Jesus’ Family Tree:  Matthew 1:1-17

This morning and for the next three weeks we are going to look at Jesus’ genealogy—his family tree as presented in the gospel of Matthew.  [Open Bibles to page    }.

Today we’ll focus on Jesus’ genealogy as a whole and in the weeks ahead, we’ll hear the stories of some of the people  on his family tree.  As we do this, we’ll be asking, what hints does the genealogy give us about who Jesus is and how he will live his life?    And what does it tell us about God, the eternal Father of Jesus? And what does it tell us about ourselves as people who are grafted onto Jesus’ tree family tree—as brothers and sisters, siblings to him and one another.  

As we engage in this exploration,  I invite you to think about the folk on our own “family trees,” not only in terms of biological kinship, or adopted kinship, but more broadly in I want you to bring to mind all the people who have nurtured and shaped you.  (Note the tree with fruits on it)

Listen now for the word of God from the very beginning of Matthew’s gospel:

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, 4 and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of King David.  And David was the father of Solomon by (Bethsheba), the wife of Uriah, 7 and Solomon the father of Rehoboam…

12 And after the deportation to Babylon:  15 Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah. 17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.

If we had read the whole genealogy, It might have been kind of boring, right?  I wonder, why doesn’t Matthew start with an interesting story that would grab our attention?  Why does he begin his gospel story of Jesus with this long list of names?  

I think Matthew starts here to remind all of us that Jesus, just like every human being and every one of us is born into this world connected to a long, long story about lots of people who came before us.  Jesus is, and we are embedded in the physical DNA, the histories, values, dispositions and commitments of those who have gone before.  We inherit the successes and failures of generations who went before us.  

And Matthew wants us to know that Jesus is born into the long, meandering story of the Jewish people.  These are the people God has chosen out of the whole human race to be a light to the nations.  That story begins not with Adam and Eve, but with Abraham and Sarah, this unsuspecting pair whom God calls to leave their home and the life they know to journey with God to places unknown.  They say “Yes” and God makes an everlasting covenant, promising to be their God, to bless them, and to make of them a great nation.  

But the goal of these divine promises and blessings do not end with the Jewish people.  God’s promises, blessings, and everlasting covenant of love is intended to embrace all peoples and all nations through this one particular people who would be a light to the Gentiles.  They would be a light for others by showing a way live grounded in love of God and love of neighbor.  They would seek justice and peace.  They would welcome the stranger/the immigrant, and care for the least, the unloved, the forgotten ones.

Jesus is born from this history and into this story which has gone on for 42 generations before him.  It is a story of triumph and tragedy, of great plenty and great lack, of stunning wisdom and predictable foolishness, of glorious nationhood and devastating defeat.  And through it all, it is story of being called by God, and saying “yes,” or saying “no.”  This is the grand narrative that Jesus inherits and is formed by.  And from this long line, that runs through the lineage of King David, Matthew is making an argument—that Jesus is born to be God’s Messiah, Israel’s Shepherd King, the One who comes to gather all people into God’s household of love.

While making this argument, Matthew zooms in on all these individual people, these little stories that make up the big story and he invites us to get a glimpse, a preview of the kind of folk who make up Jesus’ human lineage.  Ordinarily, ancient genealogies are made up of long lists of men from whose loins children are begotten.  Luke’s genealogy includes only men.  But Matthew includes all these women, Rahab, Ruth, Tamar, Bathsheba (the wife of Uriah), and of course, Jesus’ mother Mary.  And theirs are not your usual stories of Jewish pregnancies and birth.  Rahab is a prostitute.  Ruth is a foreigner who has married into the Jewish people, becomes a widow, but stays faithful to Naomi, her Jewish mother-in-law.  Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife is the object of King David’s adulterous lust and the King murders Uriah in order to make Bathsheba his wife.  Tamar, denied of her rights as a widow, tricks her father-in-law into laying with her, becomes pregnant, and births twin boys.  And then there is Mary, the unwed pregnant teenager who has said “yes” to becoming the mother of God’s Messiah, Jesus, conceived through the Holy Spirit.  These are difficult, surprising, somewhat  scandalous stories.

 There are all these women and all these men, including Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive dad (whose family geneaology this is).  And Matthew is telling us that the people in Jesus’ genealogy are human just like we are.  They are finding their way.  They are stumbling.  They are making messes.  They are getting it right and getting it wrong.  Among the men named in the genealogy, there are murderers and liars, thieves and adulterers, bullies and idolaters.  And, some of these same men, like Kings David &  Solomon, are the ones called by God to lead God’s people.  Their stories remind us that, by the grace of God, their sins, their transgressions become the root of their transformations.  By the grace of God, we all live and move and have our being in God’s own self—we change and grow, stumble and grow, succeed and grow, mess up and grow—all our lives long.

By beginning the story of Jesus with this rich and crazy genealogy, Matthew is reminding us that the story of Jesus is the story of God.  It’s a love story.  It is a story about the mystery of God’ ways.  It’s about God’s wide welcome, and compassion, and forgiveness, and persistence.  This rich and crazy genealogy of Jesus prepares us to expect that Jesus as God’s eternal son, and Mary and Joseph’s fully human son, will be God for us and for the world:  offering wide welcome, unconditional love, infinite compassion, forgiveness, peace, and justice to some unlikely folk.   And Matthew’s gospel shows us in Jesus what our best humanity looks like.  Reborn through the Holy Spirit, we are grafted in as branches on Jesus’ family tree, sharing in his life, shaped by his DNA, called by God to be a light to the nations.  

How then shall we live at this time when there is so much tension and fear? Can we rest in the presence and promises of God?  What is the infinite, unbridled love of God, fully shown in Jesus Christ calling us to?  Can we find our “yes” and walk with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit on the paths that lead to more love, deeper peace, and greater joy for us and for our neighbors?