In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
As often happens, like clockwork, one of you will approach me and announce two things. One, you recently have attempted to read through the Bible, cover the cover. And two, when you got to the genealogies, you tapped out. Typically, you tell me this because you want sympathy, or maybe advice about how to muscle through those obstacles to reading.
Here is the good news. There really aren’t that many genealogies in the Bible, compared to the entire collection of stories. The bad news is that there are a few of them right in the beginning. And jumping ahead to the New Testament won’t save you the trouble either because...
The Gospel of Matthew starts with one. I am not going to read it to you (those of you who know me well might worry that I would do that very thing). What is notable and not surprising about Matthew’s genealogy, like the others in the scriptures, is that it is made up almost entirely of men.
40 men to be exact, which is very Biblical, by the way. It tracks the connection of Jesus all the way back to Abraham; Abraham to David, David to Joseph, bringing us to the infant Jesus. In Judaism, past and present are nearly indistinguishable. Past is prologue to the now.
But in the midst of all those men, are five women, five mothers. And who these women were speaks to what God was and is up to when he entered the world in human form, when God put on flesh.
Tamar: cast aside by her family and their version of a welfare system, she must manipulate her father-in-law to force him to take care of her.
Rahab: and I’ll say this delicately—a woman of the night, and a foreigner, who betrays her people to save her family, and in doing so, has a life changing encounter with one and only maker God.
Ruth: also a foreigner and an outsider who must beg for food and until she manages to marry into security.
Bathsheba: a woman who is exploited by King David, a man abusing his power, the result being an adulterous and eventually murderous affair.
And finally the mother we honor tonight. Mary: a young innocent woman, who according the song she proclaimed after learning about her role, demonstrated a fierce sense of human rights and a yearning for justice, and was opened to scorn when she is with child by the Spirit of God.
- Those cast aside
- those who claw their way to subsistence
- outsiders who depend on the kindness of others for survival
- And finally, God born into the world by a woman who recognized the injustice of all of it.
Matthew’s Gospel says that the baby is to be named Jesus, Yeshua, which means salvation, because he will be born to save us from our sins. And that list of very real human beings that make up the lineage of his birth points to the reality.
Jesus did not come into the world to reward the righteous, but to embrace the broken.
Jesus did not come to celebrate strength, but to heal the wounded and support the weak.
Less than a mile from Bethlehem, sitting atop the tallest hill, was the massive palace of the Jewish puppet King Herod the Great. Called the Herodium, it had 200 polished marble steps leading to a series of towers and arches. It contained a swimming pool twice as large as an Olympic pool. It would have been clearly in sight that night, blazing away with its torches and candles.
Why wasn’t Jesus born there? Was it a mistake for the Messiah to be born to such humble surroundings? Shouldn’t there have been a palace instead of a barn? Shouldn’t there have been a gold delicate cradle instead of a feeding trough? Shouldn’t there have been the best doctors present instead of just Mary and Joseph and whatever help that might muster? Did God know what He was doing?
“The question is not what God COULD do but what God CHOSE to do. God’s choice was that though Christ was rich, yet for our sake he became poor. So quietly, without fanfare of trumpets, God quietly slipped into this world as the son of a poor working-class family.
What this means for all of us is that in order to come to God, in order to walk with him and grow into a truly spiritual life, it does NOT mean that you must be good, or perfect, or accomplished. All that is required is that you recognize your need for God. That is all that is required for him to save you.
The way that God chose to enter the world is evidence that God is on our side. God is for you. All that is required is to acknowledge your desperate need, and then let him love you.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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