A Place for Us or What’s in a Name?
A sermon brought forth from Matthew 1:1-18 preached on January 1, 2023
Perhaps like me, you’ve been to your share of graduations. They have preschool graduations now. Elementary and middle school ones, also. But I’m much more apt to attend high school or college graduation ceremonies. No doubt they’re causes of great celebration.
We watch as our loved ones are acknowledged for their years-long accomplishment, and we can’t help but think about how their walk across the stage signifies one of life’s important passages. One chapter of their story draws to a close and another awaits them.
But graduation ceremonies are also a drag because they’re not just about your loved one, but everyone’s loved one. Three or four hundred kids will have their moment, walk across the stage, shake a few hands, and gather their diplomas. If only we could fast-forward to the good part when our loved one’s name is called, and we cheer a bit, then leave. Move on to the next thing. But we’re not supposed to do that. No one gets to do that. It would be impolite. There’s no leaving early or arriving late, for that matter. Everyone in attendance must suffer equally. It goes with the territory.
See, once that first student’s name is called—something like “Abbott,” say—there’s no moment when another student and their family aren’t celebrating. We all get a moment like that, and then it’s someone else’s turn to have theirs. That’s what it’s like—for 3 hours or more. Someone special to someone else has their name called and gets their moment of recognition and grabs a hold of what they’ve earned. And there’s no fast-forwarding through any of it. What a drag.
Let’s be honest, how many of us skip right past a genealogy like the one we just read? Our eyes get dizzy just looking at it, and we press the fast-forward button until we get through verse 18 where the story begins. I have. Just look at these names. Yeah, there are lots of them, but even worse, most of them are unpronounceable. We’re not used to names like these. So if you’ve ever zoomed past genealogies like this in your Bible reading—well, get in line. I have, too.
Most pastors preach from a plan of suggested scripture passages called a lectionary. That way they don’t have to open the Bible, close their eyes, and point every week. There’s more than one lectionary, but most pastors follow something called the Revised Common Lectionary. It’s a three-year-long list of scripture passages, and upon it, Matthew 1:1-17 is nowhere to be found. But I preach from another lectionary called the Narrative Lectionary. It’s a 5-year long list that doesn’t skip around as much. That’s the good news. But it also gives me fits. What a drag. And this Sunday, it’s placed this doozy in front of us. But it’s here, so the people who created the Narrative Lectionary must think there’s something in it for us, so let’s go deeper.
Every story begins with names. “Once upon a time, there was a man named Adam, and a woman named Rahab.”
Stories begin with people. “In the beginning, God…”
We believe that God is a person, too. Not an idea or a conjecture, nor a good feeling. God is not backdrop; God is foreground. Front and center. The first of all names. All of our stories, or at least the ones that matter, begin with people. Subjects. God begins that way, too—not with events or assertions, theological principles, or cold hard facts. God begins with people like you and me. Our story has its beginning because our God is a storyteller who did not want to exist all by Himself. He wanted company, and people to share His story with. So, God brought forth life and everything we know about it, and God made room and time for Adam to come up with names for everything He encountered because you make sense of a thing by giving it a name.
Imagine how long it took Adam to come up with names for everything he saw. We’d happily sit through a few dozen graduation ceremonies than go through that again. But how important that work was!
God knows how important names are. Through scripture, when God speaks someone’s name, a blessing followed. Whenever we speak a name, we bless a person. Matthew began his Jesus story by doing what God has always done: by naming those who helped God tell His story—the one that began with Abraham and leads to Jesus. Forty-two names, each representing a generation, that Matthew intentionally splits up into three groups of fourteen. Fourteen generations from Abraham to King David. Another fourteen from David to the exile of God’s people into Babylon. And fourteen more from the exile to Jesus.
Don’t gauge your history books by Matthew’s genealogy. It’s not quite accurate. He skips at least three generations here and there. But he wasn’t trying for accuracy; Matthew had something better in mind. He’s telling a much more interesting story, one about a God who chooses to work out His ways through rascals and swindlers like Jacob and David; through outright evil kings like Manasseh, and the otherwise unknown, like Shealtiel and Elihud. Jesus came from a long line of outsiders, outlaws, scoundrels, and sinners.
Jacob’s in there. Think of Jacob’s shame for a lifetime of deception. Farther in we find Judah. Judah is shamed for selling his brother, Joseph, to slave traders and for lying to his grieving father, Jacob, about it.
This genealogy is also an early sign to us that Matthew’s not interested in convention. Refreshing. Ancient Jewish genealogies don’t include women, but Matthew includes five women: Tamar; Rahab; Ruth; Mary, Jesus’s mother; and one he thought important to include though he couldn’t bear to name her: Bathsheba. Of the five, three have track records that are, at best, touch-and-go. And only one was Jewish.
And what about Matthew’s choice to leave out some much more notable women like Sarah, Rebekah, and Leah? They’re nowhere to be found. Matthew’s genealogy is surprising and confusing; somewhat erratic and, throughout, inconsistent; it’s questionable and uneven; and filled with people who knew shame and doubt, because God tends to work out His salvation through those who know that they’re not enough. Jesus’s family tree has branches filled with those who were down and out, who found their way into the family of God when no one else would have them. It overflows with those who were well acquainted with their sin but were just as familiar with forgiveness. It’s crowded with the eccentric and inconsistent, and it’s well supplied with the proud and the defeated; but who, at the last, were loved, more than they would ever know, by God—just like we are.
Named sons and daughters, all are we. Each of us gets that moment where we hear our name spoken, and along with it, those incredible words spoken from the heavens that claim us: “You are mine.”
And we do not dare fast-forward through any of it. What a drag.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia. Amen.