Joyful Genealogy

I'm fairly sure no mythic god would be announced with a genealogy of the kind that appears in Matthew, Chapter 1, listing the paternal ancestry of Jesus across two thousand years. As a writer, I'm always intrigued by the narrative arc of the ancient Biblical texts. Why start an important, dramatic story with a lengthy list of begots? 

The list itself has spurred reams of historical speculation. Why is it arranged as it is? Why does Matthew's differ from Luke's? What's the evidence for either? Why are there obvious omissions in both?

I talked yesterday with a niece who has sometimes dabbled in family genealogy. I have a younger sister I've never met, and my niece was at one time in touch with that part of my disrupted family. She reminded me I also have three half-brothers I never met. We don't even know their names. They've never made it onto any family tree I've ever seen. 

But no family tree ever has every name. Every family tree has holes.

Would I put a genealogy in a story of my own? Probably not. If I did, which family lines would I include? In my father's mother's line we have links that go back to early Welch settlers along the Hudson valley sometime before the American Revolution. In other parts of the family tree, we know just a few names, back to maybe the early1900s. Names before that were lost in a sea of northern Italian Carl Capras, (my paternal granfather) or Irish Patricia Ryans (my mother). 

My husband Whitney and I have been watching The Chosen by Angel Films, a series on the life of Christ. We watch an episode each Sunday evening, with our regular Sunday evening fare of popcorn and cut-up apples and cheese. We watched through the first three seasons, then circled back to watch again. It's a fictionalized version of the Gospels, of course, but parts of it ring true, and parts raise intriguing questions. 

Matthew is one of my favorite characters. The quirky, hated tax-collector. Obsessed with detail, disliked by his fellow disciples, a meticulous note-taker. The writers of The Chosen did a great job imagining Matthew as the writer of the Gospel of Matthew.

But there's something taking place in Matthew's genealogy that leaps past any imagined 1st century reporter, no matter how fond of making lists.

As would be expected for a writer of that time and place, most of the names Matthew provided are male Many were powerful, important, known figures from Jewish history. 

There are also names that might have been known by the people of Jesus' day, but aren't recorded in any Old Testament writings: Akim, Elihud, Eleazar, Matthan. Other names seem changed or conflated or slightly out of order. Let's assume Matthew didn't have access to digital census documents, or Ancestry.com. Should anyone assume an exactly accurate listing, or is there something more important at stake?

Here are the most unexpected entries, totally wrong if Matthew's goal was to win support for an unexpected Messiah (Warning: at least 2 of these stories would be banned in any well-conceived book-banning scheme):

• Tamar: a Canaanite widow (ie: NOT endorsed wife) who posed as a prostitute to entrap her father-in-law Judah (Genesis 38, check the backstory here)
• Rahab: a Canaanite prostitute who lied to her own people to protect Jewish spies (Joshua 2, context here)
• Ruth: a Moabite (another outsider), who married Boaz after a not-exactly model courtship (Ruth 3, summary here) 
• Bathsheba: she's not named by Matthew, just "Uriah's wife", a reminder that King David was not always a paragon of virtue and was guilty of Uriah's death after the illicit conquest, or worse, of Uriah's wife Bathsheba. The conception of Solomon, Bathsheba and David's son, is not one most writers would take care to spotlight in the opener of an authorized holy narrative (2 Samuel 11; story here)

In an essay called "Genealogy and Grace," Gail Godwin ponders the list of Jesus' ancestors:

For reasons unknown to us, God may select the Judahs who sell their brothers into slavery, the Jacobs who cheat their way to first place, the Davids who steal wives and murder rivals -but also compose profound and beautiful psalms of praise....

And what about the women Matthew chooses to include? ... Every one ... had scandal or aspersion attached to her. 

What does your own family tree look like? What's your own part in that tree?

Christmas can be a hard time of introspection. We think of loved ones no longer with us. We think of family rifts, stories not told, histories we carry we don't fully understand. 

I find myself encouraged by the genealogy of Jesus. By the recognition of the women - seen and remembered - despite so many reasons to omit mention of their lives. 

I find myself rejoicing that God's story, as it unfolds across generations, has never been the exclusive domain of the powerful, the purposeful, the socially accepted, the righteous and the upright. 

There's room in it for me. For my family: past, present, future. Known and unknown. 

As Godwin concludes:

Matthew's genealogy is showing us how the story of Jesus Christ contained - and would continue to contain - the flawed and inflicted and insulted, the cunning and the weak-willed and the misunderstood." (from Evensong, Gail Godwin, 1999). 

As we think about who will gather, and not gather, around our Christmas dinner tables, let's rejoice that there's one table where all are invited, all are welcome, all are named.  

From 17th century Tree of Jesse
P. Kritikos Collection (Patmos) Wikimedia Commons