Matthew 1 3rd Sunday of Advent: December 11, 2005
The Women of the Genealogy of Jesus
A few months ago I was beginning to read the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew has the genealogy of Jesus right away. Often when I hit a passage like that, I skim over it to get to the good parts – the stories. This time I read it & I was surprised by how many of the names I recognized. The list changed from being a list of semi-anonymous names to a list of makers to stories I know and love.
What intrigued me most was that in this long list of men, four women are mentioned – five if you count Mary. In this very patriarchal society, Matthew includes four women in his genealogy – it’s really interesting since it is Joseph’s genealogy, if you want Mary’s genealogy you have to read Luke
Tamar (Genesis 38)
You might know that the Jewish people often call God the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jacob’s family put the “dis” in dysfunctional. Jacob had 12 sons by 4 women, only one of whom he loved. The 11 brothers so hated Jacob’s favorite that they first tried to kill him, and then sold him into slavery.
The oldest brother in the family was Judah. He married and Had three sons: Er, Onnan and Shelah. When the oldest, Er, grew up he married Tamar. Er was an evil man and he died young with no offspring. There was a law in those days that if your brother died with no heir, you would marry his widow, but the offspring would be considered your brother’s and would carry his line. So Judah got Onan to marry Tamar. Onan didn’t want to produce offspring for his dead brother that he would have top feed and keep, (and most likely without an heir, Onan would get Er’s estate) so he slept with Tamar, but used his own style of birth control so as not to have children. Onan’s greed and lack of responsibility angered God and he died young too.
The third son, Shelah, is still a kid at this point and Judah says to Tamar, “live as a widow until Shelah grows up and he will give you children.” But he had no intention of getting the two together because he figures that she’s a man killer! Tamar thinks to herself these boys have a habit of dieing young with no kids, Shelah is still a kid and her biological clock is ticking, and besides that, his name is Shelah! So she decides not to wait for Judah to give her another husband.
Judah goes off to another town on a business trip, and Tamar goes there disguised as a prostitute. Prostitutes were veiled back then, so Judah doesn’t recognize her when he sees her. Judah sees her and promises to send her a goat for sleeping with him. She asks for a surety and he leaves his seal and staff with her to be given back when the goat arrived.
The next day, Judah sends a friend with the goat to retrieve his seal and staff. The prostitute is nowhere to be found, and the townsfolk say that they have never seen her. Judah decides that he was hoodwinked and pushes the issue no further, because it is pretty embarrassing.
Three months later, Tamar is starting to look pregnant! Word gets back to Judah that his daughter-in-law is guilty of prostitution and has become pregnant. Judah is furious that she would shame the family so and says, “Bring her out and have her burned to death!” (honour killing is not a new thing)
As she is being dragged out, Tamar grabs the seal and staff and says to Judah, “I am pregnant by the man who own these things, do you recognize whose seal and staff these are.”
To his credit, Judah repents, and declares that Tamar is more righteous that he is, since he had planned to keep Shelah from marrying her.
Tamar gives birth to twins, Perez and Zerah. Perez is Jesus’ 35th Great Granddad.
Rahab (Joshua 2)
Years later, the children of Jacob have gone to Egypt, become slaves, liberated by Moses, walked in the desert for 40 years and now come to the edge of the land that God promised them. Joshua is leading the people, and he sends two spies to look over Jericho, which is the first city that they would attack. The scriptures tell us that they entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there. The king heard that the spies were with Rahab, and ordered her to bring them out, but she lied and said that they had been there, but they left before the city gates were closed. She had really hid them in the thatch of the roof. After the soldiers left, she went to the spies and told them that she knew that God had given them this land, and she asked for herself and her family to be spared because of the kindness that she showed them. They agreed, and she helped them escape by a window in the city wall. When the attack came, and the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, Rahab’s house was marked with a red thread on the window, and it remained standing. She and her family were safe. The writer to the hebrews says, “by faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.” (Heb. 11:31)
Rahab married an Isrealite by the name of Salmon and she gave birth to a boy named Boaz – Boaz was Jesus’ 28th Great Granddad.
Ruth (Ruth)
A few years after Israel came into the land and settled there was a famine and families left the land to go and find food. One family who went to the country of Moab for food was a man named Elimelek and a woman named Naomi and their two sons Mahlon and Kilion. While they were in Moab, Elimelek died. Naomi’s sons married moabite wome named Ruth and Orpah. The two sons also died leaving Naomi with no family except her daughters in law. She decided to go back to Bethlehem to her people. When she left, she told her daughter in laws to stay behind in Moab because there was nothing for them in Israel. Orpah stays back, but Ruth begs to be allowed to go with her saying, "Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."
They return together, destitute.
It was the custom that the poor could go into a field after it had been harvested and pick what was left behind by the harvesters to feed themselves. In fact God command his people to be sure to leave some of the crop behind in the field for the poor. So Ruth went out into the field to glean what she could.
The Gleaners - Jean Millet
It happened that she landed in a field that belonged to a guy named Boaz (Rahab’s son) Boaz was a relative of Ruth’s husband. When Boaz comes to check on his harvesters, he sees Ruth and asks about her. The workers tell him about what a hard worker she has been, and how good she has been to Naomi. Boaz tells his workers to watch out for her and treat her kindly, and to leave more grain on the ground than usual. Then he approaches Ruth and tells her to glean only from his fields – he would protect her and she may not be safe in other fields.
Ruth goes home with the grain and tells Naomi about the day. Naomi thinks it’s a good idea to stay in the fields of Boaz. At the end of the harvest, the threshing began and Boaz slept with his men on the threshing floor to protect their crop. Naomi tells Ruth to go off to the threshing floor in her best clothes an makeup, watch where Boaz lies down and then later in the night, go and lie down at his feet. Boaz wakes up to find this woman lying at his feet! He says, “who are you?” and she tells him that she is Ruth.
To make a long story short, and not get into all the legal proceedings, Boaz marries Ruth, and they have a son and call him Obed. Obed is King David’s Granddad, and he is Jesus 27th Great Granddad.
Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11-12)
David is seen as the greatest King Israel ever had – he was called a man after God’s own heart. But he didn’t always act like God’s king should, and he didn’t always stay close to God’s heart.
One day when David was supposed to be out on the battlefield with his troops, he was on the roof of his palace. He spied a woman on her roof top bathing & she was very beautiful. David had his own collection of Beautiful women and so he sent a friend out to make some inquiries about her. He found out that she was named Bathsheba and she was married to one of his men; a valiant and loyal warrior named Uriah.
David still sent for her and they slept together.
Their affair would have stayed hidden except that Bathsheba became pregnant. David tries to cover it up by calling for Uriah to come back to the front: Uriah would sleep with his wife, and she would just have a large premature baby. Everything would be fine. Uriah come back from the front, but he refuses to go home to his wfe- he sleeps in the courtyard with the palace guards because, he says, “how could I sleep in the comfort of my house with my wife when my men sleep out in the field?” David it seems didn’t have any trouble sleeping with his men’s wives in the comfort of his palace while his men were sleeping in the field.
David tries to get him to go home to his wife; he keeps him another night and gets him drunk, but he still did not go home.
David gives up and sends Uriah back to the front with his own death warrant in his pocket. David writes to the general to place Uriah where the fighting is fiercest, and then pull back from him leaving Uriah alone against the enemy. The General Joab does it and Uriah dies defending the king that had betrayed him. After the appropriate time of mourning, David takes Bathsheba to be one of his wives. Their first child dies at seven days, but their second child is called Solomon . Solomon is Jesus’ 24th Great Granddad.
I tell these stories because there are the only women (besides Mary) that Matthew mentions. He must have had a reason for mentioning them 3 foreigners, two women who prostitute themselves, and one adulterer!
The stories of these women made me think of two different things.
1) The presence of Jesus’ genealogy helps me to believe the scriptures.
There are people who do not believe the scriptures because they think that they are just a marketing tool for the messiah, or possibly the church. If I was trying to be a spin doctor for Jesus, I would not have included his genealogy! The stories of these women are typical of the personalities and situations of almost all the people in Jesus Family. (and you thought your family Christmas dinner was rough!) If I was trying to impress people with Jesus, I would have left off his family, and even if I left the genealogy with its honoring of fairly messed up people, I would not like have mentioned the prostitutes!
The Bible presents the whole story, it does not try to gloss over that Jesus comes from the wrong side of the tracks, it does not paint a picture of a sterile stable with a baby that doesn’t cry and doesn’t make his mom cry. It paints a picture of God coming down into the muck and mire of a stable and the muck and mire of a messed up family.
When I see that the Bible doesn’t gloss over the reality of life for Jesus, for God, for the church and the world, there is no way that I can think of it only as a tract or a marketing tool for a religion. It is real and it is Truth.
2) God has his hand on the poor, the lowly and the messed up.
If you ever think that God won’t accept you because you just don’t match up, I need to ask you “have you seen his family?’ God glories in taking people like Rahab and David and loving them and lifting them up so that they a redeemed to extent that they are seen as heroes of the faith.
Mary (the fifth woman) sings of God’s love for the poor and lowly. In Luke 1, when the young pregnant Mary greets her cousin, the old pregnant elizabeth and John the Baptist leaps inside Elizabeth for the joy of greeting the Messiah in utero, Mary breaks out into song. This Song is so full of attitude, you’d almost think Mary was Irish. The Canadian Government thought that the song was a bit too uppity when they jailed Tommy Douglas for sedition for printing it without comment!
Luke 1:46-55
"My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers."
The women in Jesus’ Family, in fact his whole genealogy gives me great hope.
Our God is a God who can redeem the worst people and he redeems good people from the worst situations. You might think that you’ve done too many bad things for God to welcome you into his family. But lets look…
Adulterers? – already in the family
Prostitutes? - already in the family
Murderers? - already in the family
Abusers? - already in the family
Liars? - already in the family
On the flip side, if you think you are doing pretty good on your own and don’t need a great deal of forgiveness, you might have trouble accepting the kind of people God accepts. But that’s ok there’s a few prideful bigots in the family line as well.
The hope that the women in Jesus’ family give me is not just a hope for acceptance – it is also a hope for forgiveness and redemption. God takes us in as we come, and then because this little child grows up to be a man who goes to the cross for us, he cleans us up, removes all the terrible things that we have done, and even the terrible things that have been done to us and throws them away, never to be examined again. Jesus accepts you into his family so that you can become the you he created you to be!
Come, join this family of damaged people, and let Jesus make his beautiful repairs.
