In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The Nativity and Four
Feasts is upon us. Christ is coming to be born
the King of the Jews. the hope of all the Gentiles,
the son of David and the son of Abraham. And
yet, in St. Matthew's male -centered genealogy,
Christ isn't actually the son of David or Abraham
or any of these men. Matthew makes that painstakingly
clear for us. Abraham begat Isaac. Abraham fathered
Isaac. Abraham sired Isaac. And Isaac begat Jacob.
And Jacob begat Judah and his brother. And Jesse
begat David the king. And on and on and on until
Joseph. But Joseph doesn't beget Christ. No,
Joseph is the husband of Mary. Of Mary, Jesus
was born, who is called. In a genealogy that
records the act of beginning by 41 different
men, Matthew intends us to feel this abrupt break.
Christ isn't begotten by Joseph. Rather, he is
in fact born, born of Mary. If Joseph doesn't
beget Christ, then who does? Well, God. God the
Father begets Christ in eternity. Christ is begotten
of the Father before all ages, but born of Mary
in time. And we can spend hours upon hours on
just that statement alone. Christ has no human
father because his father is God who alone begets
him. And yet, by being born of the Virgin, he
assumes the flesh of his mother, Mary. She bears
God in the flesh. That's why we call her the
Theotokos, literally the God birther, the one
who gave birth to God, the mother of God. Although
Joseph isn't Christ's biological father, the
genealogy nevertheless catalogs a people with
whom Christ voluntarily identifies, manifesting
his own divine father's solidarity to these people.
A solidarity so deep, so profound, that Christ's
Father, in fact, assumes their names into his
own title. So, for example, in the Old Testament,
you'll hear this in the New as well. Christ's
Father calls himself the God of Abraham, the
God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Israel,
the God of Judah, the God of David. He considers
these forefathers holy and beloved. They believe
in the Lord. They hope in the Lord. They love
him. They serve him. Nevertheless, in their earthly
lives, none are perfect. In fact, many in this
genealogy fail miserably. You just have to read
the stories about them. But God loves them. And
so, like father, like son, Christ identifies
with these. As the father voluntarily becomes
the God of Abraham and the God of Jacob, the
God of David, Christ now voluntarily assumes
their flesh to become the son of David, the son
of Abraham, to save his people from their sins.
But besides these men, the genealogy also significantly
highlights four women with whom Christ identifies.
Four women who anticipate his own mother, Tamar,
Rahab, Ruth, and Uriah's wife. It's technically
what Matthew calls her, Bathsheba. Unlike Mary,
these women are all foreigners. They are all
Gentiles, two Canaanites, a Moabitess, and a
Hittite. Like Mary, however, these four women
were all involved in highly irregular and scandalous
-looking relationships. After Tamar is widowed
by two of Judah's sons, Judah refuses to give
her in marriage to his youngest, thinking she's
cursed, fearing that his son, his last son, will
die, and disregards the Old Testament leveret.
marriage tradition, which requires a brother
to marry his dead brother's wife and produce
children. To preserve Judah's line, which anticipates
the Christ, Tamar, however, disguises herself
as a prostitute and posts up at one of Judah's
favorite hangout spots in order to be seen taken,
bedded, and impregnated by her father -in -law.
In the end, when all is revealed, Tamar is vindicated
as Judah declares her to be more righteous than
he. Matthew wants us to recall these events when
he includes Tamar in Christ's genealogy. Unlike
Tamar, who disguises herself, Rahab is actually
a prostitute when the two Israelite spies enter
her brothel looking for what men typically look
for. in such unsavory places. The Hebrew in Joshua
explicates their desires to sleep there, as in
to sleep with women. While the two spies are
looking for such things, Rahab is looking for
God. So she hides the spies, she helps them escape,
but not before confessing Israel's God as the
God of the universe and begging to be saved from
Jericho's impending doom. Again, Matthew wants
us to recall these events by preserving Rahab's
memory in Christ's genealogy as the mother of
Boaz. As a Moabitess, Ruth descends from the
incestuous union of Lot and his daughters, where
the daughters uncover their father's nakedness
and sleep with him to continue his line. Ruth,
however, after her husband dies and leaves her
childless, remains faithful to Naomi. her bitter
mother -in -law, and identifies with Naomi's
people and her God. Eventually she meets Boaz
and at the prompting of her mother -in -law dresses
like a harlot and goes into the threshing floor
at night to uncover Boaz's nakedness. In the
book of Ruth, when the author mentions how Ruth
uncovers Boaz's feet, this is a Hebrew euphemism
for uncovering nakedness. offering herself to
him, echoing what the mother of Moab did to her
father Lot. By including Ruth, Matthew again
wants us to recall these things in Christ's genealogy.
The wife of Uriah, that is Bathsheba, found herself
taken by King David after he beheld her bathing
from his roof. David took another man's wife,
his friend, his friend Uriah the Hittite, slept
with her, committed adultery. After realizing
she was pregnant, David then arranged for his
friend's murder, sending him out to battle in
the front lines, telling the rest of his soldiers
to abandon him in order that he would be killed,
freeing David to take Uriah's wife as his own.
After the child of the adultery dies, the couple
produces another child, Solomon, for whom Bathsheba
schemes to preserve his kingship. solidifying
Solomon's place in Christ's genealogy. Through
scandalous events, these four women all take
initiative in preserving a lineage that becomes
Christ's. But through their initiative, the Holy
Spirit manifests his secret activity. Matthew
includes these four women because scandal and
divine activity converge in them to bring about
the Messiah. thus anticipating Mary. Mary's pregnancy
is considered a scandal in ancient Near Eastern
parlance because she hasn't yet lived with Joseph,
her husband, her betrothed one. The son in her
womb, however, was put there not by another man,
but by the Holy Spirit in order to bring forth
the Christ hidden to Joseph. hidden to the public,
but mentioned by Matthew from the very outset,
even before Joseph knows. In Mary, God does something
radically new. In the past, God intervened to
work in spite of moral or biological deficiencies
in human parents, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah.
But in Mary, he works in spite of the total absence
of a human father. No male human begets Christ,
already begotten. He is conceived in the virgin's
womb by the Holy Spirit. In this way, she becomes
the God -bearer, different from every single
woman who preceded her or follows her. There
is no one like her. Christ becomes Emmanuel,
God with us, because the virgin bears God in
her. And knowing that Christ isn't his son, Joseph
has to enter into essentially the very same thing
we heard in Hebrews 11, the epistle reading.
A life of Christ. Joseph must nevertheless identify
with him at the risk of shame, at the risk of
every danger that will come to him and his family.
mirroring in his own life what Christ actually
does for Joseph, what Christ came into this world
to do for Joseph, and the entire line of David
and Abraham and all of humanity. Christ voluntarily
enters into the fullness of human life and identifies
with it, the joys and the sadness, the faith
and the faithlessness, the righteousness and
the sin, the hope. and the shattered dreams,
the kingdom and the exile, the life and the death,
all of it, Christ inhabits it. He assumes it.
He integrates it into himself. He fills it with
divine life, God with us, manifesting how God
is still with them. Abraham and David, all of
the saints, the God of the living, not the God
of the dead. Obeying the angel's command, Joseph
takes Mary into his house, but refrains. for
meritoriously knowing her. Joseph calls Mary's
son Jesus, for he will save his people from their
sins. Yeshua, Hebrew. Jesus. Salvation. Savior.
God saves. The Lord saves. Victory. Healing.
Another chance. In Jesus' coming, he saves from
sin. In Jesus' coming, he conquers death. In
Jesus' coming, he overcomes the demonic powers
of this world. In Jesus' coming, he brings healing
in his wings. In Jesus' coming, he shines his
light and the darkness scatters. Because in his
coming, God comes down. God with us, God for
us, and God in us. Brothers and sisters, he identifies
with our humanity. All of it. Everything that
we are, everything that we carry, the good things,
the faith, the hope, the love, all of it, as
weak as it might be, but also the mess, the brokenness,
the shame, the failures, the darkness of our
life, the cold season prompts us to these things.
What about our own hearts? Jesus invades all
of those things as the God of love that need
to be filled with his life and presence. Let
us prepare. Let us rejoice. Let us shake off
anything that would hinder from us. Let us confess
anything we need to confess for looking at this
genealogy. There can be nothing that disqualifies
us from being loved by Christ. Nothing that would
keep us at arm's length from Christ's love and
mercy and compassion to us. Nothing. No one is
above. No one is... No one. Christ will not let
anyone go. Let us enlarge our hearts, as the
Apostle puts it, so that Christ might come, so
that Christ might enter into us, filling us with
life. light, love, joy, and peace, and even with
himself, Christ dwelling richly, born in our
hearts. Amen?