Someone once described churches as places where we often present selective, redacted, highly edited versions of ourselves.
Our message to each other – and to the outside world via the trappings of the “good life” – is that, like Stacy’s mom, we’ve got it going on: Shiny, happy people living our best lives ever, even when we’re nowhere close to having all our ducks in a row. Yet the role that the Lord intends the Church to play is more like, in the words of Pope Francis, “a field hospital after battle.” Heal the wounds, then let’s talk!
Thus her mission to help us become strong, healthy bearers of pain and brokenness stands among the greatest blessings of the Church: A provider of safe spaces where people enjoy both invitation and permission to share struggles, sorrows, and traumas. After all, who among us doesn’t long to be more fully known and yet still unconditionally loved despite dysfunction that’s sometimes wholly profound?
Matthew seems to be asking the same rhetorical question when he begins his Gospel in a less-than-engaging way, starting off with a tedious, tongue-tying genealogy that traces Jesus’s family tree deep into the bowels of the Old Testament. But what sounds like a sure way to bore the pants off his readers is actually Matthew’s chosen way of declaring that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the purposes, all the hopes, and all the dreams of God’s long-suffering people: As another describes it, “One generation begetting brokenness of another generation, begetting brokenness of another generation, begetting brokenness of another generation.”
So no, Jesus isn’t just some swaddled-babe-turned-handsome-leading man who pops up out of nowhere and onto the world stage. Jesus is the rising star who finally makes his appearance long after the curtain has risen on God’s salvation drama – a spellbinding story of rescue and belief that God began writing generations and generations before coming to earth in the flesh of Jesus and stepping into the spotlight.
Jesus’s subtle-yet-grand entrance surprises with an unexpected plot twist that makes one thing crystal clear: God indeed wants to save the world from itself. God indeed wants to do something amazing and wonderful that puts evil in its proper place. Even though God’s people are stiff-necked on repentance and hell-bent on sin, God remains doggedly determined across the vast space of time immemorial to bring forgiveness to people’s sin and restore them to wholeness.
And by grace, across the ages, God steers the course of human history toward Jesus – the generational offspring of murderers, adulterers, and prostitutes; people who committed incest; liars, schemers, and idolaters. While God’s people are a rogues gallery of unfaithful miscreants and hellions, God remains utterly faithful to the heavenly promise of a savior – a messiah – who’ll rescue and redeem everyone and everything. And oddly enough, that Savior – this Messiah – comes to us by becoming one of us. So, hang in there through this long list of who’s who, and listen for the Word of the Lord revealing to you what’s what.
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 the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:1-17)
Every family tree has a few bent or broken branches, and Jesus’s extended family has a few skeletons in its closet, too.
There’s Rahab, a prostitute who helps the Israelites capture the city of Jericho.
There’s Tamar, who tricked Judah into fathering her son after he refused to let her remarry.
There’s Ruth, who as a widow remarried to a family member many years her senior so she could hold onto her dead husband’s property.
And the dark family secrets don’t end with the sordid sexual affairs of the women.
There’s David, the great king of the Israelites, who seduces a woman he spots bathing on the roof of his palace. Then, to make Bubble Bathsheeba his own, he conveniently arranges for her husband to be killed in battle so David could scoop her up in marriage.
And of course, there’s poor ’ol Joseph, who desperately wants to break his engagement to Mary after finding out that the bride-to-be is pregnant by whom Joseph assumes is another man. It takes no less than God appearing to Joseph in a dream to convince him to proceed with the marriage, even though Joseph knows full well that the scandalous marriage will set the sharp tongues of gossip a-wagging and the gnarly fingers of judgment a-pointing.
When you dig deep into the tangled, twisted roots that sprout the person of Jesus, you find saints mixing freely and easily with sinners, and more often than not, the line between saint and sinner is at best fuzzy and blurry. And that bitter, distasteful truth is our hard-to-swallow pill, too, for by baptism, we have been adopted into the family of Jesus, and like it or not, the flock we’ve been hooked up with has more than its share of black sheep abiding with the shepherds in the fields by night.
Which is the disturbing, surreal picture that Matthew wants to paint with bold strokes at the get-go of his story: It is through the lives of ordinary people – some more broken and imperfect than others – that God gets done what God wants to get done. God taps into the holy in the ordinary to bring to fulfillment every jot and tittle of the promises that God made. Through the ordinary, God acts in the extraordinary, accomplishing the expected through the unexpected.
That’s the Good News of understanding who you are and where you came from – whether it be Jesus or any one of us!
When you dig into your past, you might not like what you find: Like the great-grandfather who spent time in federal prison for embezzling from the local bank, or the cousin who made and sold bathtub gin to the Capone gang during the days of Prohibition. You’d just as soon identify with the Civil War hero or long-serving church organist in your past than with the draft-dodger or exotic entertainer. Greater still, you’d much prefer to remember the good things you did over those times when you stumbled and fell. But like it or not, it’s all there – warts and all, a part of who you are, and without any one of them, well, you wouldn’t be here and who you are.
Even so, you struggle with it all.
How long, if at all, should the sins of your genetic past shine a bad light on you? For that matter, how long, if at all, must you stand in bad light for the sins of your every-day here and now?
How long, if at all, must you shun or be shunned for each and every sin of commission or omission, each and every act that crosses the line and makes you either a trespasser of places where your mother warned you not to go or an easy target for those who have no respect for well-established boundaries and trespass against you?
Those seem to be the muscular questions with which we’re wrestling as the scandal of sexual misdeed grows wider and deeper into the spheres of government and other halls of power with each passing news cycle. In announcing on-air some years ago that her “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer had been fired for sexual misconduct, a thick-throated Savanna Guthrie spoke with the heavy heart of many, and I quote,
“We are grappling with a dilemma that so many people have faced these past few weeks: How do you reconcile your love for someone with the revelation that they’ve behaved badly? And I don’t have the answer to that.”
God grappled with the same dilemma: How do you reconcile your love for a people with the revelation that they’ve behaved badly? Someone who comes from a long line of bad-behavers and seems more inclined to carry-on the family tradition than make a clean break with the past? Finding the answer strains the limits of the human mind, but the answer came gracefully to the divine heart. How do you reconcile your love for someone with the revelation that they’ve behaved badly?
The answer: Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God With Us – whose arrival in our world can move line-crossers, rule-breakers, and bad-actors out of bad light and into divine light.
Jesus Christ, Wisdom from on High – the living, breathing advent of God’s grace and forgiveness who declares in no uncertain terms that, even though our past shapes our present, our past doesn’t have to shape our future.
Jesus Christ, Great Lord of Might – the very-real presence of heaven come down among us who ensures that our futures are held in merciful hands filled with divine promises of mercy and justice, goodness and well-being.
Jesus Christ – the Black Friday, door-buster-deal-of-a-gift that is ours to unwrap with the reckless joy and abandon of the 4-year-old who really has spent the last year being more naughty than nice but nevertheless finds a great, big box wrapped in shiny paper waiting under the tree come Christmas morning.
Jesus Christ, the Brightest of Morning Stars – the Lord’s answer to reconciling his love for you and me with the revelation and you and I have behaved badly.
Jesus Christ, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace – by whose Holy Spirit becomes your answer and mine to reconciling our love for others with the revelation that they have behaved badly – sometimes even as badly as you and I.
What could have been a source of shame for Jesus – his messed-up ancestry – was anything but, and therefore needn’t be for those of us whose personal histories are long-shadowed.
Past is not prologue. Jesus himself came from a long line of murderers, adulterers, cheats and frauds, so most definitely there’s good hope for us all. Jesus breaks the mold in showing that generations of dysfunction don’t have to predict the future. Cycles can be broken. Systems can be replaced. Families – and therefore whole communities and entire nations – can be and are healed when repentance is the norm, and forgiveness is the standard, and healing is the resolution.
Far too many folks believe that they are destined to live out and carry forward whatever awful, dreadful family traits shaped them. A Jesus whose family tree is distinguished and revered would have suggested that maybe that’s true – as would a Jesus who shows up from nowhere, fully grown and without the emotional baggage of heritage.
The actual Jesus, though, shows us something different. We are not our bloodlines or our family histories. Because in Christ, as we sing of Bethlehem: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward all!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on the Twelfth Day of Christmas, Sunday, January 5, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Chris Davis, Scott Dudley, Scott Hoezee, and Peter Wehner inform the message.