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Moseley Chimes
January 2008
Say something interesting about Jesus. Well, there is so much we could indeed say, but I bet no one would have thought to turn to the genealogies! But it is exactly Jesus’ genealogy that inspires Matthew and, as we will be hearing Matthew’s Gospel in church for most of the Sundays next year, we ought to know why.
The Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah can be found in Matthew 1:1-17; go on, take a moment to look it up and see what you find …
You will see that there are fourteen generations from Abraham to David; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
So is this just a boring list of names of old men? X who was the father of Y, who was the father Z. Well perhaps it is if you read Luke’s genealogy, which really is boring (Luke 3:23-38). But, Matthew’s is much more interesting if only we delve a bit below the surface, for Matthew includes the names of some women in his genealogy, very rare for genealogies of the time. The names of these women are Tamar (v3), Rahab (vS), Ruth (vS), Uriah’s wife (v6), and finally Mary (v16). Now you might expect that these women would all be distinguished figures in Israel’s history, royal powerful women sitting alongside names such as Abraham (v2), Isaac (v2), David (v6) and Solomon (v6). Instead the stories of these women were somewhat different than what you might expect.
Tamar had a relationship with Judah that would have hit the headlines, for Judah was Tamar’s Father-in-Law (Genesis 38). Rahab was a prostitute as well as a foreigner who betrayed her people (Joshua 2-6). Ruth was a Moabite woman who was faithful to her Mother-in-law Naomi after her first husband died. Uriah’s wife was Bathsheba who was probably a Hittite woman who committed adultery with David, while he sent her husband off to die in battle (2 Samuel 11-12).
So how come these women are mentioned and not the good upright Israelite women you would expect? The truth is that God can use all of us no matter who we are or what we have been in the past, so much so that even these women who had chequered pasts have their names recorded in the scripture as Jesus’ ancestors. Jesus’ mother Mary as well was unmarried when Jesus was born. But this does not matter in Matthew’s or God’s plan for the world.
For Matthew goes beyond the standard format of the ancient genealogy and gives us more depth, for Matthew is encouraging all of us, for he believes that anyone, provided they do the will of God, is related to Jesus. That includes all of us today, for God has adopted us into his family, no matter what our background has been. Matthew is an evangelist he is calling us, no matter who we are, to worship Jesus as our Lord. Our stories have been grafted into Jesus’ story. Therefore our names, like the names of all these women, will finally be written in the Book of Life in heaven.