Family History

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

12.22.13; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Matthew 1:1-17

So we’ve wandered away from the pre-assigned readings a little bit this morning, into the section that begins Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus.  Why?  Why, you may ask, would I have subjected you to seventeen verses of that?  

C’mon, please, something Christmasy, anything Christmasy, but please, not another list, because Lord have mercy, you already have lists waiting for you at home.  Those lists weigh on your minds as the minutes click away to Christmas day with the tension-building relentlessness of a self-destruct sequence in some sci fi flick.  “An Alien versus Predator Christmas Special,” perhaps.  Just don’t open that large egg shaped package, unless you’re planning on having Christmas dinner end unpleasantly.

And still, in the back of our minds, that list of things we haven’t done clicks down in Siri’s voice.  “Seasonal autodestruct failsafe has been passed.  Your Christmas will be a complete failure and your children will hate you forever in nineteen.  Eighteen.  Seventeen.  Sixteen.”  

But it’s Advent, and as we’ve said for the last four Sundays as we’ve lit those candles, Advent means arrival, and arrivals are beginnings.  Given that we’re talking about the birth of Jesus in just over a day and a half, you’d think starting at the beginning would be a good thing, but here?  Here at the first verse of the first chapter of the first book of the New Testament?  Hoo boy.

As a writer who struggles with only occasional to come up with the best possible start to my stories, that hook, that sentence that draws you in?  Wow.  The greatest story ever told kinda doesn’t exactly get off to a riveting start.  

It’s a list, one that you can easily imagine being read by Ben Stein in a class once he’s stopped saying “Bueller?  Bueller?  Bueller?”  And if the Gospels are our greatest tool for evangelism, the best way to teach a broken world about the joyous message of Jesus Christ, why for the love of Pete would we start them this way?

That the wise Christian souls who select our readings every year have chosen to skip over this passage makes a ton of sense, not least because it’s the sort of text that makes most readers break down and weep openly in front of the whole congregation. Shealtiel?  Who names their kids Shealtiel?  Probably the same kind of folks who name their sons Salmon.  Not the fish.  Not sahmohn. SaL - Mon, like Poh-Keh-Mon.  There’s nothing like publicly reading seventeen verses of one barely pronounceable name after another to reinforce your fear of public speaking.  

Instead, they start with our second passage from today, as Joseph the father of Jesus struggles to come to terms with the reality that his new bride is pregnant and he’s not the father.  That passage, and Joseph’s acceptance of this child, that feels like Christmas.  But this one?  It gets skipped for a reason.

So why did Matthew start his story that way?  Why is a long list of names the way we begin?

Because to understand Jesus, it helps to know the family he was born into.  That’s what Matthew’s doing here, because each of these names isn’t just a name, stuck onto the equivalent of an ancient Judean organizational chart.  These are people with stories, part of a web of relationships that went back thousands of years.

And when Matthew writes this list, he’s writing it to people who would have known exactly what he was talking about.  Matthew’s Gospel was written to a community of Christians who were still deeply connected to their Jewish heritage, and every single name on that list would have echoed with a personal story.  These were old family tales, each name opening up like a flower with a rich narrative all it’s own.

Oh, Abraham we know, because that’s where the story of the family begins.   And we know Isaac his son.  We know Isaac’s tricksy son Jacob, who wheeled and dealed his way through life, stealing blessings and always with some scheme up his sleeve.  There are women, too, on this list Matthew has slapped together.   They tend to be the...well...how to put this...the “interesting” women.  

There’s Rahab, who worked as a foreign prostitute before she married into the family.  There’s Ruth, who even though she came from a people who were enemies managed to prove her faithfulness, so much so that Rahab’s son couldn’t help but fall in love with her.  

Like father, like son, those folks listening would have thought.

There’s Bathsheba, when David saw her bathing on the roof, and her beauty and the moonlight overthrew him.  Matthew’s still a little unfairly cheesed at her, to the point that he won’t even speak her name.  You know, that woman.  The wife of Uriah.  But the kid that came out of that sordid mess was Solomon the wise.  Can’t leave him out, now, can you?

Name after name, and mixed in with the names, the times of family triumph and disaster are whispering echoes.  “King David,” says Matthew, the only time in this long list he uses a title.  King David.  Remember when he was King.  We had a real King, once, a weeping, singing, a beautiful and flawed poet-warrior.

And in the list, too, a little note...remember when we were forced to move, when everything we had was torn away from us and we found ourselves owned by the man, struggling to get by in a strange land?  And heads would nod.  Yeah, we all know what that feels like.

It’s a list, sure, and lists are boring, but churning just under the surface of the list is the story of a family going forty-two generations back.

And Lord have mercy, families are many things, but boring is rarely one of them.  Families are messy and complicated and alive, so much so that maybe a little bit of boring might be welcome for a change.

This time of year, we feel that strongly.  Because this season is the time when families gather and reconvene.  Or they don’t, and we feel that too.  It’s a time of year when those memories of our family life mix and bubble to the surface, when old patterns of life seems to rise back up and claim our souls, for good or ill.

It’s a time to sing and laugh and reconnect.  It’s the time when we remember the laughter of voices that are now passed, and old wounds of loss and misunderstanding and betrayal reopen just enough to sting.

It’s the mess of family, and that, I think, is why Matthew brings up those stories.  This is who we are, he’s saying.  This is where we came from.  

And now into this mess, we’ve brought something new.  We’ve chosen to let it in, just as Joseph chose to claim that child as his own.  That’s the promise of this Season, that into the mess and flesh and chaos of human story, something new has entered in.  And that new thing has the promise of changing the whole feel of the story.

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.