Matthew 1:1-17 The Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah I used to skim quickly through the genealogy of Jesus that opens the book of Matthew. Those lists of names are easy to ignore; they are too long, the names are difficult to read (even silently), and they often favor a patriarchal worldview. I would rather skip those names and head to the good stuff in verse 18: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way...” Now this is the part of the story we’ve all been waiting for.
Then I found this beautiful children’s book by Sally Lloyd-Jones called “The Jesus Storybook Bible.” In the introduction she says, “The Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his treasure. . . . There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the Stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them. It takes the whole Bible to tell this story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every Story in the Bible whispers His name.” I realized that all of those names in Matthew 1 serve a deeper purpose; they provoke us to remember the stories that accompany them. There’s Tamar, a woman who disguised herself as a prostitute and gave birth to twins. There’s the slingshot-wielding, shepherd turned murderer and poet, King David. Even the Story of cursed ex-king Jeconiah, who was defeated and sent into exile by the the Babylonians, made the cut. They are stories of triumph and failure, forgiveness, and deceit; stories of people just like us, mixing up God’s messages and failing to love each other. Yet somehow, unlikely as it seems, these stories point to the birth of Christ. Amazingly, forty-two generations of bumbling, misguided, and downright tragic characters became a part of our beloved Christmas Story. As Sally Lloyd-Jones reminds us, the baby is the center of the Story. The manger scene is not, however, the end of the Story. The Stories recalled in Matthew’s genealogy lead to the beginning of Jesus’s life, and this Christmas story points to the end of his life: the Easter Story. Here, we find a tale of more human failures, more of God’s Grace, and a Resurrected Savior. We know that the story does not end with the manger, or the cross, or even the empty tomb. The story of the coming of the Kingdom of God is still being written, and beyond our wildest dreams, we are all part of that Story. In this season of Advent, a time of waiting and hoping, we anticipate experiencing God’s presence in unexpected places, and we pray that our Stories somehow point toward Christ. And while we wait for the baby, like those saints and sinners listed in Matthew, we give thanks that by the Grace of God, our story is part of God’s Story, too.
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Diana CurtisWife, mom, stepmom, writing instructor, handbell ringer, choir singer, calligrapher, and expert napper. Archives
December 2017
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