In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ! [Glory to him forever!]

If Christmas is the winter Pascha, and the Sunday before Pascha is Palm Sunday, then this is the winter Palm Sunday. And the reason why I think that’s very appropriate, that today is the winter Palm Sunday, is because we focus on Jesus as the King. Jesus as the King: this is actually the theme of Matthew, St. Matthew the Gospel writer. Throughout the entire gospel of Matthew, his perspective is always Jesus as King. So we want to think a little bit about that this morning: Jesus as King, and we are presented with that genealogy, and Dn. Luke must have been practicing he did such a good job this morning. That’s always a very difficult gospel reading to read with all of those names.

And what’s very interesting about it, because this genealogy—there’s another genealogy in Luke, but this genealogy is specifically about Jesus as King, and if the king is a male, then it’s kind of a male lineage. Now, when we think of Jesus as King, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And we know the story, yes? The Jews were looking for an earthly king; they were looking for a king to deliver them out of Roman occupation. The Romans were ruling over the Jews. They weren’t allowed to govern themselves, and they wanted to overthrow that Roman occupation, that Roman government.

We read in the gospels that this idea that Jesus was King, and he’s so often portrayed by various people as King that we lose the fact that they weren’t listening! They weren’t listening to when Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” So we belong to the kingdom of God. We are citizens of the kingdom of God. When you’re in a kingdom, you’re a servant of the king, and that’s why, when we come forward to receive the Eucharist, we fold our arms and we say, “The servant of God.” We say we are servants of the King. All of the people that you see surrounding us in this iconography are people who have given their lives, who have willingly become servants of the King.

His kingdom is not of this world, and yet on Palm Sunday when Jesus comes, sitting on a donkey, very humbly, but he comes into Jerusalem triumphant before his death, he comes in the midst of the people, being greeted as a king, and yet, a humble king. He promises that he will return in glory as the King of the universe, that it will be unmistakable when Jesus returns, that he is the King of all.

So we see in this genealogy all of these men that are named, that are in the lineage of David from the very beginning. It says, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David.” David was the example of the greatest king, the one who is the prototypical king of Israel, and the Messiah, who is Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed One, is in the lineage of David. Mary herself provides that genealogical lineage.

But what’s interesting about this lineage is that it’s not all men. There are four women that are named in this genealogy. And what’s incredible about these four names is that each one of them are either prostitutes or fornicators. They’re not great examples. It’s because Jesus is not only the King, but he is the Redeemer. We read later in today’s gospel that he is the One who comes to save people from their sins. He is the Savior; that’s why he’s named “Jesus.” That word means the savior of his people.

Bathsheba was the one who had an affair with David, who produced Solomon. And David killed Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba. It was a horrible, horrible situation, but Jesus takes all of that lineage into himself. And in his perfection, in his godliness, he redeems it; he transforms it. He once again gives people who are leading ordinary lives, who are leading miserable lives, and he grants them salvation; he grants them the ability to be saved and to be with God again. So Jesus is not only the King, he is the Redeemer.

And then finally we read in verse 20, “But while Joseph thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David’ ”—he was also in the lineage of David—” ‘Do not be afraid to take to you Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.’ ”

Jesus is the King, Jesus is the Redeemer, but Jesus is also the Son of God. It’s very interesting in the Scriptures. The Scriptures never refer to Jesus as the son of Joseph. Other people refer to him that way, but the Scriptures themselves never refer to him that way. So Jesus is the Son of Mary, but Joseph is the foster-father. Jesus is the Son of God. And it says, “The Holy Spirit conceives in her,” and that’s why now we have the icon of the Annunciation so prominently displayed to us, that Good News—that is the icon of the Good News—that she will conceive in her the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So what we celebrate here at Christmas in just a few days is this idea that Jesus, the Word of God, the eternal Word of God, intervenes in our world. And we’ll stand here tomorrow night at the vigil, and we’ll sing that beautiful hymn, “God is With Us.” This idea that the God of the universe, the God of heaven, is not distant from us: this is the uniqueness of Christianity. This is why all the worldly philosophies fold before Christianity; they collapse before the message that the God of the universe loves us so much that he comes to earth and he intervenes, and he not just makes himself present but he makes himself one of us. We have a God who loves us so much that he takes on humanity; he takes on flesh. He unites it to his divinity so that he is fully God and fully man, and he exists among us. And he not only heals us from all of our diseases and our sicknesses and our sins.

That’s why when he comes, he comes preaching and healing and casting out demons. He shows us: that is the sign of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God will not be fleshly desires. In some religions, you have—what is it?—72 virgins. Men, they blow themselves up because they have the promise of 72 virgins. That’s insanity! That’s not the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This is the kingdom of God, and Jesus comes bringing it even on this earth. And he says, “I promise you, if you follow me, you will receive this inheritance. You will receive the fullness of my presence, the fullness of the kingdom of God, where there is no more worries, there’s no more sickness, there’s no more death, there’s no more sin, there’s no more struggling, there’s no more work, there’s love and joy and peace.” And when he comes into this world, he brings that in himself and he spreads it throughout all of those who believe in him.

There’s one more thing that I want to point out in this beautiful reading of Jesus as King and Redeemer and Son of God. Look at the very last line of the gospel reading today. “Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife,” meaning he accepted her as his betrothed. They weren’t married; they were betrothed. He was her protector. “And did not know her until”—or it says “till”—“she had brought forth her firstborn Son, and he called his name Jesus.” The father always names the son, and he calls him Jesus just like the angel instructed him.

I want to talk about that. “He did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn Son.” So if you look at Orthodox iconography, if you look at the icon of the Virgin Mary here, she always has—and you can see it. Where is it? Up here, too. Look on her forehead, the veil. Do you see that star? And then look on her shoulders. Now, you can’t always see it in every icon, but there is a star on one shoulder—you see it on her right shoulder there?—and then Jesus covering up, but there’s a star on her left shoulder. This is a doctrine for us, and that is—those stars mean that she was a Virgin before, during, and after the birth of Jesus. Before, during, and after. That’s why we call her “more honorable than the cherubim, more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim.”

But how do we reconcile that with what it says in the Bible here? It says, “And he (Joseph) did not know her until she had brought forth her firstborn Son.” What it makes it sound like is: after she brought forth her firstborn Son, he had relations with her, right? It’s impossible. It’s impossible, because, first of all, God dwelt in her womb. The Scriptures very clearly say Joseph knew God was dwelling in her womb. He wasn’t going to touch her. And this word, “until,” in English it sounds a little bit like at that point, after the birth, then he touched her again, right? he had relations with her.

But think about this. There are so many places in the Bible—and I’ll give you a very good example— Jesus says to his apostles; he says, “Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the world, the end of the age.” Now, what does that word “until” mean? Does it mean Jesus with us until the end of the age, but once the end of the age is here, he’s not with us any more? Of course not! So “until” can also imply “through.” It’s “to that point, through the end of the age.” So it says that Joseph did not know her until she brought [forth] her firstborn Son, meaning at that point he did not know here, and through the rest of that time, he did not know her. This word, “until,” also can be used in that way. It’s used in that way throughout the Scripture.

There are dozens of examples that I could give you where this word, “until,” doesn’t mean it just stops there. So let’s protect this doctrine of the perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary, to understand that she is that sanctified temple. We have that beautiful icon in the back of our choir loft that shows her: all of creation rejoices in her, because she holds the Son of God in her womb. There are prophecies in Ezekiel that talk about the Temple, that where God entered the Temple, where the Temple was first built, that door was never used again, because God entered through that door. She, the Virgin Mary, is the fulfillment of that prophecy in Ezekiel.

All of these things, you can see in the Scriptures, are jumping out at us and are telling us: Look, your King is being born. Your Redeemer is being born. The Son of God is being born. And he is being born by the one who is a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ. Let us rejoice in these days to come.

One more practical thing. I want to get this very important point. This is for everybody that’s listening to these words. Let’s resist the temptation to make Christmas Day into a non-church day. There’s a lot of churches that say, “We don’t have [church] on [Christmas] because we want families to be together.” Well, of course! Come together. Come to church! This is our family here. It doesn’t make any sense if we’re going to celebrate Christmas and sit around our dining room tables and celebrate the birth of Christ without coming to church first and gathering around the table of the Lord to receive his body and blood.

So we have to resist this temptation. We have services tomorrow: we have services in the morning, we have services in the evening. Let’s come to those services, and let’s sanctify these days. Let’s sanctify the day of Christmas itself on the 25th. Let’s honor the Virgin Mary on the 26th. These are very important, important days for us. Let us understand they are about Christ. They are about the One who has come into the world to save us, to redeem us, to be our Ruler, and to be our Savior. To him who is our life, with the Father and the Spirit, be glory, honor, and majesty, always, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ! [Glory to him forever!]