Scripture: Matthew 1:18-25 Breaking the Cycle Colleen, Henry, and I received a Christmas card from a some of Colleen s relatives in Alabama at the end of the week. We just got our own Christmas cards in the mail to our extended families this past week one of those photo cards you can order from Snapfish. This year, our Christmas card is a photo of us we had taken on our trip to Yellowstone in August. It s amazing looking at how Henry has changed over the course of the year even over these past four months and our families are eager for any pictures we send them. Everyone has been excited to see pictures of Henry as he s been transforming from a baby into a running, climbing, and talking ( or at least animal noise making) toddler. But really, the question everyone has wanted to know is which one of us he looks like most. For a while it was a tossup because he didn t really look like either of us. Over the past year and a half, we ve been comparing Henry to some baby pictures of our own, and at first, to be honest, there really wasn t much of a resemblance especially with all that blond hair. But then slowly, as his face filled out there was no question. You put Henry next to Colleen s baby pictures and that was it. Same nose, same cheeks, he still was a little more like me around the eyes, but that was nothing compared to the rest At least that was the case until we got that Christmas card this week. Inside that card was a picture of Colleen s grandfather when he was maybe seven or eight years old. As soon as we saw it, all our ideas about who Henry looks like the most were thrown out the window. We knew it wasn t me, but now we know it s not even Colleen. Looking at that photo of Colleen s grandfather was like looking at Henry in five or six years. The resemblance was undeniable. Incidentally, after Henry was born and we had no idea about this until after Henry was born we found out that Colleen s grandfather, even though his given name was William and he went by Bill, for whatever reason, his nephews and nieces all called him uncle Henry. 1
Heredity, passing on our genes and physical characteristics, it s such an amazing and powerful thing. The craps shoot of dominant and recessive genes. Hair color, eye color, whether your earlobes dangle, so many things are determined by forces beyond our control. But as the gospel of Matthew reminds us, we inherit far more than just our parents genes. The lectionary spares us the first part of Matthew 1 Jesus genealogy from Abraham to Joseph because in one way, it s just a list of names. But when we stop and read it, it s actually much more than that. And just as it was for us receiving a picture of Colleen s grandfather in the mail and finding out who Henry actually looks like, sometimes the key to understanding the present is to look at the past. So picking up from before our passage, Matthew starts out by giving us some of Jesus wouldbe ancestral highlights and lowlights. But Matthew doesn t just go father-to-son, father-to-son, father-to-son, as biblical genealogies usually do. Only a couple verses in, Matthew lets us know this isn t just a straight-shot run-of-the-mill kind of family tree. We start out well enough with people we should more-or-less remember from the past couple years Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac was the father of Jacob, And Jacob was the father of Judah (and his brothers). We re good to this point. It s what we d expect for the Messiah. After all, Abraham was the one God originally gave those three promises to the promises of land, descendants, and that the entire world would be blessed through them. Now, granted, Abraham did have a hard time believing those promises. And he did have an illegitimate son with his wife Sarah s servant girl. And he did leave that servant girl and her son to die in the desert after Sarah eventually did get 2
pregnant. So maybe Abraham wasn t really who we d choose to be the father of a nation, but hey. Why not? So from Abraham, we go to Isaac. And Isaac well he s probably best known for nearly being killed by Abraham on mount Moriah. We usually think of this story for Abraham s point of view, but what kind of emotional, psychological, and spiritual scars do you think that would leave on Isaac? Then from Isaac, we go to his son Jacob the little weasel who stole his older brother s birthright by playing a trick on their elderly father, stealing the blessing from Esau, who just happened to be, the bible tells us, Isaac s favorite son. And then Jacob goes on, you may remember, to continue the family tradition of favoritism, creating a terrible dynamic between his son Joseph and the rest of his sons dysfunction that culminated with Joseph s brothers nearly beating him to death and then selling him to foreign traders a sale that just happened to be Judah s idea (the Judah or Jesus family tree) who then in turn sell Joseph as a slave to the Egyptians. Abraham to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob, Jacob to Judah. This sounds like a stellar family line for the Messiah. But just in case we d glossed over all the more unsavory parts of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah, Matthew makes sure we re on the same page in the next verse by giving us more information than we need. We don t just find out about father and son in verse three, but Matthew tells us. Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. You remember Tamar s story from Genesis? She was Judah s Canaanite daughter-in-law. But when Judah s son, Tamar s husband, died, Judah refused to marry her off again, so Tamar 3
disguised herself as a prostitute and got her father-in-law Judah to sleep with her. One of the sons that came out of that was Perez, who continues Jesus family tree. Now, don t worry, we re not looking at everyone in this list, but, speaking of prostitutes, a couple verses further on we get to Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab. You should remember Rahab. She was the Canaanite prostitute in Jericho, the prostitute the Israelite spies went and stayed the night with when they went to scope things out. A little further on, there s David the great king David who was the father of Solomon the great king Solomon who was David s son by Bathsheba, the woman whose husband David had murdered in order to cover his adulterous desires. And Solomon, of course, well we all know Solomon s desire for the ladies was the stuff of legends. Now, going on, it s not all bad there s Hezekiah, who really was a good king, who worked tirelessly to reform the nation. Granted, he was the father of Manasseh, who, unlike Abraham, actually did sacrifice one of his own children. He burned him on an altar to the foreign god Molech. And things just continue to snowball. When we really read this list of Jesus genealogy, and actually look at players here, we might be tempted to say, what kind of a messiah could possibly come from this family tree? How could this line give us anything good and lasting? And that s when Matthew chimes in and says, you re right. And that s the point. Most of us are aware that it s not just our genes we pass on to our children. We see this in multi-generational cycles of abuse, or alcoholics, or workaholics, or even just inherited cynicism and pessimism. We all know families like that, and sometimes those families may be our own. 4
And that s why the start of Matthew gives us a new hope, because in this long line of inherited genes and inherited sin, a child is born who, by his very nature, has the ability to break this long cycle of pain and heartache. Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is not from your long dysfunctional line, full of opportunistic adulterers, murderers, womanizers and favorite-players. The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he, finally, will save his people from their sins. We ve spent all of human history trying to break our cycle of sin from the inside out. And all of human history has shown us there s no way we can do it without some help, without something outside ourselves, without something beyond us. We ourselves are too much a part of it. Matthew is here to say that outside help is here, and that in the birth of Jesus Christ to an unwed and terrified couple two thousand years ago having no clue what would come in the future we see the face of God breaking the cycle for us. Rev. Nick Preuninger December 22, 2013 5