When it comes to Christmas, Luke offers a more exciting read than Matthew. In Luke, we get the preamble of God's miraculous powers at work with Elizabeth and Zechariah and the gift of John the Baptist, the son of their old age. Kind of like Isaac in the old age of Sarah and Abraham. But this gift is interlocking with what is to come.
As John (the Baptizer-when he was grown) was the forerunning miracle, the proof Gabriel would point to in convincing Mary that the Lord picked her, so too would John be the forerunner of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, the voice crying out from the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." It's good stuff. The Lord knows how to inspire a good story, a true to life account.
Meanwhile, Matthew starts off with this barn burner, "An account of the genealogy of Jesus..." Boy, can't wait to dig into that!! Every generation from Abraham to David to the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah's birth! Who needs a Baby Name book when you have the Bible? Meet the twins, Abiud and Aminadab. Better than Johnny Cash's song "A Boy Named Sue".
Let's make it even more fun! When we are assembling the New Testament, we have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Matthew and Luke seem to use Mark as a source so Mark is probably a bit older, so lets make sure Mark is NOT first because that would make sense, from a literary-historic perspective. And John, well, he's all religious and God-focused. So he's out there somewhere, so we'll put him last. But now Luke and Matthew. Well, Luke is part one of a two-parter with the book of the Acts of the Apostles, so lets stick John between them. Then we will lead into this whole new Testament with the catchy tune of 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus.
For those of you trying to decipher that last paragraph, it is a prelude to a New Year offering of "Twenty Ways Into The Fun of God's Book".
When it comes to opening the New Testament, it has struck me that the cultural expectation is that we begin with the Christmas story, given the hype of the Season. But instead we get forty-plus names, mostly men but with a few women.
It was that minority list that was my way in. I will state flatly that the Bible was written in a very different time, dominated by the sin of sexism. We continue to work today to re-establish the reality that all of us are created in God's Image-to put it into political terms, that we are all equal in the sight of God. We continue to work to reverse the sinful and convenient excuse of blaming Eve for everything. But in the time of the Bible, women were property, father to husband, often without even the benefit of names in the Biblical account. So the year God penetrated the sexism I was raised on, when God pointed out to me where God's inspiration poked holes in the bible's sexism, it was a game changer.
It was enough to inspire a series of sermons in the Christmas pre-season one year. These women have stories, Tamar and Rahab and Ruth and Bathsheba and Mary. They opened the realization that all these characters have stories. Not all are recorded for us. Many, like Nahshon or Achim, seem like filler, but there are so many others. If you skim over the genealogy, you may come away with the thought that one of Jesus' ancestors had the interesting name of "Babylonian Exile". But it, like Abraham and David, mark stories that are defining in the life of the people of God (not just the Old Testament people of God, but we too who are God's People).
Maybe the way to look at these blood-stirring opening words of Matthew, of the New Testament, "An account of the genealogy..." is that we are getting a truly thrilling Table of Contents. No, no, hear me out. A list of names, but not random names (at least not all of them). These are names with stories attached to them, the history of a family that God paid special attention to. That the wonder of Jesus is built upon God's wonder in calling Abraham to be the father of three religions. The wonder of God building into the Messiah the promise of Kingship given to David.
It is the wonder of a young woman who risked death by fire to force her father-in-law to keep the law of familial obligation. It is the wonder of a prostitute who believed when no one else in her city dared to. It is the wonder of a woman from a foreign land who sacrificed all to be a greatest demonstration of what it means to love our neighbor in all of Scripture. It is the wonder of a woman whose husband was murdered, leaving her to be 'taken' by her husband's killer.
These are the stories that could make for bestsellers today. Foreigners and women of ill-repute and women who do 'shameful' things with right intent and victims of men of power. They are right there, in the genealogy that is the Table of Contents of the history leading to the Birth of Jesus, the tale of what God has done. There is a reason the Bible is THE bestseller of the ages.
In Jesus, the Man of Faith from a line of faithful people,
Pastor Peter
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