“Genealogy of Jesus” Matthew 1:1-17

 I was recently talking to a fellow pastor about and somehow the conversation turned to the topic “things you don’t know about me.” Right away, I knew what my answer would be. I grew up in a family that had something historical about every single vacation that we went on. Friends, we went to the beach and had to visit a museum. And yet, as frustrating as that was as a child, I am so glad that happened now that I look back. It taught me to appreciate history.

Even ancient history like what we find in today’s scripture lesson. Hands up, how many of you when you get to the genealogy section of scripture skip right past it? Let’s be honest - a lot of us have done so over the years because its a list of names that hard to pronounce. 

Yet, here on the cusp of a new year, we are looking back to the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew - which starts by tracing back Jesus’s genealogy, his lineage, so that we know, know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the Messiah.

For the next several months we are going to be journeying together through the Gospel of Matthew. Each of the Gospels tells the story of Jesus in a slightly different way. You may notice that there are some things written in one Gospel that don’t show up in another. That’s because the writers are trying to communicate the Good News of Jesus Christ to specific audiences at the time. 

Matthew is writing to Jewish people in order to show them that Jesus is the promised Savior. So he traces lines back to the writings they know - what we call the Old Testament, what they simply refer to as the Hebrew Scriptures. He wants to make known that Jesus is the son of God and the fulfillment of the scriptures. 

To that end, Matthew starts off the Gospel bearing his name by tracing Jesus’s genealogy back - way back. Back 42 generations. All in order to establish for the audience to which he is writing Jesus’s identity as the Messiah who has been promised and announced. The fulfillment of all hope. 

In recent years there has been a resurgence of tracing back our own roots and history through genealogy. There are places where you can trace your ancestors. Other businesses allow you to find distant relatives. But perhaps what has been most meaningful to me has been the process of mapping my genealogy. 

Now often when we hear the words mapping our genealogy the first image that comes to mind is of a large family tree. Maybe the type that some of you may have or even ones that were written in the family Bible. But that’s not quite the type of mapping that I’m talking about. Instead I’m talking about a family genogram. 

A few years ago, I took a course where the genogram was described this way - family tress show who is related to who, but a genogram shows how we are connected to one another. Another way to say this is that genograms don’t just show names and relationships, but family’s joys, sorrows, and brokenness. 

Because Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience who knows the stories of at least some of the names that he is bringing up, he is presenting more a genogram - showing all of the connections and family stories without ever having to say them outloud.

Think about it - Jesus is yes, the son of Abraham and David, but what does that mean? Well who was Abraham - the patriarch of promise. The one who God did an amazingly unexpected thing with - went from being childless in his old age to being promised that he would be the father of more people than could be counted amongst the stars or the sand on the seashore. Abraham is also the father of the covenant that God made with his people to be their God. Now here is Jesus, showing up in an unexpected way to be the fulfillment of God’s promise - coming in the flesh to be the Savior of the world. 

And David - David was a man after God’s own heart. He was the one chosen to be the King of Israel and was promised that a descendent from his throne will reign forever. By this point in time, that isn’t true in an earthly sense, but God is still keeping his promise by sending Jesus, the Messiah, to come from his throne. 

But that doesn’t mean that everyone in Jesus’s lineage was perfect. In fact, there are some really odd people within it who are full of contradictions. Jacob - a trickster who is also the father of the tribes of Israel. Judah - the namesake of the southern part of Israel that was the place of great kings and where the Messiah was said to come from. Also the brother who decided to sell Jospeh into slavery. 

Judah who also lied to his daughter-in-law, putting off his obligation to provide another son for her to marry after two of them died. So that daughter-in-law, one of the women oddly mentioned in Jesus’s lineage in a time when that didn’t happen, took matters into her own hands and positioned herself in a way to be mistaken by Judah as a temple prostitute - and ended up being the father of his own grandchildren. 

A few generations down the line, we find another woman - Ruth, a foreigner who chose to return with her mother-in-law, Namoi to a land unknown to her, out of a sense of fierce loyalty and protection. While in that land, she gleaned at the fields of a man named Boaz, who took a risk in marrying her, thus grafting her into this lineage as well. 

Two generations later we find Jesse, who yes, was the father of King David, but also the one who thought every other son was the one who God would choose to be the future king of Israel except for David.

And then near the end we find another oddity - the presence of Joseph. Joesph, who was not Jesus’s biological father, but reminds us of the people who are in our lives who take us in, in so many ways, and make us part of their family as well.

Friends, we are standing on the cusp of a new year. And I wish I could tell you that this year would be smooth sailing for you and your family - but the truth is that life is messy. We only need to look at some of the stories in Jesus’s family tree in order to realize that. But when I also look at this genealogy I notice a few things that I invite you to carry into the year 2023.

First, God is faithful to his promises. Yes, God may keep those promises in surprising ways, but God is truth worthy. Are we going to lean into that sense of trust this year and what do we need to maybe pick up or put down in our lives in order to do so?

Two, we are humans. I know this may seem like a pretty obvious point - but we are humans and so are the folks who composed Jesus’s family tree. God uses humans - even in all of our frailty to be part of the story of God, which is beyond our wildest imaginations. Sometimes we get to catch glimpses of what God is doing on this side of eternity - sometimes we aren’t quite sure. But God is using you as his instrument in a way to make known his glory.

Third, our family extends beyond the people who gave us brith and compose our family tree. It includes our spiritual family as well, who play an important role in our lives and in the lives of this community.

Friends, I invite you to sit with this scripture in prayer this week and allow it to become more than a long list of names. May it seep into your spirit and speak to you about your family - spiritual and biological. May it lead you to a bigger vision of what God may be inviting you to this year. And may it, above all, open up your heart and spirit to the surprises of our Lord. Amen.