There are some books that just have you hooked from the
first sentence. They grab your attention, prick your curiosity, stimulate your
imagination and you just have to read them, you can’t put them down. It is the
magic of those four wonderful words “once upon a time’… You’d think that the
gospel the greatest story ever told might start like that… but as NT Wright
says “The average modern person who
thinks maybe I’ll read the New Testament is puzzled…puzzled to find on the very
first page, a long list of names he or she has probably never heard of”… and probably has trouble pronouncing…
Even if you are more familiar with the scriptures you may be
tempted to simply skip this part, like the introduction and recap at the start
of an episode of a Netflix TV series. But if we do that, we miss what is at the
very heart of Matthew’s gospel: Jesus Christ. You see for Matthew, a first
century Jewish Christian writing to predominantly first century Jews this is
more than a simple introduction and recap.
It would have them riveted from the first word, it is like a fanfare, a
dramatic drum roll or the urgent voice of the town crier. We might get a
glimpse of this in New Zealand from the way in which for Maori and Pacifica
peoples your whakapapa tells people your identity, who you are and where you
fit. For Matthew the introduction is of the
central person of Jewish history, Jesus the long-awaited messiah, or anointed
one, the son of David and the son of Abraham, and the recap retells two
millennia of God’s gracious promises and God’s covenant faithfulness to his
people. Jesus whakapapa is the story of hope.
Let’s quickly go through the format of the passage we are
looking at…
The passage starts with an introduction, then Jesus
whakapapa is presented in three stages, from Abraham to David, from David to
the exile, from the exile to joseph, and Jesus being born of Mary, then it
finishes with a conclusion about the number of generations in each section in
verse 17.
It has some interesting characteristics…
Matthew’s genealogy differs in places from Luke’s, and while
some have pointed to this as an inconsistency, Luke as a Greek focuses more on Jesus
physical genealogy whereas for Matthew the royal heritage and whose heir Jesus
is, is more significant and central. They are the ones who are heirs to the
promises. An example from seventh form history would be James vi of Scotland
becoming James 1 of England as the heir to
Elizabeth 1 but not her son…
Matthew misses out some names, and very neatly fits it into
three series of fourteen generations, this could be to make it easy to
remember; Jews were able to recite their whakapapa and so memory aids would be
helpful. But also in his conclusion by adding up the generations as he does
Matthew points to Jesus birth as fitting in with Biblical prophecy’s in
Jeremiah and Daniel that pointed to the coming of the Messiah. The time is
right says Matthew and here is Jesus the
messiah. Matthew more than any of the other gospels shows us Jesus life and
ministry in terms of its fulfilment of the Old Testament.
When Matthew’s original readers would have read through the
genealogies one of the things that would have stood out for them was the fact
that women were mentioned. Even Luke who as a Greek is more open to telling
women’s stories does not do this. You may expect in a Jewish document to have
maybe a great woman such as Sarah, Abraham’s wife mentioned and honoured. But
here the women who are mentioned are not those you’d normally mention.
What does this introduction and whakapapa tells us?
The first thing Matthew’s introduction tells us is that
Jesus story is not something totally new, rather it is the fulfilment of a
story that has already been told. The introduction here could be for the
genealogy or for the whole gospel. the whole gospel is the creation story the
origin story of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Either
way it says that Jesus story has its origins in the Old Testament, in God’s
activity in history, but it is also a new story the hope of a new creation.
For the Jews the messiah was a person who was the fulfilment
of a promise to David in 2 Samuel 7:16.
That an heir of David would sit on the throne forever. We saw that
expectation in our old testament reading from Isaiah 11 today… A root of Jesse
would be on the throne and it would be a time of lasting peace for Israel. A
righteous and good King who would usher in the reign of God, the Kingdom of
God, Matthew says to his readers right off the bat I’ve found this Guy.
But more than that Matthew is aware that God’s purposes and
plans are for the world in calling him
the son of Abraham, Matthew is focusing back to the promises made to Abraham in Genesis 1... that not only would God give Abraham descendants and land and
bless him, but that he would make him a blessing to all nations. Matthew is
telling us from the start that not only is Jesus the messiah and a blessing for
the Jews but God’s saviour and king for all people. Isaiah 11 finishes with a
line that you may remember from last months series on Habakkuk… The whole earth
will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as he waters cover the sea.
One of the things the Women in Jesus whakapapa do is point to this possibility,
as except for Mary they are all gentiles. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of
Uriah the Hittite, or Bethsheba. Even in Jesus whakapapa God’s inclusion of the
gentiles into his people is foreshadowed.
Jesus genealogy shows us that God has been working through
history to bring his sovereign plans and purposes to fruition. From Abraham on
downwards. It also shows us God’s grace, that all the way through these two
millennia God had kept his promise by his grace. Jesus whakapapa is a very
human family tree. It includes the good kings and the bad kings. People who
kept their faith in God and people who did not…famous people and those who are
obscure. It contains stories of pain and suffering and injustice. Again this is
highlighted by the stories of the women mentioned. Tamar was the wife of Judah’s
oldest son, Er, who we are told in genesis 38, god killed because he was so
evil. Tamar had no children, so was supposed to be given a child to carry on
Er’s name by his younger brother, who refused, she was promised by Judah that
when the youngest son grew up she would be have a child with him. Now this all seems rather messy and barbaric
to us. But remember for a women who was a widow without a child, she had no
means of support, she had no status in her society. When she was denied her
right and treated unjustly by Judah, she pretended to be a prostitute and slept with
Judah and had twin sons.. It was through her son Perez that the royal lineage
was to come. Rahab was a prostitute in Jericho, who when the spies were sent by
Moses to check out the land looked after them and helped them escape. Ruth we know was a widow whose dedication to
her mother in law Naomi lead to her marrying Boaz and a Moabite becomes David’s
great grand-mother. Bethsheba of course
is a tale of both wrongdoing by David and the pain of a dead child. But Matthew
says these people too are in Jesus whakapapa.
The women can also be seen as people of faith in times when
Israel struggled to have faith. Tamar sought justice when she was mistreated, Rahab
showed faith when the spies doubted God, Ruth showed covenant faithfulness to
Naomi, in the time of upheaval during the judges.
This is one of the things that I love and which gives us
hope from the genealogy, God has worked his purposes out through normal people
just like us. Mark Woodly puts it like this
“behind each name on Matthew’s carefully
selected list we find human stories riddled with sordid scandals and glorious
and honourable details. Behind the mess and unpredictability of the human story
God is weaving another story of harmony and redemption.”
God’s sovereignty and God’s grace are at work, meeting in
Jesus Christ, and the amazing thing is that in Christ you and I are grafted
into this family tree and we fit right in, being fantastic made and faithful, with our foibles and faults,
fallenness and frailty, our high
achievements our past hurts and hurdles, our odd ball-ness or our straight down
the line-ness, our humanity and our hope of new creation in Christ. And like
with this whakapapa Jesus has stepped into the story and it changes. It becomes
a story of hope.
Matthews’ telling of Jesus genealogy finishes, not by saying
who Jesus father is, but rather focusing on his mother. Joseph we are told is
the husband of Mary, and Mary is the mother of Jesus who is called the messiah.
If Matthew’s readers hadn’t been captivated by Jesus whakapapa now, this would
have caught their attention. While we, with Luke’s Gospel giving us Mary’s
account and two thousand years of Christian faith and teaching, know what is to
come, Matthew is signalling to us that something different is happening here.
He is preparing his readers to struggle along with Joseph over the fact that
Mary will conceive by the Holy Spirit. When the Jewish readers hear the next
part of the story that Mary being betrothed to Joseph is found to be pregnant,
they might switch off, they would be shocked and suspicious of how this Jesus
could be the Messiah. They like us will struggle with the wonderful news of the
virgin birth of Jesus. Jesus birth not only being the fulfilment of the
promises to David and to Abraham, but also that in Jesus God has stepped into
human history.
One of the things the women in the whakapapa do is prepare
us for this. As women of faith and women who have carried on God’s purpose and
plans in difficult situations they stand with Mary. God had used these
situations and these women for his purpose and plans and now he is going to do
something even more unusual.
Well it may not be as captivating a start as “once upon a
time”. But this introduction and genealogy points us to who Jesus is, that what
is happening is a continuation a fulfilment of God’s promises and God’s
sovereign moving in history and a fulfilment of God’s grace and peace. To
Matthew’s Jewish reader and to us it tells us the long awaited messiah is
coming… It introduces us to Jesus in a way that we know where he fits in and
leaves us with great anticipation to see how this messiahship will work out…
and just a little tinge of mystery, that just maybe who this
Jesus is isn’t going to fit into all the expectations Matthew’s Jewish readers
and we may have…Not that we will be disappointed… rather it will be a story of
hope… more than we ever hoped for. Hopefully…
it draws us to read further to be captivated by the story of Jesus the messiah
the son of David and the son of Abraham, to be captivated by him.
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