Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David,
fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet [Isaiah]:

“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, 
and they will call him Immanuel” - which means “God with us”.

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Did she have to be a virgin?

Some believe that the virgin birth is a typically Christian belief: Moses, Buddha, and Mohammed were not born of a virgin, they say. But the Quran speaks more about Mary than the New Testament does, with the whole of Surah 19 dedicated to her story: She was made pregnant by the word and spirit of God, so she would give birth to the Messiah. For Muslims that does not make Jesus the son of God, because the Almighty God can simply create an embryo to serve his purpose. In Surah 19, the new-born baby confirms this by proclaiming from the cradle: “I am a slave of Allah.” In other words, you can believe in the virgin birth, without considering Jesus to be the son of God. On the other hand, you can proclaim Jesus as the son of God, as we see in the Letters of Paul and the Gospels of Mark and John, without referring to a virgin birth. There is no requirement in the Hebrew Bible that a Messiah would have to be born of a virgin. It should come as no surprise therefore that some second-century Jewish followers of Jesus, referred to as Ebionites (‘the poor,’) considered him to be the biological son of Joseph and Mary.

Only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, written some seventy or eighty years after the birth of Jesus, when all the ‘players’ had already died, have birth narratives. Their stories are very different from one another, so much so that it seems they were not part of shared traditions among followers of Jesus but rather more recent literary creations. They have different genealogies for Jesus and different itineraries for the holy family. In Matthew, they live in Bethlehem. Matthew has dreams and wise men, and Herod’s murder of innocent children in Bethlehem. This story is set within the final days of Herod the Great when he murdered anyone who might be a threat to his throne. They flee Herod the Great to Egypt and then settle in Nazareth. Only Luke has the birth of John the Baptist, angels and shepherds. In Luke, the family live in Nazareth and visit Bethlehem because of the census of Quirinius which took place some ten years after the death of Herod the Great, - when the Romans deposed Herod Archelaus, the son who had inherited only Judaea. Quirinius was sent to assess his properties and establish the right amount of taxation for the new province.

Fighting against those who dismissed Jesus as an illegitimate child

So how did Luke and Matthew compose their birth narratives? Luke, it seems, combined several sources: he states to have inquired carefully with people who had known Jesus, and that Mary had kept her memories ‘in her heart’ (which might confirm our earlier observation that she did not speak about them openly). He may have used a story about the birth of John the Baptist as a parallel to structure the story about Jesus’s birth. And, thirdly, he used narratives and songs from the Jewish scriptures (Mary’s song of praise seems inspired by Hannah’s after receiving her son Samuel in I Samuel 2) to flesh out that structure. Matthew, on the other hand, uses prophesies and motifs from the Hebrew bible, almost like a painter, to compose, frame and interpret the story of the Jesus. Each author in his own way positions the life of Jesus as the linchpin between in the story of Israel and the mission of his followers to all the nations of the world. But there is a common core in their stories: the teenager Mary was pregnant before she married Joseph, the child was born in Bethlehem, and Mary (in Luke) or Joseph (in Matthew) was told in a vision or dream that the child was ‘from the holy spirit’ and should bear the name ‘Jesus.’ That is the shared story that both Luke and Matthew had heard about. Please, take a moment and ponder that, as if you were a relative or neighbour of Joseph or Mary. Would you have believed them? Or, if you thought they were sincere, would you not have thought that they were deluded and superstitious?

Reading Matthew, you can see how the author reacts to the charge that Jesus was not a legitimate Messiah, in the sense of a descendent from David, since there were doubts about his paternity. Matthew goes into full protective mode. Jesus is an heir of David because he was legally born to Joseph, the husband of Mary. The gossip about Mary does not change that, as David himself descended from women of questionable repute. His forefather Judah wanted to kill his widowed but pregnant daughter-in-law, Tamar, until she revealed that she had seduced him in the guise of a prostitute to gain offspring. The Canaanite Rahab had owned a brothel in Jericho where she had hidden the Israelite spies, so they spared her life when they destroyed that city. Ruth was also a foreigner, and worse: a Moabite whose descendants were supposedly banned from the people of God until the tenth generation (Deuteronomy 23:3). David himself arranged for his officer Uriah to be killed in battle, so he could marry Uriah’s wife who was pregnant with David’s son.

Mary, although pregnant, claimed to have been faithful to the man she was to marry, even though Joseph knew that he could not be the father. Matthew sees a parallel with Isaiah’s prophecy to King Ahaz of Judah, who is afraid that the kings from the north will overrun his little kingdom, but Isaiah promises him deliverance. When he does not believe him, Isaiah promises him a sign: a young woman will conceive and bear a son; and before the boy will be a man, the kings that threaten the kingdom of Judah will have lost their thrones. When that Hebrew text was translated into the Greek bible that Matthew knew, translators had emphasized the sign by translating ‘young woman’ as parthenos: the virgin will conceive. No biological miracle may have been intended as a sign for Ahaz, but the Greek translation encouraged Matthew to consider the possibility that God could have willed and even caused Mary’s pregnancy. Already in the early second century, we see Christians claim that Mary had been a virgin before ánd after the birth of Jesus, and that his brothers and sisters were Joseph’s from an earlier marriage. Other people were less impressed. They mocked the followers of Jesus as having misread or misheard the passage: Jesus was not the son of a virgin (parthenou) but the son of a soldier by the name of Panthera. The name is a joke, but rape by soldiers was a grim reality just after the death of Herod and around the time of the census of Quirinius, when the Galilee rebeled and Roman legionnaires were sent to restore order. Sceptics undoubtedly found it easier to believe that a young girl - raped by a foreign soldier - had blocked out that memory until she could no longer ignore her growing belly.

Taking Mary's side

Whether you believe Mary or not, it pays off to put yourself in the shoes of Mary and Joseph. Mary is a religious and chaste teenage girl, destined for marriage with an equally serious and loyal construction worker by the name of Joseph. She lives in the small mountain village of Nazareth. The men around here might not notice her nausea or the swelling of her belly, but the women with whom she works and cooks and bathes do. There are options, they say, especially before a foetus takes human shape. But Mary does not want to take the bitter herbs. “Why not?,” they ask. “I have done no wrong,” she answers, “but I saw a man from God.” The women are astonished and worried: “That man deceived you, my love, what did he do to you?” The situation is dire: at best Mary would be damaged goods, unable to get a decent marriage, at worst the townspeople would pick up stones and drive the evil from their midst. You can still induce a miscarriage and pretend that nothing has happened. And sure, it is risky, but is it not better to get rid of this child before it ruins your life? Mary refuses. “It is God’s child that I carry, I cannot kill it to save myself. The Lord will bring salvation.” Her parents speak with Joseph, who is a loving and reasonable man. He agrees to end the engagement in silence. In the Gospel of Luke, we read that her parents sent her to her childless uncle and aunt in the mountains of Judea. Perhaps the idea was that she could have the child and leave it with them. Can you imagine how Mary feels on that journey to Judea? When she finds out that her aunt is already with child, a strange and fearful joy takes hold of her: God works in mysterious ways.

Meanwhile Joseph’s mind does not come to rest. He knows he has done 'the right thing,' but it has been his dream to marry this girl and build a family with her. That night, he too dreams of a man of God, a messenger. “Do not be afraid to marry her. She is right, God wants this child to be born. Receive it as yours, name it. The Lord will bring salvation.” He wakes up. Immediately, common sense questions present themselves: Should you ruin your life just because you had a dream? Can a man truly raise another one’s child as his own? The child, many would whisper behind his back, of an adulteress or a rapist? The Gospel of Luke tells us that Joseph was called to his ancestral home of Bethlehem in Judea, where a census took place. An old church history tells us that his family owned land there, and as a co-owner he may have had to register it. Did he go first to Mary in the mountains of Judea? Did he tell her about his dream? Did they protest? “The girl is in her last month, you can’t take her now.” But if Luke is right, he did not leave her alone again. He took her with him to Bethlehem. They arrived when the city gates were already closed and stayed in the inn, just outside the city walls. There she gave birth, in the midst of travellers, horses and camels. That night, Luke says, shepherds came to see the new-born babe. “A sign of hope,” they said, “we have seen angels.”
In the days that followed, Joseph went to the soldiers and the scribes. What did he say? From census records preserved in the desert of Egypt we have an idea of what he could have said: “My name is Joseph, son of James. I am twenty-six years old. I am a carpenter and co-owner of one third of our farm in Bethlehem. My wife’s name is Mary, seventeen years. We have a new-born son, Jesus.” From the stories of the Caesars we all know that acknowledging someone as your son or daughter made them so.

You can see how the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke were fleshed out in response to gossip and name-calling. Siding with Mary, the evangelists take God’s perspective: for humans the child may be illegitimate, a shame on the family and a very unwanted pregnancy. For God, this child is his son, his beloved, with whom he is well-pleased. Driven by that spirit, a girl chose the life of the child that could ruin her life. A man chose to marry a teenage mom. Together they made it work, for ‘everything is possible with God,’ even a virgin birth. Of course, no one believed them. Give it time and you yourself would doubt the spiritual experiences you may have had in your life. Was it not just phantasy and imagination? Therefore, I have tremendous respect for Joseph for saying: “this is my son,” for he became his father in every way but biological. And who could blame Mary that she kept all of this in her heart after Joseph’s death and did not tell her boys?

All she had was a name: Jesus

Imagine yourself sitting with an aging Mary on a bench in Capernaum overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Despite her hardships and suffering, she impresses you with her quiet strength and grace. Jesus proved her right, didn’t he? He was the Son of God after all. Yet, he proved her wrong as well: he did continue to care for her and her sons even after his death. His spirit is the source of love, life and light for the community of followers around her and her family. After listening to her story, you ask her, “When Joseph died, when you were a single mother in your forties, when Jesus and your boys clashed and he no longer lived with you, did you still have faith in his conception and birth as the work of the holy spirit?” She stares at the sea of memories in front of her. “In my heart, I never doubted God,” she says. “I know I was young and naïve when I had that vision, and yes, all Joseph had to go on was a dream. But the spirit works in mysterious ways, you know. When Joseph came back to me and told me the name he had given the child, it was a miracle to me. I was not disappointed that he had not called it James after his father, nor Joseph after himself. For the name he had chosen was the most beautiful of all. It is the one I had heard in my vision: Yehoshua, ‘the Lord will bring salvation.’

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Suggestions for dialogue

A moderator can explain the dialogue steps and invite people to contribute:

• Check in with yourself. Share with each other how you are in this moment. Then take a moment again to seek stillness, humility and openness. 
• First round: Share something from the text or image(s) that stood out to you and that you would like to explore with the group, briefly indicating the thoughts and feelings that it evoked within you. Listen to the others do the same: what resonates with you? Responses in this round should be limited to questions for clarification.
• Second round: Name one or two things that resonated with you from the things that other's just shared. 
• Third round: Having heard the group, the moderator names the main topics for exploration. The moderator may also propose a common thread that emerged in several topics. The exploration normally starts with asking the person(s) who brought up the topic to expand on it.
• Leave room for silence and contemplation. 
• Check out by sharing what you take home from this dialogue.

These suggestions are an adaptation of the Estuary protocol. Look for more at https://www.estuaryhub.com