Healing Vision

Revised manuscript for the Sabbath morning sermon for the Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists.

December 29, 2012

Text:  Matthew 4:23-25

The Adventist Church from its early days has given special attention to health, both to healthy habits and to the science and art of healing. I grew up in a home saturated with a deep appreciation for the church's commitment to healing ministry--”to make men whole,” in the words of the motto of Loma Linda University. I met physician friends of my parents who had devoted lifetimes to serving in remote, primitive hospitals, sometimes being the only qualified medical personnel for days travel in any direction. One of my dad's classmates spent his entire life—well into his eighties—serving a bleak, hopeless neighborhood in Watts in Los Angeles.

This year, the church opened its fourth and fifth medical schools in Nigeria and Peru respectively. Healing is our work. It is central to our understanding of what it means to be Adventist. It is central to what it means to be Christian. The community of Jesus is devoted to healing.

And when it comes to listing the healing professions, we can add to our historic list of healers—Doctor, Dentist, Nurse, Physical Therapist, Dietician—new titles: hardware engineers, software engineers, chip builders and screen manufacturers. And accountants. And venture capitalists. All the people who make the world that we live in work.

Our scripture reading summarizes the mission of Jesus in these words:

Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and pain.

News about him spread as far as Syria, and people soon began bringing to him all who were sick. And whatever their sickness or disease, or if they were demon possessed or epileptic or paralyzed—he healed them all. Matthew 4:23-24.

Jesus looked at the pain and trouble of the human condition and saw a calling to heal. In the gospel story, it looks so simple and uncomplicated. Jesus spoke a word or touched someone, and magically their ailments vanished.

We don't have that kind of magical power. I don't and you don't. You may have witnessed miracles, but you have never seen a hospital emptied because all of the patients were magically healed.

The Gospel of Matthew speaks repeatedly of Jesus' healing ministry. In the center of the Gospel we even read that Jesus sent out his 12 disciples to do the same kind of healing ministry. But nowhere in the book is there a formula we can follow to carry out our own healing ministry.

Since the Gospel offers no guidance for actually repeating the healing magic Jesus demonstrated, it's appropriate to ask, what is the purpose of the book? Why read it, if it doesn't give us power?

I believe the primary value of the Gospel is to shape what we see when we look at the world.

The Wise Men traveled a thousand miles on camels to come and see a baby. When they arrived they didn't see “just a baby.” They saw the King of Heaven, the symbol of the presence and favor of God. Because they were scholar-philosophers, steeped in the promise of a glorious, tranquil, peaceful future adumbrated in ancient scriptures, they saw in the child of Mary and Joseph, the father of a new age.

They saw something scarcely anyone else could see. They made the trek because they believed that in the person of this baby God was specially present among us. Their journey was a profound and public Amen to the declarations of the angels in the secret dreams of Mary and Joseph that their baby was a visitation from heaven.

The baby was born. The boy Jesus grew up. At about thirty he was baptized then launched a whirlwind ministry that lasted a brief three years.

What did that ministry look like? The Gospel of Matthew summarizes the first few weeks or months of Jesus' work this way:

Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and pain. (KJV: healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.) 4:23

Matthew repeats this idea about ten times in his gospel:

So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them all. 4:25

That evening many demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus. He cast out the evil spirits with a simple command, and he healed all the sick. Matthew 8:16

Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness. Matthew 9:35

Jesus knew what they were planning. So he left that area, and many people followed him. He healed all the sick among them, Matthew 12:15

Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick Matthew 14:14

When the people recognized Jesus, the news of his arrival spread quickly throughout the whole area, and soon people were bringing all their sick to be healed. They begged him to let the sick touch at least the fringe of his robe, and all who touched him were healed. Matthew 14:35-36

A vast crowd brought to him people who were lame, blind, crippled, those who couldn't speak, and many others. They laid them before Jesus, and he healed them all. Matthew 15:30

Large crowds followed him there, and he healed their sick. Matthew 19:2

The blind and the lame came to him in the Temple, and he healed them. Matthew 21:14

This is a heart-warming picture of Jesus the healer. You would have loved being there. The joy and excitement would have been irresistible. People leaping and dancing for joy. No wonder crowds flocked around Jesus. Even if you were a skeptic, you'd have been drawn. It was an unstoppable contagion of happiness.

When Jesus saw someone who was blind, Jesus saw an invitation, a summons to provide healing. The same when he saw someone lame or crippled or unable to speak because of a severe hair lip.

Note that Jesus had the same response to someone who was demon possessed. Jesus did not see people who were filled with the devil as people in need of rebuke or scolding or condemnation or punishment. They needed healing.

EVERY kind of human brokenness was seen by Jesus as a call to healing. The ONLY exception to this was the brokenness of fundamentalism. Jesus hung out with conservative religious leaders of his days—the infamous Pharisees. He went to dinners in their houses. He engaged in theological debates with them. What Jesus believed was closer to their beliefs than any other system of thought. But the conservative religious leaders—the defenders of careful Sabbath-keeping and proper eating, the advocates of avoiding contamination by contact with worldliness—these are the people Jesus scolded on occasion, and even, condemned.

My belief is that the only reason Jesus so sternly condemned the Pharisees was make it clear to all the people they intimidated that the Pharisees did not speak for God.

Over the years as I have studied and restudied the gospel of Matthew, I have found my own vision altered.

If you're coming to church from the south and you exit I-5 at Ravenna Blvd. At the end of the ramp, there will be a little man with a sign waving at you.

Looking out the window, what do you see?

A moocher? A freeloader? Someone who needs a kick in the seat of the pants? Someone in need of punishment? Perhaps.

As our eyes are shaped by the Gospel of Matthew when we look out our windows at this little man, we'll see someone broken by genetics or mental illness or mental deficit or maybe even just bad luck. We will see someone in need of healing.

But this is an easy case. We know nothing about the man, so we can easily invent a story that awakens our sympathy. Let's take a much harder case: A fellow church member. A professional woman. Chronically unable to hold it together in her primary relationships. Scornful of her present husband. Neglectful of her kids. But she talks a good line when it comes to theology.

What do you see when you look at her? You know her behavior is evil. And surely someone as smart and talented and religious as she is ought to be able to do a better job in her primary relationships.

It's pretty easy to imagine that she deserves punishment.

But looking through the eyes of the Gospel, what do we see? A broken person in need of healing. This is not to minimize the evil of what she has done to her husband and her children. Her failure to care richly and consistently for the primary relationships in her life is immoral. Still, when we allow the Gospel to shape the lens through which we view this person, we will find ourselves hungering for healing not retribution. For mercy, not condemnation.

Let me push this to where it really hurts: What if this person who fails to care, this person who wounds hearts through cruel words or casual neglect is the person you are married to or is your parent or your child?

What then? You are too close to be able to invent a story for this person like the sweet fiction we can drape around the person begging on the corner. Can we learn together from the gospel to see even this person as someone who needs healing more than condemnation?

This does not mean you should volunteer to stay in a place where you are being hurt. You may have to run for your life. You may have to set iron clad boundaries and even get legal help enforcing those boundaries. Jesus taught his disciples to run from their tormentors. So let me be crystal clear: If you are being abused, do not remain silent. Get help. It is available.

Still as Matthew's Gospel shapes our souls, we can learn to hunger for healing for the people who are close to us and wound us. For people here at church who are annoying. For coworkers that drive you crazy. We can practice praying for for mercy instead of judgment. As we do this, we will discover an astonishing freedom.

When Jesus practiced his healing arts thousands of people were drawn irresistibly. I imagine that the more skillful we become in looking at people through the lens of the Kingdom of Heaven, the more attractive we will be. Our children will be drawn. Our neighbors will be drawn. Our enemies will be drawn. We ourselves will discover a sweet freedom and lightness in our lives.

As we enter deeply into the ministry of healing, we will find a special pleasure in keeping company with God.

Helping Jesus

Sermon for the Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

December 22, 2012

(Preliminary manuscript)

Text: Matthew 2:1-15, The Wise Men.

Jesus needed help. The way Ellen White tells the story, it took scholars to deliver it. She describes the Magi as wealthy, philosopher-scholars. I like that.

In Matthew's gospel, when Jesus was born, nobody noticed. In that world, half of kids died before age five. Who knew whether this child would be one of the lucky ones to make it?

At the end of chapter one, as readers, we know this child is a Divine Being, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Messiah of God, the carrier of an extraordinary mission. As readers we also know that the specialness of this child is perfectly invisible. We—the church, people who are already believers—we know who he is, but how would people in his neighborhood know?

Maybe the religious leaders will give some kind of signal that God has arrived in the person of the baby of Bethlehem? Nope. Is the local king prepared to recognize the legitimacy of another claimant to the throne of David? Fat chance!

So at the end of chapter one, all we have in support of Jesus' status is Matthew's genealogy and Joseph's dream.

Then at the beginning of chapter two, mysterious strangers from the east show up in Jerusalem asking about the birth of a king whose star they've seen.

If these strangers had been shepherds no one would have paid them any attention. If they had been inn keepers from Bethlehem, yawn. But these strangers weren't shepherds or inn keepers. They were the Magi. The Wise Men. The Three Kings of the Orient. You can read various commentators' theories about the precise identity of these strangers. The central point Matthew makes is this: They commanded attention. The whole city of Jerusalem was stirred by their quest. Their status mattered.

Because of their status, Jesus' was marked as a special child. The wealth of the strangers' gifts funded the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt.

Jesus needed help. Help that only high status, wealthy patrons could give.

Jesus still needs the help of Kings, Wise Men and Magi.

In the mid 80s my personal introduction to AIDS came in a phone call from a church member. I could tell from Ron's voice that something was wrong. He had been to the doctor. He began talking in circles, unable to name the horror. I knew secret parts of his story, so as gently as I could I asked if the doctor had found Karposi's sarcoma. Yes. Had they diagnosed AIDS? Yes.

In those days, it was a death sentence. More than that, a diagnosis of AIDS was an entrance into the abyss. The person became untouchable. When I visited Ron in the hospital, I was required to gown, glove and mask.

The disease was unspeakable. Ron went home to die. In the world his parents lived in, AIDS was regarded as the curse of God. His parents never said the word AIDS out loud.

Jesus needed some help. He needed some one to touch Ron. To show him affection. To be willing to name the disease and still to bless Ron as a treasured son of God.

That help could have been provided by anyone with a generous heart.

But Jesus wanted more.

Jesus touched lepers, showing his gracious favor. But Jesus did more than that. He healed lepers. And Jesus wanted to heal people with AIDS.

Helping Jesus heal AIDS takes far more than than a generous heart.

Jesus needs Magi, scholars, smart people willing to spend years and years in school earning a Ph. D.

Jesus needs laboratories and grants.

AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence, at least not here, not in places with appropriate medical care. But Jesus is not finished. Jesus is not satisfied that AIDS is now routinely and effectively treated in some populations. Jesus is worried about the rest of humanity.

According to Partners in Health, Paul Farmer's organization, there are 12 million orphans in Africa because of AIDS. Jesus needs help responding to that tragic reality.

Jesus needs virologists. And economists. Epidemiologists. He needs legislators and presidents who will pursue policies that permanently improve the economic and social conditions of their people.

Jesus needs business people who will create income-producing jobs and manufacturers who will produce quality products.

Jesus needs the Magi—smart people with generous hearts and bold spirits, wealthy scholars who dare to chase dreams.

Kids, Jesus needs you. Especially if you're bright. Especially if you have the gifts of drive and focus and intellect that will allow you to earn a Ph. D. and serve the world.

Some of you connect with this story through your life time of professional service, healing people, building houses, maintaining the transportation infrastructure of the region. You have invested decades in designing and maintaining the systems that support our well-being and quality of life.

Jesus is pleased with you. Your service connects with the Christmas story celebrates God's involvement with the messiness of life.

In Matthew's gospel, the Christmas story honors the Canaanite prostitute Rahab, who did what she could to protect life. Matthew pays homage to Ruth, the Moabitess, for her generosity to her mother-in-law. He mentions Boaz, the successful business man and Eliub, the perfect nobody. So we are all included in the glory of Christmas.

Matthew climaxes his telling of the Christmas story with his report on a group of wealthy, risk-taking, adventurous scholars. This is a special message to a certain portion of the population of Green Lake Church.

Today, we are saying Godspeed to Jenny as she heads to South Africa to continue her AIDS research. We salute you, Jenny for helping Jesus.

In the light of the story of the Wise Men, the scholars who came to the aid of Jesus, I wish a special blessing to all of you whose lives are devoted to study and learning. Jesus is counting on you. Keep it up.

Today Is the End of the World, Unless . . .

Today Is the End of the World, Unless . . .

In Africa more than 12 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. Dying, knowing you are leaving your children to fend for themselves in an environment that is hardscrabble beyond our capacity to imagine, that would be the end of the world. Losing your parents in such an environment, that, too, would be the end of the world.

Many of those deaths, orphaning millions of children, can be prevented. The work of organizations like Partners in Health is delaying and preventing the end of the world. Our dollars can further that work.

Here in the United States our “war on drugs” has resulted in the incarceration of millions of young men, especially young men from poor and non-white families. These young men do not use drugs more frequently than other people, but they are disproportionately prosecuted and convicted in our “war on drugs.” Having the scarlet letter, FELONY, stamped on their life histories is the end of the world for many of these young men, shutting down all kinds of opportunities.

We can change that. For many of these young men, a change in drug policy would mean their world does not end in their teens and twenties. We could release them to contribute to society and enjoy life.

Fascination with the end of the world too often blinds us to the very real opportunities we have to mend the world. We cannot direct the course of asteroids. We cannot tell God when to schedule the Second Coming. But we can take actions that will mean the extension of life and the beautification of the world for millions of people. For millions, whether or not the world ends today is in our hands. Don't blow it.

Immanuel

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists
December 15, 2012
Texts: Matthew 1 and 9.

Wednesday morning about 6 a.m. I was walking through the church headed here to the sanctuary. Early morning in a church is a special time. It's quiet. In the heart of winter, at 6 a.m. The sanctuary is dark. With just meager light filtering through the windows from street lights.

There's something special about the sanctuary. We have trained ourselves to expect encounters with God in this space. The room itself speaks of the mystery and wonder of the divine.

I was looking forward to an hour of meditation and prayer sitting here in this sacred room.

But I was interrupted.

As I was walking down the center stairs I heard voices. The lights were on in the Day Care rooms. So as I reached the bottom of the stairs, I glanced that direction expecting to see Pam who is here every morning at 5 a.m. Instead, filling the visual frame created by the doorway, I saw a little girl, I don't know, maybe three years old, sitting on a chair, a circle of curls bobbing as she talked animatedly to Pam who was out of sight around the corner.

The first thought that ran through my head was: Whoa. What kind of life requires parents to drop off their kid at Day Care at 6 in the morning. Are both her parents surgeons scheduled to begin operations at 7? Is her mother, a unit secretary and single? What's it like to be a three year old who has to be dressed, breakfasted, and ready for the day at 6 a.m.?

The second thought that ran through my head was, If I had to drop my little girl off at 6:00 in the morning, I would hope that someone like Pam would be there to welcome her.

The third thought that ran through my head was this week's scripture reading.

This is how Jesus the Messiah was born.

His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.

As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. "Joseph, son of David," the angel said, "do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord's message through his prophet: "Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means 'God is with us.'"

When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born.

And Joseph named him Jesus.

Matthew's words set us up to expect a very unusual child. The child is fathered by the direct action of God. I don't know exactly what kind of distinctive features I'd expect, but surely since Jesus was a divine-human hybrid, something should be obviously different from pure-bred human kids. To my surprise, the only evidence Matthew presents that baby Jesus has a fifty-percent divine ancestry are the words of an angel spoken in a dream and the words of an ancient prophecy. There is nothing observable about Jesus that is unique. Instead, the specialness of Jesus is utterly hidden. It can be observed only by those with a special ability to see. It does not lie in in the phenomena being observed. Throughout his gospel Matthew works to teach us how to see. He wants us to practice supernatural vision.

Our worship of the Baby Jesus prepares us to see all babies in a golden light. Because Jesus' parents were peasants, we have a special appreciation for the value and dignity of ordinary people. Because of our sense of connection with Joseph and Mary, we have a sense of kinship with people everywhere who lead precarious lives.

At the heart of the Christmas story are the details of an ordinary baby. He sucks and cries. He poops and pees. In Baby Jesus, God and humanity are intimately linked. This link forms a major theme running all through Matthew's gospel. To the untrained eye, there is an ordinary child. But those who have cultivated penetrating vision see the divine.

The stories of Jesus' birth are not merely cute memories, they offer profound wisdom which is reiterated throughout the gospel of Matthew. One of my favorite stories illustrating this wisdom is found in Matthew 9.

The leader of a synagogue came and knelt before Jesus. "My daughter has just died," he said, "but you can bring her back to life again if you just come and lay your hand on her." Matthew 9:18.

If you know anything about Jewish culture, you are immediately riveted. Jews don't kneel. Perhaps you remember the story of Mordecai in the book of Esther. He very nearly got the entire Jewish population annihilated because of his refusal to bow to someone high up in the government. Jews don't kneel for prayer in the synagogue. Now here, this leader in the Jewish community kneels in front of Jesus begging: Please come resurrect my daughter.

Dad's get this. This girl is the light of his life. She is the most beautiful girl in the world. And the sweetest and the smartest and the kindest. The entire world will go dark if she leaves. So dad, who has never before in his entire life, never, ever, not a single time bowed to another human being, is on his knees in front of Jesus begging for the life of his daughter.

In our imaginations we stand with the dads in that crowd. When Jesus begins moving toward the house, we breathe a sigh of relief. If we are at all skeptically inclined, we are anxious. We don't believe Jesus can raise people from the dead. But this time, this once, we hope we are wrong. This dad's desperate affection for his girl has captured our hearts. He must have his daughter again. Surely the universe would not mind bending its rules just this once to allow the return of joy and life.

Jesus and his entourage head off with the father. Along the way, Jesus stops. (Like any good movie, Matthew's movie has twists of plot.) He turns and interacts with a pathetic woman in the crowd. A woman who has been bleeding for 12 years. The bleeding mentioned here meant that for 12 years she was forbidden by the command of Scripture from having any intimate contact with her husband. She was to have no social contact with anyone. Strictly interpreted, the law would have separated her from her children, her sisters. Certainly from participating in worship.

Her life has been living death. But, of course, she deserved it. Or at least, she was the kind of person these kinds of things happen to. People close to her were stirred with revulsion. Bleeding was yucky. Disgusting. So, she was revolting, disgusting, repulsive.

And she had the effrontery to touch Jesus.

He stopped and turned. He had read her touch. Instead of scolding, rebuking, mocking, instead of asking her what was she thinking, imagining she could get away with violating every social and religious taboo and reach out and touch him, a rabbi, no less. Instead of saying or doing any of that Jesus enveloped her in a transforming light.

There in front of that crowd Jesus suddenly revealed her divinity.

“My daughter” he said.

When Kate Middleton gives birth, her child will be royalty. Why? Because Prince William and Kate are royalty. When Jesus, the divine king announced this woman was his daughter, he announced her own glorious status, a glory utterly invisible anyone uninstructed in the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Matthew softened our hearts with his portrayal of the Jewish synagogue dad bowing in front of Jesus pleading for the life of his daughter. Then having charmed us with the warmth of desire and admiration in that dad's heart, Matthew plays a trick on us. While we are all emotional, sucked in by the drama of this dad's love and loss, he pivots the camera and catches this woman who repulses us, then has us hear Jesus say to her, “My daughter.” Then Jesus seals her status by healing her.

The story ends with Jesus resurrecting the daughter of the synagogue ruler, but by this point in the story the resurrection is anticlimactic. We were all in love with the synagogue ruler's daughter from the beginning of the story. We know it's going to turn out okay for her. The surprise glory of the story is transfiguration of an undesirable, pitiful woman into a glorious queen of heaven, daughter of Jesus the Messiah.

Matthew presents us with the most exalted wisdom in the history of humanity—the vision of beings as the bearers of the divine presence.

See that baby born to Mary, that infant sucking and crying and sniffing and making happy baby noises. Look again, that child is the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Messiah of the Jews, the Son of God. Then throughout his gospel, Matthew shows us multiple examples of this same principle. God and God's beloved are hidden in plain sight all through society. Kids and women and men. Lepers, Romans and ruffians. Synagogue rulers and Pharisees. Once we have been learned from Jesus, we see the glory of God glowing in them all.

When we have deeply imbibed the wisdom of Jesus contained in the gospel of Matthew it might transform the story I told at the beginning of my sermon.

On Wednesday at about 6 a.m. I was walking through the church building, anticipating a quiet hour with God here in the quiet emptiness of this sanctuary. I was going to practice contemplation of the infinite.

But I was interrupted. I was prompted to look back over my shoulder toward the Day Care room where I saw, framed by the doorway, a vision of a little child talking with an attentive adult.

In light of the Christmas story, especially the way Matthew tells it, my hours of meditation on the grand mystery of God are not superior to the minutes Pam spends every morning paying close attention to three-year-olds whose parents are off to work.

As a congregation, we at Green Lake Church, rightly give serious attention to shaping our worship services to lift our hearts to God. We spend money and time to make sure this space lifts our spirits and facilitates our engagement with God.

You are to be commended for this.

As a congregation, Green Lake Church also opens its doors at six in the morning, Monday through Friday, to care for children who are in every observable way indistinguishable from Baby Jesus. (Okay Jesus wasn't blond.)

This is certainly no less significant, no less holy, no less admirable.

While I am sitting here in the darkness attending to the mystery of God, Pam is sitting in the light attending to the prattle of three year olds. According to Matthew, Pam's attention to a three year old is not less glorious my prayer and meditation.

And the entire enterprise of caring for children, which occupies so much of our building for much of the week is no less gloriously spiritual, is no less an engagement with God, than is our worship here at 11:00

As a Christian congregation, a community of people owned by the Christmas story, we are called to the highest vision, the glory of God hidden in every child of God, every son and daughter of human kind.

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.