The 4th Sunday of
Advent
The Genealogy of
Jesus
Deacon Carole Maddux,
St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, Alpharetta, Georgia
Today, our Gospel tells us the Christmas
story from Matthew. Something we’re all familiar with and love. But
today, I’m going to preach on the part of the Gospel you didn’t
hear. A part of the Gospel of Matthew that you will, in fact, never
hear proclaimed as the Gospel in any Episcopal Church.
It’s not that it’s too controversial to
be included in the cycle of Gospel proclamations, or too racy, or too
scary. It’s not a concealed part of the Gospel---no Gnostic tales of
undisclosed marriages or secrets to immortality. But if you want to
know it, you’ll have to read it yourself.
Because this part of Matthew is just too
boring to proclaim in church. What we heard today was the first
chapter of Matthew starting at verse 18. So what about verses 1-17?
What’s in those verses? A looooong list of ancestors. The Ancestors
of Jesus. Remember how boring the begats were in the Old Testament?
Important, I guess, at the time it was written, but seeming hardly
relevant today?
Well, the first seventeen verses of
Matthew read something like that. And I’m guessing that the great
liturgical minds of the church knew that if we were subjected to that
in the Gospel, we might just fall asleep even before the sermon!
Today, though, I want to look at why
Matthew starts out the most important thing he’ll ever write with a
long list of names. He evidently was never taught how to write a lead
sentence, was he?
In my journalism class, we were taught
that the most important stuff all had to be in that first sentence.
You had to grab the reader and that was your only shot. Plus, if he
didn’t read any further, at least you got the main facts across. But
yet here’s how Matthew starts:
An account of the genealogy of
Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham
was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob
the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez
and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron…
And on and on like that for 14 more
verses.
Where’s the story? Why not grab the
reader (or listener in Matthew’s day) with promises of salvation and
everlasting life? Where’s the drama of birth & death, friendship &
betrayal, sorrow & joy? That’s all in the Gospel, why start with
possibly the most boring part of the story that you know? But, maybe,
if we look at it carefully, if we think about the people he’s naming
instead of just letting the names flow over us, you can see why
Matthew starts what is truly the Greatest Story Ever Told, with the
genealogy of Jesus.
First, these people are all so very
human. Abraham had doubts as well as faith and made some questionable
decisions. Judah sold his brother Joseph into slavery and used
prostitutes.
Speaking of that, there are also four
women named in the genealogy. The first one named isn’t Sarah or
Rebecca or Leah. It’s Tamar. The woman whose father-in-law refused to
live up to his responsibility to her as his son’s widow, and who posed
as a prostitute to get the justice God promised. So in the few verses
I have read to you just now, we have deviousness, betrayal, human
slavery and prostitution.
Later in the genealogy, we’ll have
murder, exile, and mixed marriages. Maybe this portion of the Gospel
is too racy to be in the cycle of readings!
Secondly, it’s obviously important to
Matthew that we know that Jesus came from the house of David. It was
important to Matthew’s listeners at the time to show the Jewishness of
Jesus. That he came from Abraham just as they did. He, too, was a
child of Abraham and from the House foretold to produce the Messiah.
Of course, in the part of the Gospel we did read today we learn
that Jesus was essentially adopted into the House of David as
commanded by God. Without Joseph’s obedience, the whole genealogy is
moot. That part may be the part that’s too scary. Thank goodness for
us, Joseph’s awesome responsibility of being faithful to God is
countered with the vulnerable and corruptible humanness of the other
players in this genealogy.
So there’s more to this genealogy than
it at first appears but, still, why start with it?
This past summer, I, along with many of
you, attended the funeral of Hendree Harrison. Hendree was the
rector of St. David’s for many years and helped to start St. Aidan’s.
His son and namesake, also a priest, preached the sermon. At one
point, he started to talk about his father’s preaching. A small
ripple of laughter went through the congregation at that point for
most of us knew that Hendree had hated preaching and thought he wasn’t
very good at it. His son, though, pointed out that Hendree actually
only had one sermon and it was a good one. The only thing that
Hendree ever preached about was that God loves you, Each and Every one
of you.
Perhaps that’s the important point that
Matthew starts with. That God loves each of those flawed people.
Loves them enough to set his only son on equal footing with them.
Because he loves each and every one of them. This is the
point of the incarnation. A point that is born out through the rest
of Jesus’ life. From an unwed mother, to a merciful step-father, to a
birth on the street, to being a refugee in Egypt, to dying on Death
Row, Jesus’ life is one of humility. How better to show that God
loves us, Each and Every One of us, than to make Himself equal to the
shamed, the homeless, the oppressed and the incarcerated. Something
only the incarnation of Jesus Christ could accomplish.
And it shows that God loves each of us
equally. Every life is precious. Every one of those
steps on the genealogy was important. God loves Abraham as much as he
loves Tamar. God loves the man on death row as much as he loves the
man on Wall Street. He loves the unwanted child as much as the
yearned for child. He loves the prostitute as much as the Madonna.
He loves the refugee just as much as he loves the king. God loves
every one of us. The genealogy can be racy and scary, here
it is controversial, too. For if we respected and loved each other as
God loves us, we could no longer use others for personal gain. We
could no longer treat one race differently from another. We could no
longer abuse another or ourselves. We would respect human life
everywhere, for we would know that God loves that person as much
as he loves me. For the genealogy doesn’t stop with
Jesus, it stops with you and me.
At a Chamber of Commerce meeting last
week, we had a speaker from the St. Vincent de Paul Society talking
about how they take presents out to poor families at this time of
year. “For many of these children,” the speaker stated, “this is the
only Christmas they’ll have.” My first thought was that I wish the
Roman Catholics would do a better job of teaching theology to the
laity. After confessing that uncharitable thought, though, I realized
that while Christmas is certainly not a present or a toy, there is a
gift. A gift of the incarnation. The gift of knowing that God loves
us. Loves us enough to send His Son to live just like us. Loves us
enough to teach us. Loves us enough to make us the next step
in the genealogy, the Body of Christ. For once we love Each and
Every one of us, there will be peace on earth.
Love and Peace to you, my brothers and sisters.
Amen.
© Deacon Carole Maddux. All Rights
reserved.
(top)
