Two of the gospels begin with the story of Jesus’ birth. While Mark chooses to instead begin his book 30 years after the fact and John, seemingly out of left field, chooses to give us a university philosophy class’s worth of exploration into the meaning of truth and divinity to begin his account, Matthew and Luke both decide to begin at the beginning, with the story of Jesus with the circumstances that lead to his birth and beyond. However, as you read these two accounts, you realize that though they are telling the same story, their focus is on such different details as to make it at times hard to see how the two tellings are related at all. And this is done on purpose. Both of these gospel writers spend their time building a different case about who Jesus is and why he is important, both arriving in the end near each other, but with different emphases as well. This you can see from how the story of Christ’s birth unfolds in both accounts.

In Matthew’s telling, we begin the Christmas tale in an unlikely place: a genealogy. A Family tree tracing Jesus’ lineage all the way back to Abraham himself. And while the list ends with Jesus, it is also worded in such a way as to let us know that Jesus adopted Father, Joseph, is an important fellow too. He also is a descendant of Abraham. He also is of the lines of the Israelite kings themselves. This is a fact that Matthew hits on hard as he talks about who Joseph is, focusing on the righteousness, caring, and protectiveness that Jesus adopted father has for his new family, characteristics that he demonstrates all the way through Jesus’ childhood as well. Matthew writes Joseph in many ways to be the ideal Old Testament man. He follows the law as it was meant to be followed. He follows the Lord without question. He is the product of all the most important Old Testament characters, and in his conduct, this shows.

Luke instead goes a different way with his account. He chooses to focus more on Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the hardships she goes through. Mary becomes pregnant through no choice of her own, out of wedlock. A recipe for a persecuted life in those years for certain. She then defies convention by going to see her family by herself, where she is blessed to find out that her cousin is pregnant with a child who was prophesied, who would make clear the way for the Lord, so which in the presence of the baby in Mary, this child jumps. Finally, when Mary returns home though she was expecting the worst, she is married, to which she then travels for a number of days, while 9 months pregnant, only to arrive at her destination without a place to stay, shunted into a stable where she ultimately gives birth to which she is met by a number of shepherds she doesn’t know who all praise her child.

Both of these gospels, tell the same story but with such a different focus that it can be a bit hard to tell how they are connected at all. But they are connected, and as I said before how they are connected is that they both tell us something different, yet connected about who Jesus is. In Matthew's telling of Jesus’ birth, the focus is on Joseph, the descendant of Kings and a man who is in every way the ideal Old Testament man. This is the man who adopts Christ, claiming him as his own. Jesus is in every way this man, Joseph’s son. And so Jesus is like Joseph as well. Jesus is also what the Old Testament bore, he is also from the line of kings. This is who Matthew wants us to know Jesus is, he is the return of the king. Luke in his focus on Mary makes a different case. In all that happens to Mary, she finds herself the target of the injustices of her time. She is pregnant and unwed. She is poor and a woman in a time where both those things would end you on the bottom of society, and she was from a people who were under the boot of oppressors as well. This is how we see Mary’s situation to be, and then she witnesses Elizabeth’s pregnancy, fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies. Then we see how her own child will play into these prophesies as well. This is also who Jesus is, Luke tells us. The fulfillment of Scripture. The one who will bring the kingdom of the Lord that will see justice brought to all as Isaiah foretold.

These are some of the big things we see about who Jesus Christ will be from these two accounts of his birth. We see our Lord, is a king returned. But we also see that Jesus is the one who fulfills prophecy. We see Christ embodies the Old Testament like his adopted father did, but we also see how he will bring salvation for all who need it, like his Mother as well. Though their accounts may differ, Luke and Matthew tell us a similar and glorious thing. This is Jesus Christ who was born, and this child, He will change the world.