Branch of Jesse

Second Sunday after Christmas
St. Matthew 2:19-23
© 2010 Rev. Matthew L. Whitehead

Most of society has been proclaiming ‘Happy new year’ for the past several days, but in the church, January first is the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ with no mention of a new year. The Church has never recognized any other new year’s day other than the First Sunday in Advent. Because of that, this Second Sunday after Christmas, even though it is always the first Sunday of the new civil year, is never designated the first Sunday of the year according to the Church.1 It is a pity, that, because a civil designation would work just about as well as the liturgical designations appointed for today. The Second Sunday after Christmas is an awkward day, stuck between the two seasons of Christmas and Epiphany; its propers are equally awkward, either not fitting the season, being read out of sequence, or laden with potential scandal.

The day which we call the Second Sunday after Christmas was not found in any Christian liturgy until the 1920’s, when various Anglican liturgists drafted propers for their trial Prayer Books.2 Three out of every seven years there is no second Sunday after Christmas, so the ancient liturgists never bothered with it. Prior to the 1920’s the propers for the Circumcision of Christ were extended to any second Sunday of Christmastide, and in parts of the Anglican Communion where the 1662 English Prayer Book is used this is still the custom. In the Roman Catholic Church this day is the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which is better connected with the Feast of Circumcision.

Aside from the basic liturgical awkwardness of a Second Sunday after Christmas, we have to deal with the awkwardness of today’s propers. The epistle lesson is taken from Isaiah sixty-one, but we associate it with Christ’s reading of it in the Synagogue, when he proclaimed that he himself was the Anointed One of whom the prophet wrote.3 Christ’s use of this passage as a revelation of himself makes it better suited to Epiphany Season. Even though it is almost Epiphany, we are not there yet, and we should no more celebrate Epiphany early than we should Christmas or Easter.

The Gospel Lesson has its own difficulties. It tells the story of the Holy Family’s return from Egypt after the slaughter of the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem. The reading is liturgically misplaced, because the actual flight to Egypt, the slaughter of the Innocents, and the Holy Family’s return, all occurred after the visit from the Magi, which we celebrate at Epiphany. Our liturgical calendar is telling the story out of order, but we can live with this because liturgical order is foremost concerned with theological priorities, and therefore is not bound to historical chronology.

Christmastide is a difficult season for liturgists; the feast days are fixed in their relation to Christmas Day, which leaves two Sundays hanging in the balance. The First Sunday after Christmas may come before or after Holy Innocents, and it may coincide with the Octave of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ; it is hard to give ordered fixed propers to a day that is so flexible. Remember that the Second Sunday after Christmas does not even occur three out of every seven years; it is difficult to give order to a day which does not exist half of the time. For all these reasons, the Second Sunday after Christmas has no overarching theme to guide us. Some would be tempted to call today a ‘filler’ Sunday, or a ‘liturgical orphan’. I think we should ‘redeem the time’ and make what we can of it. The lack of any overarching theme to guide our interpretation will allow us to examine a notoriously difficult issue in today’s Gospel Lesson.

At first reading the Gospel Lesson seems simple enough; it tells of the Holy Family’s return from Egypt, describing how and why they ended up in the city of Nazareth. The problem is in the last verse: Saint Matthew wrote that they settled in Nazareth “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, [that Jesus] shall be called a Nazarene”. The problem is that none of the prophets said this; it is nowhere mentioned in the Old Testament, neither in the Apocryphal books. Another problem is that Nazareth, Nazarene, and Nazarite are all different things: Nazareth is a city, whose people are called Nazarenes, but the city is not mentioned in the Old Testament; a Nazarite is someone who has taken a special vow of holiness before God, but Jesus did not take such a vow, and no Old Testament prophecy suggested he would; Nazarene and Nazarite might also be used to describe a militant Jewish sect,4 but Jesus is not associated with them. What are we to make of this?

One solution is to hypothesize that Matthew quoted a lost prophetic book, or that the prophet quoted was not a canonical prophet. We can dismiss the first theory, a ‘lost prophet’ is only a figure of imagination, and has more in common with the silliness of The DaVinci Code than any real Biblical scholarship. It is doubtful, also, that the quoted prophet was non-canonical. The Hebrews are ‘People of the Book’, and they know their Book. Matthew quotes the prophet as if everybody should recognize the source. Why then would Nathanael, when his brother Philip told him about Jesus, ask if “any good thing [could] come out of Nazareth”?5 Nathanael did not recognize such a prophecy because it did not exist.

A better explanation requires some knowledge of Hebrew. We have already mentioned the Nazarite vow, prescribed in Numbers chapter six. We know that Samson took the Nazarite vow in ancient times; it is possible that Saint Paul might also have taken the vow, so it was not unheard of in the times of Christ.6 The Hebrew root word for Nazarite is nazir (nozz-ear), which means ‘one consecrated’ or ‘holy’. It is thought, then, that Matthew was using a double-entendre; that ‘Nazarene’ was meant to communicate Jesus’ city of origin and his holy purpose. Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of the holiness of God the Father, and as such he commanded us to be holy, that we we might keep the Father’s commandment of holiness.7

The best explanation of Matthew’s supposed prophecy comes out of Isaiah chapter eleven: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.” The Hebrew word for ‘Branch’ is naṣar (knots-are), which, even though it is spelled different, sounds strikingly like the beginning of ‘Nazar-eth’. It is known that ancient writers liked to use word-play and puns, so here we have a pun that communicates Jesus as both being from the city of Nazareth and being the prophesied Branch from Jesse.8 This explanation is strengthened by the way Matthew structured his birth narratives of Jesus: he began with Jesus’ genealogy, which of course mentions Jesse and focuses on David; if this prophecy is understood to reference Jesus’ ancestor Jesse, then it makes a nice close to the Matthean birth narratives.

The liturgical details may be awkward, but we are reminded today that Jesus Christ, from his birth, was the promised Messiah. He was the one prophesied to bring Good News, as we read in our Epistle Lesson; and he was the One prophesied as the Branch from Jesse, according to our Gospel Lesson. Therefore, on this last Sunday of Christmastide we are reminded of where this is all going. If Jesus is the Promised One, then we are necessarily going to the cross. The liturgy will take us there over the next thirteen weeks: we will see Jesus Christ revealed as Messiah on Epiphany, we will prepare for the Passion during Lent, and we will mourn the death of our Saviour on Good Friday. But all is not lost; this same Promised One will rise from the grave on the Paschal Sunday, conquering death by death, that we might have new life in him. Jesus Christ, the Branch from Jesse, brings us Good News.

Blessed be God the Father, “Because thou didst give Jesus Christ, thine only Son, to be born as at this time for us; who, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, was made very man, of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin.”9 Amen.

1 Lindemann, Fred H. Advent and Epiphany Seasons. Vol. I. The Sermon and the Propers. St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1958; 109.
2 Shepherd, Massey H., Jr. The Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950; 106-07.
3 Lk 4:16-21. See the Gospel Lesson for the Ember Days, 1928 BCP; 261.
4 1Macc 3:49; Acts 24:5.
5 Jn 1:46. Cp. Jerome, Commentary on Matthew, 1.2.23; Anonymous, Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 12; in Simonetti, Manlio, ed. Matthew 1-13, vol. NT-Ia. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, ed. Thomas C. Oden. Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001 [ACCS]; 37-38.
6 Judg 13-16; Acts 18:18. Chromatius, Tractate on Matthew, 7.1; Cp. Jerome, Commentary on Matthew, 1.2.23; Anonymous, Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 12; ACCS, 37-38.
7 Jn 17; Mk 1:24 & Lk 4:34, Jesus’ origins in Nazareth connected with holiness; Lk 2:23, Christ was consecrated unto God;; Mt 5:48;; Lev 11:44; 19:2; 20:7.
8 Barclay, William. The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. 1. The New Daily Study Bible Series. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001; 40.
9 Proper Preface for Christmas Day, 1928 BCP; 77.