Advent 4a; Dec 22, 2019; Matthew 1; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM
Today we heard Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus. No donkey, no stable, no angels, no shepherds—just this business about the scandal of Mary’s untimely pregnancy. But Matthew doesn’t start there—we jumped into Matthew’s gospel at verse 18. The first 17 verses never get read in church on a Sunday morning- in fact they’re rarely read at all. Those first 17 verses are the genealogical account of the ancestors of Jesus. 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Exile, and 14 more to the birth of Jesus. Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, etc. etc. etc. At first it seems like a neat tidy package. But, Matthew leaves out a bunch of the people listed in Samuel and Kings and his list of names is different from Luke’s list. Clearly, Matthew is making a point in his choice of those 42 hard to pronounce names. The truly unusual and risqué content that drives the whole point home of starting a gospel with what seems to be a boring old list of names, is Matthew’s inclusion of 4 women plus Mary in his list—five women whose lives were cloaked in scandal, referred to by one scholar as the shady ladies.
Matthew was written in about 85 AD for a particularly Jewish oriented community of Christians. Paul didn’t include anything about the birth of Jesus, neither did Mark. Luke’s account is the one we normally hear that includes all those Christmas pageant characters and John who wrote later still starts his account with that metaphysical poetry about the Word of God, the Light and the Darkness, and the character of time. Matthew grounds his story in the history of the Jewish people. He starts with Abraham, through David, through kings and the exile, all the way to Joseph—and then, after all that, he says Joseph’s role is just husband of Mary.
Matthew frames the story in scandal, Mary pregnant too early, Joseph’s pain and his decision to “put her away quietly.” A Jewish tradition gives meaning to that phrase and reveals more about the scandalous aspect of this story. You see, in that culture, if a woman was raped in an urban setting and could not prove she had resisted the rape she would be put to death by stoning. If she was raped in a rural area and couldn’t prove her resistance, then she could be “put away quietly.” The idea was that in a rural area she could scream her lungs out but there might not be anyone around for miles—so in that case she could be given the benefit of the doubt. Joseph’s dream offers an alternative explanation of Mary’s situation. Matthew’s inclusion of four other women reinforces the point.
The first shady lady is Tamar. Her story is in Genesis 38. She is the daughter in law of Judah, Jacob’s son. Tamar married Judah’s oldest son but he dies childless. So, the next son of Judah is supposed to marry his widow—the second son is Onan. If you want scandal—read his story for yourself. It’s too long for this sermon—He gets out of marrying Tamar. The next son, Shela, is 5 years old and not yet a suitable spouse. So, Judah sends Tamar home to her father’s house promising the marry her to Shela when he is of age. Tamar tries to put back the broken pieces of her life, cast off, without status.
Years later, Shela is grown and Judah’s wife dies. He has business in Tamar’s town. She sets a trap for him by dressing like a prostitute and sitting at the city gate. He sees her and once again revealing his character he decides to avail himself of her services. They make a deal as he doesn’t have the payment with him. He gives her his signet ring and a couple pieces of clothing as a promise to pay. A few days later he sends a servant with the payment, but Tamar is no longer at the gate. The townspeople deny there has ever been a prostitute who sits there. He tries to find her but can’t. He is worried about his reputation and decides to let her keep the things to avoid becoming a laughingstock. Three months go by and he hears his daughter in law is pregnant. He is “wrathful” as the bible puts it. He makes moves to burn her to death. She sends the ring and clothing with a note—by the way, the father is the owner of these items. Judah repents and takes her into his own harem. She produces twins. One is named Perez. Matthew tells us that it is through this incestuous and deceitful relationship that Jesus’ own lineage comes.
What? How is this part of the Christmas story? But wait, there’s more… a few generations later the lineage flows through Rahab—she’s the prostitute that harbored Joshua’s spies in the battle of Jericho. Then comes Ruth. Ruth is the Moabite daughter-in-law of Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, who had fled Judah with their two sons in a time of famine. Having moved to Moab the two sons marry Moabite women. All three men die there, leaving a Jewish mother and her 2 Moabite daughters-in-law. One daughter-in-law returns to her Moabite family. Ruth and Naomi survive by gleaning the fields. Naomi knows the ways of the world and sees that the owner of the fields is Boaz, a distant kinsman of her Elimelech. According to the same law that featured in Tamar’s story, Boaz could marry Ruth and care for them. So, Naomi hatches a plan. Ruth dresses her best and seeks out Boaz when he is drunk at a festival. She gets under the blanket with passed-out Boaz. In the old movies, the scene would fade out at this point and our imaginations could fill in what happened next. Boaz, wakes up, sees what has happened and does the honorable thing. He marries her and through the sneaky seduction it all ends well.
Matthew moves on to the next shady lady, so shady we aren’t even told her name, just that she’s the wife of Uriah. If you know your bible stories the way Matthew’s original audience did, you know the wife of Uriah is none other than Bathsheba who King David was smitten with. He watches her bathing and summons her to the palace. She was in no position to deny the King. She becomes pregnant and David engineers the death of her husband Uriah so Bathsheba can be added to his harem. Conquest, adultery and murder in the lineage of Jesus.
Skipping the 17 verses of “begats” avoids the tricky questions. But by the time Matthew opened his gospel with this genealogy there was already debate about the legitimacy of Jesus of Nazareth. Joseph’s initial reaction of wanting to “put her away quietly” and send her back to her father’s house reveals that scandal. Joseph’s dream gives him an alternative explanation. Matthew draws our attention to the way God has worked before too.
God doesn’t work through moralistic actions. In fact, God can even take an immoral act and work through it to bring good. The line that produced Jesus can and does flow through incest, prostitution, seduction, adultery, and even murder without hindering God’s ability to work through human history to bring life and light to the world.
So often people use the bible as a book of judgment. They want to make it a severe kind of weapon with which they can organize and control the behavior of others. But the writer of Matthew says, “NO the message of God in Christ is a message of love. It’s a message of love that says, no matter what you have done, no matter who you have been, the love of God can transform any life and bring holiness out of any human distortion.
Jesus lived out that pattern.
No matter what they did to Jesus, he loved them.
No matter what they said to him, Jesus loved them.
He was denied and Jesus loved those who denied him.
He was betrayed and Jesus loved those who betrayed him.
He was tortured and he loved those who tortured him.
He was killed and he loved those who killed him.
How else can you say with a life, there is nothing any of you can ever do, there is nothing any of you can ever be that will finally separate you from the love of God that we meet in Christ Jesus.
Christmas is not primarily about miracles. The story of Christmas is about the love of God interacting with human life to create wholeness, extravagant love, and the courage to be everything that you are capable of being. It is the power of God in Christ that enables you to live and to love and to be. That’s what the Christmas story is all about. It’s told in a dramatically human fashion.
Even in the supposedly boring 17 verses of “begats” we find the key that unlocks the truth. The bible is a remarkable book. People destroy and distort the Bible whenever they treat it as if it is a literal document about history. It’s not. It is a magnificent portrait painted by Jewish artists who describe the impact of a God filled life named Jesus of Nazareth upon human history. We are called to live fully, we are empowered to love, we are enabled to be all that you were created to be, and that’s the message of the baby born in Bethlehem, who himself came through a very checkered ancestry.
The love of God is never distorted by the means through which it flows. And it can never finally be distorted even by the acts of those of us who claim to be Christ’s disciples. Bethlehem means that the love of God has entered human life. And Christmas will be real when we understand that our job is to allow God’ presence to flow through us so that the love of God might be known among all the people that God has created and that God still loves.