Tuesday, December 17, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Genealogy
The book of genealogy of Jesus Christ.
It starts with Abraham, this list of men ending with Joseph the husband of Mary, and “of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ.” Written perhaps for the Jews, Matthew the former tax collector did his homework in the library, tracking down lesser known ancestors of Joseph like Azor and Eliud. Or maybe that wasn’t so difficult, since the Hebrew nation prided itself on its ancestry, going back and back and back, to the extent of knowing the names of their great-great-greats.
Abraham became the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob (renamed Israel after a wrestling match with God’s angel).
Matthew names 14 generations, which added to the ten listed by Luke gets the lineage back to the beginning … the son of, the son of, back and back and back, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Now that’s history! Revisionists line up their challenges, but the people of God rejoice and dance down on the staircase of generations all the way to their favorite son, their Jesus. Of course countless Christians come from Gentile stock, but we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. Paul said often enough that sons of Abraham were not the only sons of Adam, not the only children of God, that all of us are given unto salvation by our savior, Jesus the Messiah.
So now here we are in 2024, reading these two thousand year old texts, seeing in our mind’s eye the men and women of the four thousand years before that, letting history’s wings carry us along above our own lives, our own moments in time glistening far below. Back and back and back into the welcoming, creating arms of God. Naked we came and naked we go. From dust we came, and to dust we return.
But here’s the thing. These packets of dust with names on them matter so much to God. We call them Abraham and David and Joseph, and we have our own names to add to the list. Like fish in schools we move through history as families and nations, but in those groups we claim our separateness as individuals, each of us aware of both our community and our own single self. Genealogy brings these two tracks into harmony with one another.
And then comes Jesus, the alpha and omega, creator with his Father at the beginning and ruler with Him at the end. Jesus-God, our cosmic Christ, invaded history and each of our lives in what Pastor Matt on Sunday called “the only way we could endure.” God became man and inhabits earth, thereby changing everything. History bends toward justice, toward love, and toward completion.
Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace forever.
God’s original blessing was never supplanted by our original sin. The blessing has always been here – Jesus made that crystal clear – and today like every day, we can rejoice without fear.
O wisdom of our God Most High, guides creation with power and love.
(Genesis 49, Psalm 72, Matthew 1)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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