The Genealogy of Jesus

If I said to you, “George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy,” you’d know that I was giving a highlight reel of American presidents. You might even think, given how admired those presidents are, that I am getting ready to tell a story about the American character, recollecting nobler moments in our history.
 
Or, if I said to you, “Jaworski, Cunningham, McNabb, Vick, Foles, Bradford, Wentz, and Hurts,” you’d know that I was setting up a story about the highs and lows of being an Eagles fan over the years.
 
In other words, a list of names as a prologue creates context and expectations for what happens next. Tonight’s Gospel works the same way. These names reveal something about this baby, Emmanuel, God with us.
 
Tonight the genealogy of Jesus is divided into three blocks, each with fourteen generations.
 
The first block starts with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so on, until it reaches fourteen generations of patriarchs, up to the kingship of David. Each one of these names is worthy of a homily in its own right; each one of these names is a story of great faith, of God working through history to reveal himself and build the covenant with us.
 
Four unusual women are mixed among these first fourteen generations. Their presence is a clue that deserves extra attention. If you’re telling an origin story in the pagan Mediterranean world of the first century, building up the prestige of your hero, you would probably not include women. And if you did, you would probably work with well-regarded women like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.
 
But instead, mixed with tonight’s patriarchs, there is Tamar (a prostitute), Rahab (another prostitute), Ruth (who seduced someone), and the wife of Uriah (who inspired adultery and murder). It’s also noteworthy that three are not Jewish, and the fourth marries a Gentile. Get a Bible with decent footnotes, and you can track all their stories in the Old Testament.
 
The next fourteen generations are David’s successors in the royal line of Israel. If you look them up, you’ll see that when the kings are humble, worship rightly, and follow God’s law, the whole nation prospers. When the kings get proud and take matters into their own hands, the nation suffers humiliation from foreign armies, which is why the line ends with the Babylonian exile.
 
Finally, the third and last group of fourteen generations – after the patriarchs, after the unusual women, after the good and the bad kings – this final group, running from the exile up to Mary and Joseph - appears to be a group of historically unknown characters, remnants of a once proud line, living and laboring in obscurity.
 
If the Bible were a con job, if the Biblical authors were imitating pagan mythology, if Bible stories were just window dressing for generic spirituality, all of this genealogy would have been told differently. Matthew could have airbrushed out all this embarrassing stuff, and told a more impressive, glamorous story. The councils and bishops of the early church had a second chance to tidy things up – they didn’t have to put this Gospel in the canon, or they could have at least edited this chapter out.
 
But instead, this genealogy is intentionally front and center, in a place where nobody can miss it. Why? What is being revealed about the baby we meet at the end of all these names?
 
The climactic sentence refers to Jesus as the “Messiah,” a word from ancient Hebrew and Greek meaning “the anointed one.” His identity is always going to be tied to the Jewish covenant and the royal lineage. He is worthy of homage and reverence. His identity makes him a threat to Caesar and all worldly powers. His royalty makes him the center of a people, of a particular history. He is the sovereign God, the fulfillment of our hopes.
 
And yet when we first meet him through this genealogy, his family tree also includes all the oddballs, sinful and broken people. At the end of it all, instead of a remote king, there’s a humble baby on the way, due to be born in a manger.
 
This humility changes everything for what happens next. If it was the birth of someone like Zeus or Odin, then the genealogy should have been airbrushed, and we’d receive a Gospel of pride and worldly ambition. It would all fit very well with our culture. But what we’ve got here is the opposite of all that.
 
The challenge is, if the Gospel tells us that the King works in this humble, patient, merciful way, can we trust him? Can we put our weight on this story?
 
Think about how powerful and creative the real Gospel actually is. Take Rahab, one of those four dodgy women, one of the prostitutes. In tonight’s genealogy, she is re-cast as one of the King’s great-grandmothers. With Jesus in our lives, our story can change like that too. God can rewrite a story with oddballs and scoundrels, turning despair into hope, darkness into light. Tonight’s genealogy is an invitation to open ourselves to this grace and re-cast our own stories.
 
Let me offer a practical example of how this works.
 
Honestly, I personally had a tough week last week. I was worried about the news, financial challenges, some difficult decisions. But Jesus interrupted my week, changing where I directed my attention.
 
It happened when I went to visit a friend. I thought it would be a short holiday hello. But it ended up becoming a long conversation. He told me his conversion story, and I will remember it as long as I live.
 
Nowadays, this guy is a successful businessman, with a happy marriage and grandchildren. But 40 years ago, it could have all turned out so differently. He grew up with an abusive dad and a promiscuous mom. By his early 20’s, he had become angry, depressed, and alcoholic.
 
One night 40 years ago, on the way home from work, he had a vague sense that he needed some spirituality in his life. He stopped in to visit a center city church that just happened to be open. The pastor was walking around the sanctuary. They made eye contact and started talking.
 
The man started telling the pastor a version of his life story. He talked about how his father abused him, how his mom humiliated him, how he could never catch a break, how everyone seemed against him. The pastor listened, and said a prayer over my friend, something like “Lord Jesus, you know X [my friend], no matter what anyone else says, we thank you that you see him and you love him.”
 
And my friend felt an inner conviction, and inner presence. He says that he felt the Lord looking at him, and all Jesus said was “I know you.” I know you.
 
That night my friend goes home. His heart is beating a little quicker. He picks up a Bible. But it makes no sense. He reads the words but it’s gobbledygook.
 
Something stirred in his conscience. He thought about what it might mean for Jesus to know him, to really know and see him. The next day, he went back to the same church. He finds the pastor again. He says “this time, I want to tell you my story again…but this time, I’m going to tell you what I did.”
 
In other words, in the first story, it was always somebody else’s fault. He airbrushed. He deflected. He edited out the embarrassing sins in his origin story.
 
But in the second telling, like tonight’s genealogy, my friend found the courage to pull back the mask and drop the excuses. He knew that Jesus already knew the truth – and loved him anyway – and that gave him new courage. He was able to look again at the parts of his history that he had airbrushed, and this courage opened the door to repenting, apologizing, and starting again.
 
After an honest confession, the floodgates of grace opened. My friend went home that night and opened the Bible again. That time, it all made sense. The Lord’s humility. The invitation to face the mess, repent, change and grow.

He’s been a daily Bible reader ever since. He’s not perfect, but the narrative of his life has changed. He’s no longer paralyzed by his sins. He has transcended his wounds. He’s no longer depressed, and he’s broken an abusive cycle that went back generations.
 
This is the creativity that God’s grace can unleash for us. This is letting Jesus be born in your life, even when your own genealogy is messy too. God knows you as you. He knows our little stories each ordinary day, and he knows the bigger stories that accumulate over the years. We don’t have to be perfect. But the genealogy of Jesus testifies that he can take whatever we offer him, and redirect it for good.
 
The tragedy would be to get defensive, to try and be self-sufficient, to haggle over our sins and blame everyone else. That would be like airbrushing our genealogy. Denial is a strategy many people use to get by, but it keeps a lid on grace.
 
With Christmas, something genuinely unexpected has happened, and we’re invited into a new situation. Tonight God comes in the flesh. Tonight eternity has broken into our world. Tonight he is smiling up at us from the manger, a soft beautiful baby. We’re created for intimacy with him, and his genealogy testifies that this plan has been gestating for a long time, that God has been at work in the world.
 
Tonight, we’re part of a story that begins with God knowing us and loving us anyway, inviting us to loosen our guarded hearts, so that we can return that gaze of love.