what he says easy to accept.

And he does not stop even there, but ties the words to God. He does not call the saying Isaiah’s, but the saying of the God of all things. That is why he did not say, “so that what was spoken by Isaiah might be fulfilled,” but, “what was spoken by the Lord.” The mouth was Isaiah’s, but the oracle was breathed down from above.

What, then, does this oracle say? “Look, a virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel.” Someone may say: “Then how is it that his name was not called Emmanuel, but Jesus Christ?” Because he did not say, “you will call,” but, “they will call” — that is, the crowds, and the way events turned out. Here he puts the event as a name. This is a habit of Scripture: to put the events that take place in place of names. So to say, “They will call him Emmanuel,” means nothing else than that they will see God among human beings. He has indeed always been among human beings, but never so openly. [e]

But if the Jews argue stubbornly, we will ask them: When was the child called “Make speed to the spoil, hasten the prey”? They could not say. How is it, then, that the prophet said, “Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz”? Because when he was born there was a seizing and dividing of spoils, the event that took place in his time is put as his name. The city, too, it is said, will be called “the city of righteousness, the faithful city, Zion.” And yet we nowhere find the city called “righteousness”; it went on being called Jerusalem. But since this did come true in fact, when the city changed for the better, he says that it is called so. For whenever some event marks out the one who brings it about, or the one who benefits from it, more clearly than his name does, Scripture speaks of the reality of that event as his name.

But suppose that, with their mouths stopped on this point, they look for another — namely, what is said about Mary’s virginity — and hold up other translators against us, saying that these used not the word “virgin” but “young woman.” First, we will say this: the Seventy had a just claim to be trusted above all the others. Those others made their translations after Christ’s coming, while remaining Jews, and they may justly be suspected of speaking out of hostility and of darkening the prophecies on purpose. But the Seventy took up this work a hundred years or more before Christ’s coming, and so stand clear of any such suspicion. Because of their date, their number, and their agreement, they have the better right to be trusted. [g]

But even if our opponents bring in the testimony of those others, the victory would still be ours. For Scripture is in the habit of using the word “youth” for “virginity,” and not of women only, but of men as well. It says, “Young men and maidens, old men with the younger.” And again, speaking of the girl who is assaulted, it says, “If the young woman cries out,” meaning the virgin.

What comes before the verse confirms this reading too. He does not simply say, “Look, the virgin will be with child.” He first says, “Look, the Lord himself will give you a sign,” and then adds, “Look, the virgin will be with child.” If the one who was to give birth was not a virgin, and this happened in the ordinary way of marriage, what kind of sign would it be? A sign must surely lie outside the common course of events; it must be strange and extraordinary. Otherwise, how could it be a sign?

“Then Joseph, raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him.” Do you see his obedience, and his submissive mind? Do you see a soul truly awake, and incorruptible in everything? When he suspected something painful and wrong, he could not bear to keep the Virgin with him. Yet once he was freed from that suspicion, he could not bear to put her out either. Instead he keeps her with him and serves the whole plan of salvation. [i]

“And he took Mary his wife to himself.” Do you see how constantly the evangelist uses this word? He does not want that mystery disclosed yet, and he is wiping out that evil suspicion.

And when he had taken her, “he did not know her until she had given birth to her firstborn son.” He has used the word “until” here, not so that you would suspect that he knew her afterward, but to tell you that before the birth the Virgin was wholly untouched by a man. But someone may say: “Then why has he used the word ‘until’?” Because Scripture often does this, and uses this expression without reference to fixed times. So with the ark, too, it says, “The raven did not return until the earth was dried up.” And yet it did not return even after that time. And when speaking of God, Scripture says, “From age until age you are,” not setting any limits in this case. And again, when it announces the good news beforehand and says, “In his days righteousness will flourish, and abundance of peace, until the moon is taken away,” it is not setting a limit to that beautiful part of creation. In the same way here, it uses the word “until” to make certain what happened before the birth, and as to what followed, it leaves you to draw the conclusion.

So what you needed to learn from him, he has told you himself: that the Virgin was untouched by a man until the birth. But what plainly followed from that statement, and was generally acknowledged, he leaves in turn for you to see: that not even afterward — now that she had become a mother in this way, and had been counted worthy of a new kind of labor and so strange a childbirth — could that righteous man ever have brought himself to know her. For if he had known her, and kept her as his wife, how is it that our Lord entrusts her, as one unprotected and with no one, to his disciple, and commands him to take her into his own home?

Someone may say: “How, then, are James and the others called his brothers?” In the same way that Joseph himself was supposed to be Mary’s husband. Many veils were provided so that the birth, being what it was, might be screened for a time. That is why even John called them so, saying, “For not even his brothers believed in him.”

Yet these men, who did not believe at first, later became admirable and famous. At any rate, when Paul and those with him came up to Jerusalem about the decrees, they went straight in to James. For he was so admired that he was the first to be entrusted with the office of bishop. They say he gave himself to such severe discipline that his limbs all became as though dead, and that from his constant prayer and his continual contact with the ground, his forehead grew so hard that it was no better than a camel’s knees, simply from striking it against the earth so often. This man gives instructions to Paul himself, when Paul came up to Jerusalem again later, saying, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are who have come together.” So great was his understanding and his zeal — or rather, so great was the power of Christ. [l]

For those who mocked Christ while he lived were so filled with awe after his death that they even died for him with the greatest readiness. Things like this, more than anything, show the power of his resurrection. That, you see, was the reason the more glorious things were kept for later: so that this proof might become beyond dispute. Even those we admire in their lifetime we tend to forget once they are gone. How was it, then, that the men who thought little of this man while he lived afterward held him to be God, if he was only one of many? How was it that they even agreed to be killed for his sake, unless they had received clear proof of his resurrection?

We tell you these things so that you will not only hear them but also imitate his manly strictness, his frankness of speech, and his righteousness in everything; so that no one may despair of himself, even if he has been careless until now; and so that he may set his hopes, after God’s mercy, on nothing else but his own virtue. For if these men were none the better for being such close kin — though they were of the same house and family as Christ — until they gave proof of virtue, what favor can we possibly receive by pleading righteous relatives and brothers, unless we are exceedingly dutiful and have lived in virtue? The prophet, too, pointed to this very thing when he said, “A brother does not redeem; will a man redeem?” No — not even if it were Moses, Samuel, or Jeremiah. [n]

Hear, for example, what God says to this last one: “Do not pray for this people, for I will not listen to you.” And why are you surprised if I do not listen to you? “Even if Moses himself and Samuel stood before me,” I would not accept their plea for these people. Yes, if it is Ezekiel who pleads, he will be told, “Even if Noah and Job and Daniel stand up, they will deliver neither sons nor daughters.” If the patriarch Abraham pleads for people whose disease is past all cure, and who will not change, God will leave him and go his way, so as not to receive his cry on their behalf. If it is Samuel again who does this, God says to him, “Do not mourn for Saul.” If someone pleads for his own sister when it is not fitting, he too will get the same kind of answer as Moses: “If her father had only spit in her face…”

So let us not stand gaping toward others. It is true that the prayers of the saints have the greatest power — but on condition of our own repentance and change of life. Even Moses, who rescued his own brother and six hundred thousand men from the wrath then coming on them from God, had no power to deliver his sister. And yet the sin was not equal: she had insulted only Moses, while what they had dared in the other case was open ungodliness. But this difficulty I leave to you; what is harder still, I will try to explain.

Why speak of his sister? The man who stood up as advocate for so great a people did not have the power to win his own case. After his countless labors and sufferings, and his forty years of patient persistence, he was forbidden to set foot in the land about which there had been so many declarations and promises. What was the reason? Granting this favor would not have been profitable. On the contrary, it would have done great harm and would surely have become a stumbling block to many of the Jews. When they had merely been brought out of Egypt, they abandoned God, looked to Moses, and credited everything to him. Had they also seen him lead them into the promised land, to what depths of ungodliness might they not have been thrown? That, let me add, is also why his tomb was not made known.

Samuel, again, could not save Saul from the wrath from above, yet he often preserved the Israelites. Jeremiah did not prevail for the Jews, but perhaps he did shelter someone else from harm by his prophecy. And Daniel saved the barbarians from slaughter, but did not deliver the Jews from their captivity.

In the Gospels, too, we will see both these things happen — not to different people, but to the same person, the same man now winning his case and now given up. The man who owed the ten thousand talents freed himself from danger by pleading, yet afterward he did not prevail. And another, on the contrary, who had earlier thrown himself away, was later able to help himself to the greatest degree. Who is this? The one who squandered his father’s property. So if we are careless, we will not be able to obtain salvation, not even with the help of others. But if we are watchful, we will be able to do it by ourselves — and by ourselves more than through others. Yes, for God is more willing to give his grace to us than to others on our behalf, so that by working to turn away his wrath ourselves, we may both have confidence before him and become better people. That is how he had pity on the Canaanite woman, how he saved the prostitute, how he saved the thief, when there was no one to be mediator or advocate.

I say this, not so that we will give up appealing to the saints, but to keep us from being careless — from handing our concerns over to others alone while we ourselves fall back and go to sleep. So when he said, “Make friends for yourselves,” he did not stop there, but added, “by means of the unrighteous mammon,” so that again the good work might be your own. For what he means here is nothing other than giving to the poor. And what is wonderful, he does not even hold a strict reckoning with us, provided we draw back from wrongdoing. What he says amounts to this: “Have you gained badly? Spend well. Have you gathered by unrighteousness? Scatter it abroad in righteousness.” And yet what kind of virtue is it to give out of gains like these? But God, full of love for humankind, stoops down to meet us even here, and if we do this, he promises us many good things. [t]

We, however, are so past all feeling that we do not give even out of our unjust gain. We plunder without end, and if we contribute the smallest part, we think we have done everything. Have you not heard Paul say, “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly”? Why, then, are you sparing? What, is this act an outlay? Is it an expense? No, it is profit and good trading. Where there is trade, there is increase; where there is sowing, there is also reaping. If you had rich, deep soil to farm, able to take a great deal of seed, you would spend everything you had and borrow from others as well, counting stinginess a loss in such a case. But when it is heaven you are to cultivate — which is exposed to no change of weather and will surely repay your outlay with an abundant harvest — you are slow and hang back, and you do not stop to think that by sparing it is possible to lose, and by not sparing to gain.

So scatter, so that you will not lose. Do not keep, so that you may keep. Lay out, so that you may save. Spend, so that you may gain. If your treasures are to be stored away, do not store them yourself, for you will surely throw them away. Entrust them to God, for from there no one carries them off as plunder. Do not do the trading yourself, for you have no idea how to make a profit. Lend to him who pays interest greater than the principal. Lend where there is no envy, no accusation, no scheming, no fear. Lend to him who needs nothing, and yet is in need for your sake; who feeds everyone, and yet goes hungry, so that you will not suffer famine; who is poor, so that you may be rich. Lend there, where the return cannot be death, but life instead of death. For this interest is the herald of a kingdom; that other kind, of hell. The one comes from greed, the other from self-denial; the one from cruelty, the other from kindness. [v]

What excuse, then, will we have? We have the power to receive more — and that safely, at the right time, and with great freedom, without reproaches or fears or dangers — and yet we let these gains go and chase after that other kind, base and vile as they are, insecure and perishable, and stoking the furnace far hotter for us. For nothing, nothing is baser than the moneylending of this world, nothing more cruel. Such a man trades on other people’s disasters. He makes a profit from another’s distress and demands wages for kindness, as though he were afraid of seeming merciful. Under the cloak of kindness he digs the pit deeper. By the very act of helping he rubs a man’s poverty raw; in the act of stretching out his hand he pushes him down; and while he seems to be taking him into harbor, he wrecks him as though on a rock, a shoal, or a reef.

Someone says: “But what are you asking of me? That I should give another man the use of money I have gathered together, money that is useful to me, and demand nothing in return?” Far from it; I do not say that. No, I earnestly want you to have a return — not a mean or small one, but a far greater one. In return for gold, I want you to receive heaven as your interest. Why, then, shut yourself up in poverty, crawling about on the earth and asking little in return for much? This is the way of someone who does not know how to be rich. When God promises you the good things in heaven in return for a little money, and you say, “Do not give me heaven; give me, instead of heaven, the gold that perishes,” that is the way of someone who wants to stay poor.

Just as surely, the one who desires wealth and abundance will choose things that last rather than things that perish; the inexhaustible rather than what wastes away; much rather than little; the incorruptible rather than the corruptible. And that way the other things will follow as well. For just as the one who seeks earth before heaven will surely lose earth too, so the one who puts heaven before earth will enjoy both in great abundance.

And so that this may be true of us, let us despise everything here and choose the good things to come. For in this way we will obtain both the one and the other, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.