Jesus People

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

December 8, 2012

Text: Matthew 1:1-17

Note: this is a slightly edited version of the original.  

Imagine you've sat down to watch a movie. There's music and some graphics then the first scene. You hear a female voice talking conversationally. You see the legs of a chair. Two on the floor. Two in the air. The camera pans up. You see a young woman, perhaps twenty-five years old, in jeans and a sweatshirt, both stained with paint. An easel and paints are in the background. You can see trees moving outside through the large windows of the loft. The artist is leaning back in her chair, feet up on a weathered, oak desk, her ankles crossed. Papers are stacked on the desk. She's talking about some guy she was with last night at a gallery when a gust of wind whips through the studio scattering papers—watercolors? Pen and ink sketches? Pastels? Bills? Pages of a manuscript?

“Hang on.” she says. She drops to the floor chasing the papers. We catch hints of color and line on some of them. Typing on others. Then another gust, and we see a single sheet of paper waft out the window. The girl doesn't see it. She's still on her hands and knees gathering the papers on the floor.

She gets all the papers collected, shuts the window and goes back to her conversation. But you've been set up. What was on that paper? Who is going to find it? When will she miss it? Was it a painting? Was her name on it?

Two thousand years ago, when Matthew wanted to make a movie , he did not have access to a camera, so he created his movie using the available technology. He wrote it in ink on papyrus. But just like he was making a movie, he plants some hooks right at the beginning of his work.

This was before Napster, of course. Before the Apple Store and Amazon. The only way to share Matthew's movie was to copy it by hand. And it was so good, that people made copies, hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of copies, laboriously copied by hand, one word at a time.

At first, all the copies were made using ink and papyrus. They were all in Greek. Then people began translating it into other languages. People with money had their copies done on parchment instead of papyrus. The ultimate manuscript upgrade was gold lettering on vellum.

That's how prized this movie was.

[I will display a framed manuscript page that I received as a gift. It is the first page of the Gospel of Matthew in Latin written in gold on parchment or vellum.]

This is the first page of the Gospel of Matthew. It says, in Latin, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” It's the opening scene of Matthew's movie. It sets the stage.

For a thousand years Jews had dreamed of a Messiah, a hero who would set everything right. Over the centuries rabbis had elaborated these expectations. They had dreamed of a hero like King David, a warrior with invincible power to subdue Israel's geopolitical enemies. They dreamed of a patriarch like Abraham, a man so dignified, so exalted, even God paid attention to what he said. The prophets foresaw a hero so holy, so moral and upright, that the entire world would pay him obeisance, not because of his power but because of his goodness. The prophets imagined a hero so spiritual and righteous he would transform the entire nation into an extraordinary community of perfect harmony, justice and mercy.

Jesus is that hero. Jesus is the Messiah. This is the story Matthew tells. 

The first evidence Matthew presents in support of his claims about Jesus is a genealogy. Starting with Abraham, Matthew traces the line of patriarchs down to King David and the establishment of the monarchy. Then Matthew follows Jesus' ancestry down through the royal line, through the famous kings of Judah—Solomon, Josiah, Hezekiah, Jehoshaphat—all the way to the Babylonian captivity. Then even through the horrific debacle of the Babylonian captivity and the subsequent chaos Matthew still traces Jesus' lineage. All the way to Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

At first glance it is very much other genealogies scattered here and there in the Bible, a list of the names of male ancestors. But the mysterious paper flying out the window in Matthew's movie is the inclusion of four women in his genealogy story. They stick out like sore thumbs or like gleaming jewels. Women are not included in genealogies, but Matthew includes them any way. You know instantly they are setting us up for something important. But Matthew says nothing about them. He appears to merely mention them in passing, but you know better.You know they are central to Matthew's story. And you are right.

The way Matthew tells it, there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David. Exactly 14 from David to the Babylonian Captivity. Exactly another 14 from the captivity to Jesus Christ. It is a carefully crafted genealogy. Matthew did not just copy birth records. He artfully shapes his genealogy to make the point that Jesus arrived exactly on time, with exactly the right ancestors. Jesus has the perfect credentials, the perfect pedigree.

Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah, the son of Abraham, the son of David.

Matthew continues the theme of the royal status of Jesus with his report about the Wise Men. These foreigners say they have come to see the newborn King of the Jews because they had seen his star in the East. They pay homage to Jesus because he is born a king. He is the scion of a royal line.

In chapter 5, Matthew records the Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon, Jesus sketches out the principles of his kingdom. Some scholars think Matthew is deliberately presenting Jesus as the second Moses, the ultimate lawgiver.Matthew presents Jesus as superior to Moses, giving instruction that superceeded the words of Moses in some cases.

In chapter 13, Jesus tells a series of parables, distilling the wisdom of the kingdom of heaven. For Matthew Jesus is the Son of Solomon, the new Wisest Man.

Woven all through the book of Matthew are snapshots of Jesus' dazzling power. Jesus heals the sick, sets free the demon-possessed, gives sight to the blind, sets lame people to dancing, raises the dead.

This is the grand central theme of Matthew's movie: Jesus is the supreme prophet, the greatest king, the wisest teacher, the most powerful healer. He is the Messiah. He was born to be king of a royal line. He fully lived out all the promise of the Messianic dreams.

Finally the story is coming to an end. Jesus has been crucified. Still we haven't learned the meaning of the some of those pages that went wafting out the window right at the beginning of the story. Why did Matthew include those women in the genealogy?

There's not much movie left. Jesus rises from the tomb. Over a period of weeks he appears to groups of his followers, then he summons them to a final meeting.

In that final meeting, we get it. It all makes sense. Jesus directs his disciples to go make disciples of all nations. Not just Jews. After three years of intense ministry focused almost exclusively on the Jewish people, Jesus announces that his spiritual family is all humanity. His kingdom is the world, the entire cosmos. And the citizens of his kingdom are determined not by pedigree but by allegiance to the principles of the kingdom.

The fundamental principles are spelled out in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). They are illustrated in the Parables of the Kingdom (Matthew 13). They are modeled in Jesus interaction with the Leper, the Centurion, the Tax Collector, the Two Daughters and the Pagan Mother (Matthew 8, 9, 15). The principles are summarized most dramatically in the question about the Greatest Commandment, then even more dramatically focused in the story of the Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25).

All of a sudden we get it. In his opening genealogy, Matthew listed the heroes of Hebrew history, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Hezekiah showing that Jesus was, indeed, the fulfillment of the thousand years of dreams and prophecies and temple liturgy. And Matthew included the four women, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah—all non Jews.

Notice two of them in particular, Rahab and Ruth. Both are heroes in their respective stories. They act as saviors. Rahab was a prostitute in Jericho in the time of Joshua. Joshua sent two spies into the city in preparation for the Jewish invasion of Palestine. Rahab hides the spies from the police who are hot on their trail. In return the spies promise to protect her and her family when the Israelites invade—a promise they keep. Matthew informs us that this Canaanite madam married a Jewish man—was he one of the spies? We don't know. In any case her son is chosen to carry forward the messianic line.

The next woman mentioned in Matthew's genealogy is Ruth. A Jewish couple Naomi and Elimelech emigrated to Moab. There, their two sons, Mahlon and Kilion, married local girls. Then Naomi's husband and both her sons died. Naomi is broken. She tells her daughters-in-law to go back to their father's homes. She has nothing for them. She is going to return to Israel to see if she can eke out an existence there.

Ruth insists on accompanying her mother-in-law. "Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people, your God my God.

Back in Israel Ruth works to provide food for her mother-in-law. Naomi manages to set Ruth up with a rich, good relative. They get married. Ruth's first born, Obed, is chosen to carry on the Messianic line.

The stories of Rahab and Ruth are especially dramatic because God set aside his own explicitly stated rules to include them.

The people of Jericho were so bad, that God had ordered the Jews to obliterate the city, killing all the people and even all the animals. It was a horrific order, but the writer of the Book of Joshua makes doubly sure that we understand this order came directly from God and that God would severely punish any deviation from it.

Then the same writer includes the story of how Joshua authorized saving Rahab, and not just Rahab herself, but also everyone she had with her in her house.

Ruth was a Moabite. In Deuteronomy 23, Moses had explicitly stated that no Moabite was to be given citizenship among the people of God for a full ten generations after they first came to live in the nation. Ten generations!!!! For us that would be forever.

So, in Deuteronomy God says, "No Moabites!" Then a few pages later in the Bible we find an entire book telling the sweet story of the violation of that rule. Ruth was immediately welcomed into Israel. She was made an ancestor of the Messiah. She is recorded as the great grandmother of King David.

Rahab and Ruth. Matthew puts his cryptic reference to them right at the beginning of his book. On the basis of the explicit command of God they should have been excluded. Instead, they were given the highest honor that could be given to a Jewish woman—they were made mothers of the Messiah.They are honored because they showed mercy, because they saved people. Rahab saved the spies. Ruth saved her mother-in-law. God honored their compassion.

Remember the woman at the beginning of the sermon: what was the paper that blew out the window? It was a letter from home, from Mama. It talked about how Daddy was doing in prison and how bad the trailer smelled because of a leak under the kitchen sink that she couldn't afford to fix.

The young woman's last name was Merrill, as in Merrill Lynch. She grew up dirt poor in northern Mississippi. She had won a scholarship to Exeter Academy. Her first week there, she was sitting by herself in the cafeteria. Some girls joined her. When they heard her name they made some assumptions which she did not correct. That weekend she was invited to one of their homes. She was introduced as a Merrill. Again people made assumptions. She was in. She was from old money. She had pedigree.

And in that world pedigree mattered.

She was bright. Earned a full ride at Bryn Mawr. Now she was in New York City, yesterday her first show opened in a local gallery. She had a boyfriend, a Rockefeller. He was there last night. He has been dazzled by her as a person. He admires her work as an artist. He was walking up the sidewalk toward her loft when the letter from home wafts out Sally's window and drifted down. He sees it. Picks it up and reads it.

Now, you know the plot is going to turn on the question: Will Mr. Rockefeller value Sally on the basis of her work and her character or on the basis of her pedigree just now revealed in that letter from home?

This is the question that Matthew comes back to repeatedly in his story of Jesus. He is talking to Jewish people, people with a thousand years of pedigree in the bank. Jesus the Messiah, the ultimate Jew over and over challenges his Jewish audience to recognize the poverty of pedigree. At one point Jesus even says, “God can create children from rocks, if necessary. He doesn't need you.”

In the book of Matthew Jesus is both the king of the Jews and the king of all humanity. His kingdom is founded not on pedigree but on character.

Rahab and Ruth are included in the Jesus pedigree because both acted saviors. Rahab saved the spies. Ruth served her mother-in-law. Those acts of service trumped any disadvantage of ancestry.

In the Christmas season we celebrate the birth of the Christ child. He belongs not just to Jewish people. Not just to Christian people. He belongs to the world. What is the mark of our belonging? Not pedigree, but character. Jesus makes this point repeatedly in his teaching and his example.

In Matthew's gospel, the grand climax of Jesus' teaching is the story of the sheep and goats. The sheep are the good people and the goats are the bad people. When the great judge commends the sheep for their goodness in giving Jesus food and water and a visit when he was incarcerated, the sheep object. “We never saw you hungry or thirsty.” God responds, “What you did to the lowliest persons, you did to me” (Matt. 25). The goats are excluded because they refused to give care. The great divide between the saved and lost is not religious heritage or theological purity. It is the fundamental question: how did you respond to ordinary human need and well-being.

As our hearts are warmed by the generosity and kindness inspired by the Advent season, let's remember that generosity, compassion and care are the most salient values of the kingdom birthed with the Christ Child.