You are right on about the two different reading needing to come at different times to keep the story flowing.
Jumping ahead to the Innocents before hearing of the Magi on Epiphany kind of messes with my head. (Sorry, it's 3:30 AM and I'm probably rambling incoherently. If anyone can make sense of that last sentence, please let me know. 
)
We live in a biblicallly illiterate age when the Lectionary, poorly applied, can even add to the sense of fragmentation that people have about scripture. It's tough to keep a sense of each reading as part of a book and each book as a part of the greater whole. Over the years I try harder and harder to keep Mary and Joseph linked together in my telling by linking Matthew and Luke in preaching.
thanks, John
