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Foundry United Rev. |
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“Faith Passages –
Our Magnificent and Messy Genealogy” Sunday, September 14,
2008 |
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Matthew 1: 1-17 Rev. |
We are
beginning a new sermon series today on Faith Passages. Our experience of
faith – the questions we ask, the answers we find, our relationship with God
– these change with the ages and stages of life. There are scripture lessons
for each Sunday of the series, but there is an over-riding Scripture found in
Psalm 71, which is really a prayer. I’d like to begin this morning by praying
that prayer. O God,
from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.
So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim
your might to all the generations to come. (Psalm 71: 17-18) Amen. The
Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus. To us it is a long list
of names, many of them hard to pronounce. I asked But to
the biblical people who originally heard this genealogy recited every name
was not just a name but a story. Every name was a biography and a story,
often a complicated and complex story full of struggles and victories and
defeats and ambiguities. Jesus’
genealogy is a theological statement. It is interesting that Matthew lists a
genealogy for Jesus and Luke does too, and the two genealogies are different.
They are different because Matthew and Luke had different theologies, and
they compiled their genealogies so as to illustrate their particular
theological emphases. Each
list – Matthew’s and Luke’s – is selective. Matthews lists 42 generations
between Abraham and Jesus. Historically there must have been many, many more
generations between Abraham and Jesus but this is theology, not abstract history.
So the names on Matthew’s list are selectively chosen. Each of
the names is a story. Matthew’s list includes the names of several women,
which was unusual for biblical genealogies. Four of the women on Matthew’s
lists are Gentiles. Matthew is hinting that God’s intention from the very
beginning was that Gentiles should be included in the community Jesus came to
create. It is a theological statement. Some of
the names on Matthew’s list are quite amazing. “Judah, the father of Perez
and Zerah by Tamar” is on the list. Do you know this story? It is from
Genesis 38. I’m not
making it up. It is from the Bible. This sordid little story makes it into
Jesus’ genealogy. Everyone in Matthew’s day who heard the genealogy recited,
when they heard “Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar” would know
that this story is part of Jesus’ history. Jacob
is on the list – Jacob who cheated his brother and lived is a foreign land
most of his life to avoid his family. Rahab
is on the list – Rahab the Canaanite prostitute. King
David is on the list but the way he is listed is quite pointed. It says,
“David…father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” What a way to put it! One of
Jesus’ family members is Solomon, the son of David and another man’s wife. Everyone
who heard it put that way would know that buried in those few words was a
longer story of adultery, abuse of power, murder and conspiracy. Unpack
Jesus’ genealogy and you will find heroism and bravery and courage, but you
will also find incest, infidelity, prostitution, embezzlement between family
members, parental favoritism, fierce jealousies, siblings who wouldn’t speak
to each other for lifetimes, adultery, ugly disputes about inheritances, lying
and cheating. Any of
us feeling better about our families right about now? All of
these kinds of things are part of Jesus’ genealogy. Any of
us ever wonder what we did to deserve the genes we ended up with? Where did
these high cholesterol genes come from? These diabetes genes? These
overweight genes? What did I do to deserve them? What
does it mean that I was born with the looks I have – either pretty, or not,
according to the societal standards of the time and place we were born into. I
have a friend who says, “I would have been good looking if only I’d been born
a hundred years ago.” He looks sort of
like William Taft. What
does it mean that I was born with my intellectual abilities and disabilities?
What about my gender or sexual orientation? What about my psychological
proclivities? Do
these things have any meaning or are they just accidents? Do my genes have
meaning? And it
is not really about genes. The real surprise in Jesus’ genealogy is that when
you get to the end of it, the genealogy ties to Joseph. Then the very next
passage after the genealogy in Matthew tells the story of the virgin birth,
in which Joseph is revealed to not really be Jesus’ biological father. Either
Matthew has a problem with consistency or else Jesus’ genealogy is about
something more than biology. Genealogy
is about much more than biology. The theological truth is that we get thrown
into the world with all sorts of circumstances decided for us. We have no
control over them. We can’t pick our parents, neither our biological parents
nor our nurturance parents when they are different. We can’t pick our bodies,
or our geography of birth, or our social standing. We can’t decide anything
about our entry into life. So much that we will live with all the days of our
lives is arbitrarily and mysteriously decided for us. Carl
Michalson, the Methodist theologian who died too young in a plane crash, has
a wonderful survey of existentialist philosophy in one of the lectures he
gave before his death.[i] A
theme of existentialism, he says, is what Martin Heidegger called Geworfenheit.[ii]
It is a German word that has no good English translation, but Michalson
translates it as “thrown-ness.” Heidegger
says that we exist like marbles thrown into the mud. We are stuck here. There
is nothing around us to account adequately for our arrival. We have no
memory. We have no history. If we don’t know where we have come from, how can
we know where we are going? Michalson
talks about Henri Rousseau’s paintings especially a Rousseau painting called “The
Sleeping Gypsy.”[iii]
It is a very large painting. Almost
all of it is sand. A sleeping gypsy lies in the middle a vast field of sand.
If you look closely you see there are no footprints in the sand. There are no
clues as to how the gypsy got there. When she awakes she will not know where
she came from or where she has been. Existentialism. Henrik
Ibsen, the playwright, wrote Hedda
Gabler because he once saw an insect struggling inside a bottle and it
reminded him of his own life.[iv]
Samuel Beckett wrote an entire novel about one character. The entire novel
takes place inside a bottle. He called the novel The Unnameable.[v] Some of
the first faith questions we find ourselves asking are: “Why am I here?” “Who
am I, really?” “What am I meant to be?” And all sorts of other questions flow
from these. Am I a
nobody or am I special? Am I an accident or am I intentional? “Am I
blessed or am I cursed?” “Am I a winner or a loser?” It used
to be that the number one tattoo worn by men who ended up in prison was a
tattoo that said “Born to lose.” Prison was full of men who believed that
they were born losers. Questions:
Is there someone out there who is meant to love me and whom I am meant to
love? Do I have a soul mate? Or: What
is my calling? Am I called to do something with my life? Do I have a
vocation? All of
these are ways of asking the question of whether the forces that dropped me
into the world have meaning or not. They are all ways of asking the question:
“Why am I here?” “Who am I, really?” These
are faith questions, aren’t they? Matthew’s
genealogy of Jesus is about these faith questions, which I believe we begin
to ask very early in life, most of us. We may not consciously know we are
asking the questions, or we might. But very early on we begin asking the
questions: “Why am I here?” “Who am I, really?” “What do the circumstances
and accidents of my birth and life mean, if anything?” And I
think the Bible wrestles with these questions with us. I think these are the
questions Matthew addresses theologically in the genealogy of Jesus. And I
think Matthew’s answer is in contrast to two other answers that we are likely
to come to if we try to answer this question on our own. If we
try to answer this question on our own we are likely to conclude either that
our lives and life circumstances have no meaning. This is the answer of
nihilism. Everything is arbitrary and has no deeper meaning. I am nothing…surely
nothing special. This is the basis of what psychology calls neuroses, as
illustrated by the young Woody Allen persona. Nihilism is one possible answer
we are likely to come to on our own. The
other likely answer we are likely to conclude on our own is that our lives
have ultimate meaning. We are very, very special. This is the answer of predestinationism.
It is the basis of what psychology calls narcissism. A good
person, I believe, who became a politician ended up humiliated by public
disclosure of an affair he had. This is what he said in his confession: “In
the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and
became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.” He confessed to "a
narcissism that leads you to believe you can do whatever you want, you're
invincible, and there will be no consequences."[vi] Sometimes
we are tempted to flip-flop between the two. Some days we think we are
nothing. Other days we think we are God’s anointed. Scripture
and Matthew’s genealogy offer an alternative answer. It is an answer which
often appears in various ways in Scripture. The answer is this: There
is something that God is doing in history. You and I are not the stars of the
story of what God is doing in history. Before Outlook I used a product to
organize my life called Day-Timer. Day-Timer used a slogan to sell their
product – The slogan was – “It is all about you.” They were wrong. It is not
all about you or me. But we are part of the story. We are not nothing. It
doesn’t matter whether we are the child of the union of Tamar pretending to
be a temple prostitute and her father-in-law who was visiting a pagan temple
prostitute (what was he thinking?) Or whether we, like Ruth, are an illegal
alien who doesn’t fit in the picture. Or whether we are a hero and reformer
like Josiah or any of the other saints and sinners mentioned in Jesus’
genealogy. Our
lives have meaning and direction and telos
and purpose but the meaning and direction and purpose resides in the
community of God’s people to which we belong. It is not a personal
possession. It is not all about me. It is all about us – this teaming
humanity that stretches across time and space through whom God is seeking to
bring peace and justice and love and inclusion into the world. It is
all about family. We find our meaning and purpose in family. But remember
families are not just about biology. We have our biological families, yes.
But we also have our neighbors, a family trying to live together geographically.
We have our church families, our work families. Our nation is a family.
Humanity is a family. We find
our meaning and direction in the community that we belong to. It is not all
about me, but it is all about what God is doing through this magnificent and
messy family that stretches across time and space – a family to whom I belong
and in whom I find my meaning and purpose. The
faith question is whether I will choose to belong, to engage, to care, to
love. It is this belonging and loving that we find our memory, our history,
our direction and our hope. It is
all about family – magnificent and messy as they are. www.foundryumc.org |
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