Shaking the Family Tree
We made the pilgrimage this summer. Not to Mecca or Jerusalem but to Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy, our ancestral home, so to speak. There have been Guptills and Greenes, Bancrofts and Cheneys, Wilsons and Bradburys on Grand Manan ever since the island was settled by white folk and if you believe the stories, the Guptill side goes back before the white folks got there. Angela is the genealogist in our immediate family. She is intrigued by who married who, where they came from and who their kids were. She really is passionate about it; we’ve spent vacations in grave yards. Real grave yards. And as a personal aside they don’t make grave yards the way they used to, these sanitized lawns with the granite stones placed flat so they can mow over them may be yards with graves but they aren’t grave yards, but yet again I digress. No seriously here are some of our vacation pictures.
Our family history and background is important to Angela, I find it interesting and every once in awhile I like to shake the family tree to see what nuts fall out, for instance three summers ago I discovered that I was a sixth cousin to . . .me. Yep I’m my own sixth cousin, don’t often find that on the main land. This summer Angela was in the archives and was tracing my Mom’s side back and in the side notes next to my great grandfather Theophilus’s name was a note that said “Theophilus’s great, great uncle was Abraham Lincoln” That was kind of cool, which if it is true would make Abraham Lincoln my great, great, great, great, great Uncle. And someone out there is thinking “No Denn that would make Abraham Lincoln your “Great, great Uncle twice removed on your mother’s side.” Sure.
And when we make the trip to Grand Manan and meet people the question they inevitably ask is “Who were your parents?” and when we tell them they go “ahhh” and that usually establishes our bona fides as Islanders. During our most recent trip we went whale watching and after the trip the owner of the vessel said “You weren’t nearly as much trouble as I thought you might be.” Strange comment, so I asked “What do you mean?” To which he replied, “I mean, knowing who your father and uncle are.”
But as important as family background might be to Angela or to you, that’s nothing compared to how important it was to the Jews two thousand years ago.
1) The Why of the Genealogy
The book of Matthew begins in a way that might seem strange to most of us today but was a natural way to introduce someone 2000 years ago in Israel. It was very important because the Jewish nation was founded on the promises given to Abraham concerning becoming a great nation and often in the scriptures the people of Israel are referred to as “The descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For those of you who weren’t here yesterday for Walk through the Old Testament Isaac was Abraham’s son and Jacob was his Grand-son. And so we have promises in the Old Testament like Deuteronomy 34:4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’
And it was important to the Jews that those who would teach them were really Jews. Back in the Old Testament in the book of Ezra, the people of Israel had returned home after they had been taken into captivity and the Prophet Ezra was working at re-establishing worship in Jerusalem and part of that process was finding out who the priests were and weren’t. Some people presented their names and this is what is written, Ezra 2:62 They searched for their names in the genealogical records, but they were not found, so they were disqualified from serving as priests.
Good thing I’m not trying to find work as a preacher in that culture because I am a mutt. I have Irish, Welch, Estonian, British, Asian and first nation blood flowing through my veins.
And when it is recorded in Ezra that they searched the genealogical records those were the same genealogical records that the genealogy of Jesus was taken from. And in all the criticisms that came Jesus’ way never once was his pedigree questioned.
The book was written by Matthew who was one of Christ’s 12 Apostles. You may recall that Matthew was a tax collector and Jesus literally called him from the booth where he was collecting taxes, as tax collectors were wont to do. Immediately Matthew had a party and invited all of his grotty friends over to meet Jesus. Now there is an interesting concept.
The Gospel of Matthew, the word Gospel simply means “Good News”, was written primarily for Jewish readers. That’s why more then any of the other Gospels Matthew points his readers back to the Old Testament to show how Jesus fulfilled various prophecies. It was written around 70 AD although some believe it could have been written up to 20 years earlier then that. Why was it written? To offer proof that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah.
And so the tax collector begins the introduction to his Gospel by writing Matthew 1:1 This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham: and then he finishes 16 verses later by writing Matthew 1:16 Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Mary gave birth to Jesus, who is called the Messiah.
And so as we begin looking at the book of Matthew over the next several weeks I thought it would be good to start at the beginning of the book, which in this case is 17 verses of names. And maybe as you’ve read the book of Matthew you’ve wondered what we could possibly learn from this list. Or maybe like a lot of people you read verse 1 and skipped to verse 18.
First of all while the gospels give us a clear account of the life of Christ they were not originally written for Nova Scotians, they were written for Jews who lived 2000 years ago and it would have been very natural to declare the bona fides for someone who’s story was this important.
If you are familiar with the New Testaments and the Gospel accounts than you are probably aware that the genealogy that is given by Matthew is different than the one recorded by Luke in Luke chapter 3. Some people have pointed this out as a discrepancy between the accounts but others have pointed out a couple of different reasons for why the two accounts differ. Some have said that the accounts aren’t to be viewed as factual genealogies but instead are simply symbolic, that one shows the Royal lineage of Jesus and the other the Priestly lineage of Jesus.
But that doesn’t cut it for me, either it is or it isn’t. The second theory is that the genealogy given by Matthew traces Jesus’ lineage through Joseph and the account in Luke traces Jesus family tree through Mary. They tell us that because of the culture of that day that linage was traced through the father not the mother and would go on to say that is spelled out in Luke 3:23 Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his public ministry. Jesus was known as the son of Joseph. Joseph was the son of Heli. You’ll notice that it does not say that Jesus was Joseph’s son, but that he was known as Joseph son. And those in the know tell us that the word used to refer to Joseph as Heli’s son here in the Greek is õἱόò or huios and it’s definition is apparently a primary word; a “son” (sometimes of animals), used very widely of immediate, remote or figurative kinship :- child, foal, son. And so early tradition tells us that Joseph was not Heli’s son but was his son-in-law.
The third option is that under Jewish law if a woman’s husband died and she later remarried that her children legally became the children of her second husband. So the thought is that perhaps Joseph’s natural father was Jacob, and he died and Joseph’s mother then married Heli, making him Joseph’s step father.
The truth is we don’t know we are just guessing and if anyone tells you they know the answer for sure, they are bluffing.
But there are truths in this genealogy that transcend time and distance.
2) The When of the Genealogy It was Groucho Marx who said “Although it is generally known, I think it’s about time to announce that I was born at a very early age.” And most of us want to start our story on the day of our birth, I was born on June 13 1960, don’t worry about the math it just hurts, and for me that was the beginning of Denn. And yet I think it’s interesting that the story of Jesus isn’t just the story of Jesus but is a story of the people of Israel from the time that Abraham was promised that he would become a great nation right up to the coming of the Messiah Jesus. Christ didn’t just suddenly appear out of nowhere but he, through his family had a past and a connection to the past.
Every once in awhile you come across a church, or a group or a preacher who has this new and wonderful revelation. And they want us to believe that the church is doing the wrong things and has been doing the wrong things for the past 2000 years. That there was this brief window when the church had it right, that would be immediately after the day of Pentecost. That back then it was almost perfect and then it all changed, maybe immediately after the first generation of Christians were gone or in many theories after Constantine corrupted the church in 313, but the church lost it’s true vision and meaning at some point. But luckily for you and me they, whoever they are have rediscovered the truth and their church is like the original perfect church. And somehow they completely disregard the past and they are telling us that Aquinas didn’t have it right, and Augustine didn’t have it right, and Martin Luther didn’t have it right and John Wesley Didn’t have it right, Dwight Moody didn’t have it right and Billy Graham didn’t have it right, that only they have it right.
But we are no more in isolation than Jesus was, we have a history just as he does and we need to honour it just as he did. And I would advise you when someone tells you that they have finally figured out what everyone else has missed be very, very careful.
3) The Who of the Genealogy Earlier in the message I mentioned that I like to shake the family tree to see what nuts fall out, and the reality is that each of our family trees contain not only nuts but saps as well. It was Thomas fuller who said , “He that has no fools, knaves nor beggars in his family must have been begot by a flash of lightning.” Because we believe that Jesus was divine, and God incarnate, that is 100% God and 100% man, and we teach and believe that he was perfect sometimes the temptation is to think that his ancestors were wonderful perfect people.
And that is not the reality at all. In the 42 generations mentioned by Matthew there are good people and there are bad people and there are good people who went bad and bad people who became good. The miracle of Jesus is that God stepped into the stream of history and a young girl became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. God was Jesus’ father but Mary was Jesus’ mother. Jesus was perfect but Mary and Joseph weren’t, they might have been special and chosen and faithful and wonderful but there is nothing to tell us that they were perfect or that their family trees were spotless.
As a matter of fact if you look closely amongst the branches of this particular family tree you can find a hooker, a murderer, an adulterer, a liar and an Idol worshipper and that is just looking at the surface.
It is all too common for people to blame their parents or grand parents for the bad choices they have made, “Well what do you expect look at who my parents are or the life style my grandparent chose.” We all have the good the bad and the ugly in our family tree and each of us has the opportunity and ability to rise above that or to allow ourselves to settle at the lowest common denominator and blame others.
4) The Grace of the Genealogy I think this is the wonderful thing about this particular portion of scripture, because it is here that the word of God extends the grace of God to each one of us, regardless of our background, our previous behaviour or our gender. It is the reality of Romans 5:8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
If I showed you a picture of a forty two green trees it would be very easy to miss the trees for the forest so to speak. And on its own this list of names can become overwhelming, we look at it and our eyes glaze over and we just view it as a crowd. But if we put some red into the picture our eyes are drawn to that which is different.
And that is what Matthew does, into this crowd of names he puts four names that just don’t belong, do you remember the song from Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong? Oh they are part of the family tree but they are the part that in this case wouldn’t normally be mentioned, you know they are . . . women. And if you look through the bible or Jewish literature you would discover that women aren’t included in genealogies. The family blood line is passed from Father to Son, and I know that in light of today’s society that isn’t right but don’t make the mistake of judging history in light of today.
Matthew 1:3 Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar).
Matthew 1:5-6 Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab). Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth). Obed was the father of Jesse. Jesse was the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah).
Four individuals who were first women, then gentiles, and of the three the only one with spotless character was Ruth. And yet Rahab who was prostitute was commended for her faith in Hebrews 11:31. Tamar who for a variety of reasons tricked Judah, the father of her dead husband, into sleeping with her was later referred to as righteous. It was Bathsheba who David committed adultery with and yet God chose her to be the mother of Solomon. It was only Ruth who was above board in her behaviour. And yet they are singled out in this genealogy and become the red trees amongst the green, calling attention to their presence.
Why? Because God’s grace is exhibited in their lives and while His grace was undoubtedly shown in the lives of others in the list we would have missed it because they would have been hidden in the crowd. Paul would later remind us in Ephesians 2:8-9 God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. Or as Mark Twain said “Heaven goes by favour; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
William Barclay wrote in the Daily Study Bible “Here at the very beginning of the gospel we are given a hint of the all-embracing width of the love of God. God can find his servants amongst those from whom the respectable orthodox would shudder away in horror.”
And it is in these four ladies that we see the reality of Galatians 3:28-29 There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.
And while our names are not mentioned in the list of Jesus ancestors each one of us has the opportunity to be listed as his descendents John 1:12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.
PowerPoint may be available for this message email me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca and check out my new book at www.pennofdenn.com
