And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. St. Matthew 1:1-18
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Welcome to all of you and particularly to our friends from the Patriotic and Historical societies of New York who are here for this annual service honoring those who have given their lives in the service of our country.
This afternoon I changed the second lesson for this service. Usually that lesson is the famous testing of Jesus by his enemies, asking whether or not it was lawful for faithful Jews to pay taxes to Caesar. Today instead we heard the genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have represented here a rich tapestry of various ancestries, and it seems worthwhile to give the subject of genealogy some theological reflection. In doing so, I thank John Hilliard and Thomas Bird for their thoughts on genealogy.
All those “begats” which we heard from Saint Matthew are important, because they substantiate that Jesus’ lineage fulfilled the biblical prophecies that Israel’s Messiah, the Christ, would be descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs of faith in the LORD God, and from the tribe of Jacob’s son Judah, from which stemmed Jesse of Bethlehem, and the house of his great son, King David. The biblical chroniclers were thorough genealogists.
But let us look more closely at that list of begats, because we are meant to. Just as genealogists find fascinating twists and turns in lines of descent, just so the line of descent of Jesus has fascinations. Israel was a patriarchal society, but the interesting twists and turns involve the names of several women whom we are meant by Saint Matthew to notice. First, there is Rahab. She was the harlot who assisted Israel in the defeat of Jericho by Joshua and who joined Israel and became the wife of Salmon. Then there is Ruth, the Moabite, an outsider who married Rahab’s (and Salmon’s) son Boaz and gave birth by Boaz to Obed, Jesse’s father and David's grandfather. So Ruth was King David’s great-grandmother, and Rahab was his great-great grandmother. David’s renowned son, Solomon, was his by “her that had been the wife of Uriah the Hittite. That’s the beautiful and famous Bathsheba, also an outsider, whom David took by both adultery and a ploy that amounted to the murder of his own faithful soldier and servant.
We could have noticed that at the very start of the genealogy “Abraham begat Isaac.” This in itself is astonishing. Sarah could well have been mentioned, since she was past the age of child-bearing and Abraham was very old – Scripture unflatteringly says they were “as good as dead” when they had Isaac, whose name fittingly means “one laughs,” because both father and mother laughed when told by God’s angel that Sarah would conceive and bear Abraham’s son. The line starts, in other words, by a demonstration of the surprising providence and power, and perhaps humor, of God.
And so the story also finishes similarly with God. The line ends with Joseph. He is not called the father or the begetter of Jesus, but rather the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Then Saint Matthew goes on to tell us why this is so, for, “before they came together, [Mary] was found with child of the Holy Ghost.”
Our ancestries are all fascinating, and they establish two truths about us. First, according to Holy Scripture we are all, whatever our race or ethnic background, of one blood: direct descendants not only of Adam and Eve, but of Noah for that matter; we are, in a word, literally brothers and sisters in the flesh. Walk around the streets of New York and think of that mystery. Second, an astonishing number of surprises exist in genealogical records and give color to ancestries, traditions, and heraldic arms. These surprises, arising from everything from sins to miracles, are used by God in his providence to shape us and our identities. The supreme example is nothing less than the human descent of the Son of God himself, the Word made flesh, God incarnate.
The flags and banners carried in today’s service represent part of a wide array of peoples, languages, families, and heritages that comprise our country. As we honor those heritages, we also pray, in words of the Book of Common Prayer, that the Lord will “defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues.” It is good to be proud of our heritages. Its is also fitting to be humble before the goodness and grace of Almighty God, who has made us who and what we are, given us this good land for our common heritage, and above all, called us by faith into the family of his Son.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
