MATTHEW 1 - verses 1 to 17. The whakapapa of Jesus.
Today we are going to continue on the advent theme by looking at Matthews account of the birth of the Christ child.
Matthew starts his account with a geneology
If we are being honest with ourselves many of us would never had read this scripture.
Many of us would simply skip this section and started Matthew’s gospel at verse 18.
Infact if someone was to write a book on the top ten least read pieces of scripture there would probably be a chapter or two on the genealogy of Jesus.
The question is though If you had been given a job to tell someone’s life story how would you start?
PAUSE.
Maybe you’re going to be best man at a wedding,
and you just want to say a few words to sum up who the bride groom is.
Maybe you’ve been asked to give a tribute to a close friend.
Then again maybe its just a person you want to introduce to a friend or colleague
(PAUSE)
In our society
we would probably start by saying in a short sentence an introduction about the person.
Who they are
Maybe where they come from or what they do for a living.
Matthew though is not a Gentile Christian like us
infact he was probably a Jewish convert to Christianity,
a man who lived at a time when the majority of Christians wanted nothing to do with the Jewish origins of the Christian faith,
Matthew then was a Jew and he wanted to write a gospel with a Jewish flavor to it.
Something that he could use to evangelize his fellow Jews and bring them to faith in Christ.
So Matthew starts his gospel account in a way that relates to Jews with a genealogy
the most natural way to introduce Christ to a first century Jew.
You see in writing this Genealogy Matthew is able to say a lot more about Jesus than just where he comes from and what he does for a living.
Matthew has given the reader an opportunity to some how build up a picture of who this Jesus is,
he has given a sense of the identity of Jesus to his reader.
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You could even say that a genealogy has much the same importance to a first century Jew as the whakapapa has to the Maori.
It not only traces the persons family back to a root, Abraham for the Jew,
and maybe Kupe for the Maori,
but It says that the person is someone,
that they have a pedigree.
Take Herod for instance his genealogy had absolutely no pedigree, because he was only half Jew
infact his genealogy was that much of an embracement to him that he ordered the burning of it, to hide his shame.
A geneology also says that this person didn’t just appear out of thin air,
but that this person belongs to a family,
that they have a history
and an identity.
From a whakapapa you get to know a person, without having to meet them.
And so what we have before us is the genealogy of Jesus, the whakapapa of Jesus.
PAUSE
Another way of looking at what Matthew hopes to achieve is to look at this genealogy or whakapapa like it was the credits to a movie or feature film.
So lets go on a journey 2000 years back in time to the Bethlehem Regent Cinema.
Now of course you are here to see a movie,
unfortunately you don’t know what the movie is called
but you know it must be a good movie because you’ve heard people talking about it everywhere,
they said it was an action adventure,
with just a hint of drama,
and some great historical settings,
the perfect way to spend your Sabbath afternoon.
pause
Now you remember seeing a billboard poster about this movie
it said that this story has been over 4000 years in the making.
The culmination of a story that began with Abraham, continues to the birth of a nation,
and its fall,
exile,
and temporary restoration.
This story is more than just a story though,
because its about a promise, it’s about a promise that was made a very long time ago
a promise of deliverance.
Of course you are a Jew
as was your father
and his father
and his father’s father.
All of you have heard the rumors about this story
but your the lucky one,
the one who actually gets to see the events unfold before you on the silver screen.
Its no wonder then why so many people are excited about this movie,
why so many people have talked about nothing else
PAUSE
Imagine your shock then when you see the credits to this movie.
As the cast list scrolls down the screen you see that the right names are there,
Real stars like Abraham,
and you can remember their stories too,
Abraham the man who became father of a nation,
but there are others also.
Names that you recognize,
but that you would never have expected to see in this movie
so what are they doing here???????
What right do they have to be involved in this story?
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There are women in this cast list,
women who in Jewish society have no rights,
better to have been born a gentile than a women is what your Father always said
And then you realize who these women are the first is a women called Tamar who according to Genesis 38 was an adulteress,
Then you have Rahab the prostitute from the city of Jericho,
and Ruth the Moabite.
PAUSE------------------------------
but at least there are a few kings in the cast list.
Now to have a king in your story is a good move,
a king will give the story some honor and respect
but not this one, this king has a very promising young career,
every one knows the story from 1 Samuel chapter 17, of how he defeated the Giant Goliath.
But his name was soon tarnished
you see he took another mans wife as his mistress,
then plotted to kill the husband too.
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His son Solomon wasn’t much better,
he too showed a lot of promise from an early age you see God blessed him with wisdom and riches.
greed got to him though,
and his down fall can be seen in 1 Kings 11.
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PAUSE
Then there’s the major star of this story,
a child conceived out of wedlock,
a Messiah?
PAUSE
Do this shock you,
A story that puts an adulteress and a prostitute
next to the
Father of a nation.
An infant messiah,
next to kings and warriors?
Does it shock you ???????
because that’s how this family tree would look to the average Jew,
This whakapapa of the messiah.
PAUSE
You see the Jews were looking for a Messiah,
a hero to deliver them from captivity,
but someone more like Arnold Schwazeneger
than Jesus Christ.
Maybe this was all just bad casting and God the director got it wrong.
Could this genealogy, be the genealogy of a messiah.
is this the Messiah who all the whispers and rumors were about,??????????????
the one to redeem and re-establish the kingdom.
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When Matthew wrote this whakapapa he didn’t make a mistake.
He wasn’t trying to impress the Jews,
just to press upon them who Jesus is.
When Mary fell pregnant before she was to be married,
it was not an accident but part of God’s rescue mission.
God did not make a mistake.
It was all part of the plan,
the plan to reveal the true nature of this Messiah,
this Jesus,
this hero.
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Now Jesus is perfect
the Son of the most high God
he could of come to us through any family God would care to use.
Maybe even a perfect TV family like the Brady Bunch,
but he didn’t.
Matthew could have probably missed a few names off the list and so butter up the family image and no one would have noticed,
but he didn’t.
WHY????
The problem with buttering up this family tree is that Jesus, the son of God,
the hero,
the rescuer,
the messiah
would not have been revealed to us in a way that we can relate to .
PAUSE
A whakapapa like that owned by the Brady Bunch would not give a sense of the identity of this Jesus the messiah,
But this grimy genealogy,
This whakakapapa that places prostitutes next to Kings does.
It gives us the identity of a person that we can relate too, and of a person that can relate to us,
sinners.
We may not be adulterers or prostitutes but we aren’t angels either.
Its rather ironic that God should use sinners as part of his plan to rescue sinners.
God chose the foolish, ordinary and imperfect lives of people to reveal his kingdom.
PAUSE
For us,
as the church
we need to realize that the Brady Bunch geneology
we often attribute to Jesus
is something far removed from the reality of his actual family tree.
We often try to paint over the dirt.
We hide the jaded elements of his family so we don’t have to associate with the people of Jesus’ family.
In fact we often try to live out our lives under a different whakapapa, under a different family tree.
one we call a Christian whakapapa and so give this man, this Jesus a different character.
All this uprooting of Jesus’ family tree can give us as the church an identity crisis,
as we try to chop of branches and graft in others
we change the identity of this family tree.
We end up with something that is pleasing to look at
but totally artificial.
As the saying goes you can choose your friends but your stuck with your relatives,
and so Jesus is stuck with his relatives.
No amount of genetic engineering will alter this
and Jesus would have had it no other way.
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I ask you what use would it be to follow a man who could not relate to your everyday problems.
To follow a man that is far removed from everyday reality.
Absolutely no use.
I look at this text though and I see a man who identifies with me,
a man who identifies with you also.
He can relate to our problems,
the whakapapa of Jesus reveals this.
PAUSE
These relatives of Jesus do have a murky past
but they represent us all.
From kings to prostitutes,
aliens to nationalists,
and ordinary men and women. Jesus came to rescue people like these because his identity was grounded in people like these.
He is a man who ignores labels of legitimacy and illegitimacy
and who offers his good news to all,
PAUSE
To follow Jesus then and be a disciple is to recognize that the whakapapa that Jesus came from
must also be the whakapapa that we identify with
today.
So the people Jesus embraced when he walked on the earth
must also be the people that we embrace in our walk today.
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pause
If it is in Jesus’ whakapapa,
in his life and death that God’s heart is revealed then the label on it must read:
GRACE. UNDESERVED FAVOUR.
That is what this whakapapa, this geneology shows to me.
It shows that God had a plan from the beginning to show us this grace and for all people.
PAUSE
The family God chose for his son to be born into models that grace and God’s love for all to see,
regardless of past failures, skin colour, or gender.
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I don’t look at Matthew chapter 1 as a list of irrelevant names anymore.
Instead I see Jesus’ whakakpapa, warts and all.
I see a whakapapa that Jesus was proud of,
a whakapapa that I am proud to have been adopted into
a whakapapa that gives me a sense of identity,
and most of all a sense of hope
that this Jesus who accepted his family tree
could accept me and you as sinner into his family,
into his whakapapa..
