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

Advent Three: Repentance and Return

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
(Ash Wednesday TS Eliot)

Veterans ask for forgiveness
Standing Rock Reservation, Dec. 4, 2016

I've been wondering, thinking, praying: how do we turn?

When we've set a course that leads in a direction we'll regret, how do we turn?

When accumulated actions make peace elusive, division ever deeper, how do we turn?

Thoughtful people I know no longer read the paper; the headlines are too disturbing.

Men and women of good will brace themselves to see decades of effort dismantled, no recourse in sight.

When very day brings stories of more brutality, more sadness, when anger, anxiety, evil escalate, we find ourselves asking:

Is it possible to turn?

This week a friend on the Standing Rock Reservation shared a link to a video that was already going viral:

Hundreds of US veterans had gathered in a hall, blizzard blowing outside, to ask forgiveness of Native elders. Army vet Wes Clark Jr., son of U.S. retired Army General Wes Clark Sr., offered a statement:

Many of us, me particularly, are from the units that have hurt you over the many years. We came. We fought you. We took your land. We signed treaties that we broke. We stole minerals from your sacred hills. We blasted the faces of our presidents onto your sacred mountain. we took still more land and then we took your children and then we tried to take your language we tried to eliminate your language that God gave you, and the Creator gave you. We didn’t respect you, we polluted your Earth, we’ve hurt you in so many ways but we’ve come to say that we are sorry. We are at your service and we beg for your forgiveness.

After his statement, Clark dropped to his knees and bowed his head in front of the elders, as other veterans did the same around him. Leonard Crow Dog, spiritual leader of the American Indian Movement, part of the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, leaned forward and put a hand on his head:

Let me say a few words of accepting forgiveness. World peace.

The call of world peace was picked up and echoed as men and women around the auditorium wiped away tears then stood and mingled, embracing everyone they met.

Of course the push back was immediate: who does he think he is, speaking for the US military?

Why should he or others apologize for what they didn't do?

Native Americans have their own share of guilt.

This has nothing to do with us.

On and on down the same well-traveled rut.

That one act of reconciliation will not bring world peace, yet it clears a path toward something new.

It prepares the way for those willing and hoping to turn from our centuries-old narrative of broken promises.

Advent is a time of preparation.

Readings highlight John the Baptist, bold prophet in the desert calling out “Prepare the way." "Make straight the path." "Repent and be baptized.”

By Week Three of Advent, John is in prison, doubting. His bold proclamation of a coming kingdom, his announcement of messiah, have earned him enemies eager to see him gone.

His confidence is shaken.

He sends his followers to Jesus to ask: Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?

Jesus sent back word:

Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

We live in this painful place of change and no change.

Kingdom and no kingdom.

Hope and despair.

That just world we long for eludes us.

We lean toward a moment when doors open for us all, then gasp as the doors slam shut against us.

Can we turn?

Do we dare to hope to turn?

A friend of mine has been working for several years documenting slave-holding families among church members in early Chester and Delaware Counties.

We often think slavery was strictly a southern thing. It wasn't.

Quaker families in Pennsylvania, Presbyterians, Anglicans: she has gone carefully through dusty ledgers, digging through wills, church roles, tax documents.

The goal is to prepare the way for a service of reconciliation.

To put in place a framework for repentance.

The pushback is much like that on Standing Rock Reservation: that's all behind us. We can't repent for what someone else did. It has nothing to do with us.

It's not clear yet where her work will lead, but real change starts with preparing the way.

And that preparation is repentance.

The most common Old Testament word for repentance is sub, appearing over a thousand times. It's sometimes translated "repent," more often "turn" or "return: turn from evil intentions, attitudes, actions. Turn or return to good, to God.

We are too often bound by that constant inner narrative, offering excuses, accusing others rather than examine ourselves.

White privilege? No - you have it all wrong.

Chauvinism? Never. There are good reasons to keep women in their place.

Prejudice against the poor? The uneducated? The immigrant? Those who voted differently from me?

That's not prejudice: I have my reasons. Good ones. Let me explain.

Our only hope to turn, to return, to repent, to change, is to fall on our knees and say "We, me particularly, we've done wrong. We've fallen short."

photo by Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Dec. 4, 2016

We've misused the resources we've been given.

We've abused the land we depend on.

We've judged when we should have prayed.

We've been quick to speak and slow to listen and learn.

We've been slow to speak when our word could bring healing or protection.

We have fallen far far short of the call to love.

Even so, there is great mercy available in confession.

Grace surrounds us when we name and claim our sin.

Laziness, greed, anger, pride, selfishness, bigotry, fear, hate, arrogance, contempt.

We pretend these don't matter, allowing them to grow and fester.

Allowing them to shape our politics, our choices, our lives,

We are in a dangerous place, as a nation, as a people.

As God's people, whatever we name ourselves.

We have much to concern us.

Much to answer for.

Any change will need to start with us.

With a bolder, more courageous, more honest repentance, making way for return to a deeper knowledge of God's grace.

It starts when we kneel to say we're sorry.

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned
in thought, word and deed.
We have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
In your mercy forgive what we have been,
help us to amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be;
that we may do justly,
love mercy,
and walk humbly with you, our God.
Amen.

This is the third is an Advent series of four.

Earlier Advent posts:

Advent One: Post Truth?, Nov. 27, 2016
Advent Two: Shepherds and Strangers, Dec. 4, 2016

Advent One: Hope beyond Terror, Nov. 29,2015

Advent Two: Listening in the Desert, Dec. 6, 2015

Advent Three: Blessed Singularity, Dec. 13, 2015

Advent Four: For You, Dec. 20, 2015

Advent One: Hope is Our Work, Nov. 30, 2014

Advent Two: Peace is Our Promise, Prayer and Practice, Dec. 7, 2014

Advent Three: Love is the Air We Breathe, Dec. 14, 2014

Advent Four: Joy is the Song We're Given, Dec. 21, 2014

Advent One: Rethinking Portfolios, Dec. 1, 2013
Advent Two: Resisting Idols and Injustice, Dec. 8, 2013
Advent Three: Redefining Home, Dec. 15, 2013

Advent Four: Rejoicing in Mystery, Dec. 22, 2013

Advent One: How Do I Know? Dec. 2, 2012
Advent Two: Outsiders In Dec. 9, 2012
Advent Three: Question. Fruit. Dec. 16, 2012
Advent Four: Sing Alleluia, Dec. 23, 2012

Advent One: What I'm Waiting for, Nov. 26, 2011
Metanoia,  Dec 4, 2011
Voice in the Wilderness,  Dec. 11, 2011
Common Miracles,  Dec. 18, 2011

Advent Three: Blessed Singularity

This fall I’ve been planting acorns. I foraged small pin oak acorns from a local nature preserve, gathered round swamp white oak acorns from the park where I do habitat work, and convinced one of our occasional birders to share a handful of impressive bur oak acorns from the centuries old tree growing in his yard.

Some of the acorns went into open areas of the park, some into a friend’s back yard, some into pots in my shed, where squirrels aren’t able to dig them up and eat them.

To me, acorns are both miracle and mystery. Amazing that the essence of a mighty tree can be captured in form small enough to hold in my hand. Amazing that, in time, an acorn can become home to multitudes of caterpillars and beetles, providing habitat and food for generations of birds, squirrels, and other creatures.

I wrote some weeks ago about particle and wave theory: the seemingly contradictory discovery that energy functions both as individual particles and undulating waves.

I plant my acorns and consider each as a single entity: a tiny world in its own hardened shell. Yet each is part of a wave of life, spreading back beyond human memory, reaching forward long past my own remaining future.

I turned sixty this week – my Facebook page had birthday greetings from Europe, Africa, a dozen or more states. People I’ve known since birth. Some I’ve known briefly, would like to know better. I marvel that my own small particle of life has somehow rippled over oceans, across six tenths of a century.

A friend gave birth to a daughter this week: a joyful reminder of the miracle of birth, a celebration on the way to greater celebration of the birth two thousand years ago.

The word I’ve been carrying with me this advent is “singularity.” How is it that on a planet full of people, each new child is unique?

How is it possible that each person is a gift, a singular treasure, that the expansive material and sweep of life gathers, again and again and again, into one living cell, then expands into a new human person whose influence ripples through families, communities, even nations?

Reading through the list of birthday greetings on my Facebook page, I find myself giving thanks for each person, their roles in my life: siblings, cousins, uncles, friends. Young people I knew when they were tiny children; elders who inspired me when I was young myself.

Singularity:

1. the state of being singular, distinct, peculiar, uncommon or unusual

2. a point where all parallel lines meet

3. a point where a measured variable reaches unmeasurable or infinite value

Every human is a singularity, a point where parallel lines of generations intersect, where strands of DNA recombine into just one individual creature of unmeasurable or infinite value.

And each human, young and old, points toward what C. S. Lewis called “the central miracle asserted by Christians.... the Incarnation:

"Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.... It was the central event in the history of the Earth—the very thing that the whole story has been about. …

 "By a miracle that passes human comprehension, the Creator entered his creation, the Eternal entered time, God became human—in order to die and rise again for the salvation of all people. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still ... (to) the womb ... down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him" (Miracles, Chapter 14). 

Rereading Luke’s story of that singular birth, I’m struck by the repetition of the word “blessing.” 

The Annunciation, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1898, France) 

Blessed are you.

Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!

Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!

That blessing ripples through Mary and her child to those who mourn, those who suffer, those who hunger and thirst, and beyond, to all nations, all peoples on earth.

Blessing (makários) describes a position of favor, but literally means “extend,” “make long, make large.”

The blessing of an acorn comes when it extends its roots and branches, reaches out beyond its protective shell, expands into beauty and grace for the multitudes of beetles, bugs and birds that find shelter in its shade.

The blessing of Christmas extends past the womb, the manger, the shelter of Mary’s embrace, to a world at war, a universe in pain. In Christ, we’re told, we receive forgiveness, freedom, mercy, grace.

In Christ we are drawn into fellowship with saints of the past, present, future, into fellowship with men and women of every race and tongue.

Into eternal song with angels and archangels.

I’ve posted before about binarythinking:

Friends/ Enemies

Universal / Particular

Large / Small

Momentary / Eternal

We want life to fall into easy categories: particle or wave.

And we want easy instructions: Hate your enemies. Love your friends.

We recoil from the idea of loving enemies.

We shake off the difficult sayings of Christ: “The first shall be last, the last shall be first.”

“Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

The instruction manual for our current age is clear.

Keep it simple. 

Grab what you can.

Guard your back.

Build the walls high and watch out for your own.

Grace, forgiveness, compassion are archaic ideas that have no place in a dangerous world like ours.

In the dangerous, tumultuous days of Hitler’s rise to power, when Germany was caught in the grip of racial exclusion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of the implications of Christ's birth in his classic “The Cost of Discipleship”: 

And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least of men is an attack on Christ, who took the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate Lord makes his followers the brothers of all mankind.  

Bonhoeffer died in opposition to Hitler's rule, a singular theologian whose reach continues on. 

And Christ’s blessed singularity extends through us as blessing for those most unlike us: Jew or Greek. Atheist or Muslim. Black Lives Matter or White Supremacist. Feminist or Fascist. 

Or that blessing dries up in us and dies, like discarded acorns that fail to grow. Leaving us brittle and small. 

Irrelevant. 

Isolated fragments of an intended whole. 

As I move toward Christmas, I find myself grieving.

This is a dark time of the year.

A dark time in our political process.

A disturbingly dark time in our national narrative.

But light shines in the darkness.

The light of Christ’s love, that blessed singularity, shines in me, through me, taking root, growing strong. 

A radiant extension.

A brilliant beacon of hope and joy, not just for those most like me, but for all the nations and refugees on earth. 

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

This is the third in a four week Advent series.
Earlier Advent posts on this blog:

Advent One: Hope beyond Terror, Nov. 29,2015

Advent Two: Listening in the Desert, Dec. 6, 2015

Advent One: Hope is Our Work, Nov. 30, 2014

Advent Two: Peace is Our Promise, Prayer and Practice, Dec. 7, 2014

Advent Three: Love is the Air We Breathe, Dec. 14, 2014

Advent Four: Joy is the Song We're Given, Dec. 21, 2014

Advent One: Rethinking Portfolios, Dec. 1, 2013

Advent Two: Resisting Idols and Injustice, Dec. 8, 2013

Advent Three: Redefining Home, Dec. 15, 2013

Advent Four: Rejoicing in Mystery, Dec. 22, 2013

Advent One: How Do I Know? Dec. 2, 2012

Advent Two: Outsiders In Dec. 9, 2012

Advent Three: Question. Fruit. Dec. 16, 2012

Advent Four: Sing Alleluia, Dec. 23, 2012

Advent One: What I'm Waiting for, Nov. 26, 2011

Metanoia,  Dec 4, 2011

Voice in the Wilderness,  Dec. 11, 2011

Common Miracles,  Dec. 18, 2011
The Christmas Miracle, Dec. 24, 2011 

Advent Two: John the Baptist,  Dec. 12, 2010

Mary's Song,  Dec. 19, 2010

Christmas Hope,  Dec. 24, 2010