So, is this a historical record? The answer is no, and I think even Matthew would agree with that. There are a number of ancestral lists in the Hebrew Scriptures and they vary greatly from each other. Even the author of Luke in the third chapter has a completely different list. Matthew agrees with Luke on only about half of the names. In fact, Luke takes his list all the way back to Adam, and yet only has a handful of names more than Matthew. Unlike Luke, Matthew divides his list into three equal groups of fourteen generations. This is more a literary device than a historical record as seen in the fact that the first fourteen generations he lists cover about 800 years and the second fourteen generations span only about 400 years.
This is also not what we might today think of as Jesus' genealogy. The word translated as "genealogy" in the first verse of Matthew might be better translated as "birth" and would thus read, "An account of the birth of Jesus the Messiah." According to both gospel writers, they are not Jesus' blood relatives. They both trace the line through Joseph while at the same time telling us Joseph was not even the biological father. The very definition of a Jew is a person whose mother was a Jew. If your father was a Jew and your mother was not, you can only become Jewish by conversion. Since most of the few women mentioned in Matthew's list are non-Jews, if this is his biological genealogy, Jesus was not even Jewish.
Another point is that almost all of the names are men, not one of which begat anybody without some serious help. As has happened throughout history, it was the women who did the hard work of begatting and the men who got the credit!
No, these are not Jesus' actual relatives; hey are his theological and spiritual ancestors. You could say that they are his faith family. And you know what, our faith family may be as important in making us who we are as our blood family. As Joan Durdin said in response to this idea, "You can't do anything about who your relatives are, but yon can choose your choose your spiritual ancestors."
I wrote the script that we used to dramatize this section of Mathew today based on an idea from Doug Adams, one of my favorite seminary professors at Pacific School of Religion. The purpose was to shows what a cast of unlikely characters are part of Jesus' faith family. There are the very powerful and there are those who are at the bottom of society. There are famous people known by almost everybody today like Abraham and King David, and there are unknowns of which almost nothing is known. They are Jewish and gentile. Some were wonderful people and others evil, like the son of Judah named Er who (and I quote,) was "wicked in the sight of God and God put him to death." (Sometimes I wish God still worked that way to get rid of wicked people but then I worry about where the cut off point would be and on my worst days, might end up myself on God's strike down dead list.
Another evil guy was Joram, who murdered his six brothers and the Bible says that when he died, "He departed with no one's regret." Jesus' faith family includes despicable kings and a brave and heroic prostitute. There are those who embrace God's purposes and those that follow God's guidance, buy most do some of both in varying degrees
In the spirit of this day in which we have dedicated our new pew Bibles, I encourage you to go and read about some of these folks. If we had time, we could have a sword drill, an exercise some of us grew up with in church) to see who could first find these names in the Bible. After our Wednesday evening Bible study on this text, David Hilton looked them all up. He found that the Internet helps a lot with this!
If you want of the wackiest tales you will ever read that probably no one has heard a sermon on, read Genesis 38. Again, the folks who put together the lectionary skip over this as well. It's one of many biblical stories about highly dysfunctional families, and involves deceit, adultery, and lots of sex. One of the main characters is Tamar, one of the original desperate housewives. She was first married to the before mentioned Er, the one that ticked God off so much that God struck him dead. Er's father Judah then stuck her with his other son Onan who had no desire whatsoever to be with his dead brother's wife. Tamar desperately wanted a child but Onan would not cooperate in such a way that he gave us the word "onanism." Which also displeased God too, and God put him to death also. Taken out of context, Onan provided a biblical basis for warning us teenage boys when I was growing up that a certain behavior could kill you, or at least cause you to go blind. I will say no more and let you read the rest yourself, other than to say that Tamar finally gets her baby by dubious means which almost gets her killed if not for using her smarts.
As Joan Durdin heard someone once say, biblical stories such as this are akin to Southern stories. Instead of beginning with "One upon a time, they begin with "you're not going to believe this!" The Bible is also full of stories about good people doing wicked things, even the best of them. King David, perhaps the most revered man in Israel's history, could be ruthless in battle. He slaughtered many innocent civilians, writing it off much as we do in Iraq as just collateral damage. And then there was that whole affair with Bathsheba and David's murder of her husband, one of his own soldiers on the battlefield. This too greatly displeased God, but David was fortunate that God tried another tack other than the struck down dead approach. God even allowed him to stay married to Bathsheba and they begat Solomon.
Solomon was renowned for his wisdom and he accomplished great things, yet he was the king who instituted slavery among his people and taxed countless peasants into ruin in order to finance his luxurious palaces and Great temple. Even Father Abraham did some wacky things and almost blew the covenant with God more than one time. Yes, Jesus' ancestral list includes some of the best folks you would want to know and some of the worst, and sometimes they are the same person.
Just like us! As Timothy Tyson says, "The distance between our highest and our lowest capacities is not as far as we think." That is worth remembering and taking to heart on this Sunday with its theme of repentance. We begin Advent with repentance because it is supposed to be a time to search our souls, get in touch with our shadow sides, and even face "the absurdity of our gall and ignorance." (Tyson again)
In a season of gross materialism that dishonors everything Jesus stood for, to celebrate Advent as a time of spiritual preparation is one of the most challenging and counter cultural things we can do. Rather than spend much of our time shopping, we could do well to use this season to reflect, examine our lives, and laugh.
Tyson says, "Our laughter is communal and cathartic binding us to one another while it expresses, and hence (we hope) disarms, the darker impulses we all share." (Quotes from Blood Done Signed My Name, p. 191) Or as the Muslim mystic and poet Kahlil Gibran said, "When we confess our deepest darkest sins to one another, we laugh at each other for lack of originality."
We don't want to skip over the beginning of Matthew's gospel because it is the beginning of the account of Jesus' birth. It sets the context for God's incarnation. It is the very first story of the love and grace that Jesus' birth will bring into the world. Matthew begins with a story of hope for if all these folks that Matthew begins with can be in Jesus' faith family, we can too. Matthew wants us to know right up front that Jesus' grace and love is for every one of us, saints and scoundrels that we all are. And that, my friends, is very good news. Amen.