Second Sunday of Advent
December 8, 2024

Celebrating Christmas with Matthew

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Matthew 1:1–25

We are engaging in some holy imagination this Advent, imagining what it would be like to visit the home of each Gospel writer for Christmas. We stopped by Mark’s house last week. Mark knows nothing of Christmas, only knowing of Jesus as an adult. But we learned from Mark you don’t need to know of mangers or magi to know that when you are in the wilderness the Son of God will show up.

The mood changes this week, as we are invited to share Christmas with Matthew. You’ll hear music when you approach the house. They are gathered around singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” “We Three Kings” is a favorite at Matthew’s house. He has a tree with bright lights, and of course there is an angel on top. A large illumined star hangs from a tree in the front yard. Around the trunk of that tree is a blue ribbon that reads “It’s a boy.” What you notice most of all is the crowd, including the magi. These kings or wisemen or astrologers or whoever they are, they have shown up as something of party crashers. It’s actually a bit surprising to find them here, but Matthew threw the door open wide. Evidently everyone is welcome.

Based on the crowd gathered at Matthew’s house, you might think there is a festival of some sorts, but the truth is it’s just a family reunion. All of Joseph’s family is gathered. I mean all of them.

Sitting in some easy chairs you will find Abraham. He’s Joseph’s great, great … forty generations great grandfather. He’s got some years on him now, as does the guy sitting next to him, King David. Oddly enough, Matthew can’t celebrate Christmas without these guys. They are heroes of Judaism. It may surprise you, but Christmas at Matthew’s house is a Jewish celebration. I know, I know. But remember, Matthew knows Christmas to be the celebration of the birth of the Messiah. The Messiah is the promised one of Judaism. If you are worshiping the Messiah, the faith you are practicing is Judaism. Matthew is Jewish and so are the people at his house.

Well, except the magi, they are Gentiles. They have crashed this family reunion. Matthew clearly will welcome anyone.

But let’s start where Matthew starts: with Jesus’ family tree.

Abraham was the father of Isaac. You remember them. Abraham and Sarah, barren for decades, until Isaac was born. Well, technically Isaac wasn’t the first of Abraham’s children. It’s a messy story. Isaac was the father of Jacob. You remember Jacob and Esau. Every time Esau turned around, he was being snookered by Jacob, including right here, because Matthew doesn’t mention Esau in the genealogy, but rather Jacob, the baby brother, gets all the attention. The baby always gets all the attention.

It goes on generation after generation. Jesse was the father of David. The shepherd boy, giant-slayer, becomes king. With every name there is a story. The stories continue all the way to Matthan was the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, and Joseph the father of … uhh, no! Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born.

It’s clear that Matthew has marched through the generations to show Jesus’ tie to Jewish royalty, but when he gets to the last link in the chain, Joseph turns out not to be the kid’s father but rather the guy who marries the mother of the Emmanuel child. Well, it’s messy.

Scholars say Joseph technically adopts Jesus when he names him. But after forty generations of “the father of” to be “the husband of” … well, it’s a bit messy.

When I lived in Kansas City, we used to drive out to a Christmas tree farm off of Highway 69, and there we would cut down the perfect tree. We knew it was the perfect tree because the kids would make us inspect every tree on this 6-acre farm to make sure we got the perfect tree. The closest experience we have to hunting.

Last weekend Carol and I got our tree. The process is a bit different. I dropped her at the Ace Hardware, drove around the block. As I rounded the corner, she was waiting for me on the sidewalk, with a tree all bundled up in that mesh. When we got home we said, “Well, we should open it up and see what kind of tree we have.” It was less than perfect, but it’s hard to tell when they are all tied up like they are.

But she said, “We will put that side in the corner, some extra lights here. It will do.”

We have journeyed from having the perfect tree to just going with what we have. It will do.

When it comes to the family tree of Jesus, it’s more of an Ace Hardware tree. It’s got its share of problem spots, and Matthew makes no effort to turn the messy sides to the corner. He brings them right out in the open.

Jesus’ family tree is not unique. I suppose most family trees are of the Ace Hardware variety.

My grandfather ran away from home as a kid. He hopped a train in Maine, riding south as far as he could go. In a freak accident he fell from the train. The fall left him with a broken arm and a bumped head. The arm healed, but the jolt to his noggin left him with memory loss. He couldn’t remember his name. He was in the children’s ward at Roper Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, the beds lined up against the wall identified by letters of the alphabet. He was in bed “R.” Since he couldn’t remember his real name, he just took a name from the children’s ward bed R, and so his name was Ward Are. I am embarrassed to tell you how long I believed that story. The truth is his mother died when he was young, and his father brought him to Charleston. His father, my great-grandfather, died soon thereafter. He did find himself alone in his teen years. He lived in an upstairs room above the Leland Moore Paint store. Mr. Moore let him live and work there. It was home for my grandfather, and he never left the paint business.

For reasons he would never tell us, he did not wish to contact his family. Thirty years later my uncle was in the service and was stationed in New England. He met some Ares and called my grandfather to tell him, “I think I have found some family.”

My grandfather responded, “Don’t talk to those people, and you come home right now.” My uncle is in the Army and my grandfather is telling him to come home like he’s late for curfew. Well, I have to tell you, even today I don’t know what was going on in that part of my own family, but I imagine it was a bit messy.

Matthew would get that. A closer read of Jesus’ family tree reveals more than a few branches that would raise an eyebrow or two in ancient Israel. There are five women to start with. This was not the norm in those days. No, ancient genealogies were all men: the father of the father of the father of.

Judah was the father of Perez by Tamar. Tamar — a brave woman in her own right. But Tamar was Canaanite. This is the family tree of the Jewish Messiah. Why would Matthew want us to remember that Jesus has a Canaanite in his line? Not just Tamar: Ruth is here, and Ruth was Moabite. There was no love for Moabites in Israel. Deuteronomy says not even their descendants to the tenth generation can be welcomed in the assembly of the people. Rahab is there. Oh my. Rahab was a prostitute. That’s awkward.

Not sure why Matthew is doing this.

But none of that is as significant as David, the father of Solomon. David the father of Solomon, by the wife of Uriah. The revered king assaulted Bathsheba and then tried to cover it up. When that failed, he had Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, killed in battle. That’s a story that seldom gets lifted up at family reunions, but Matthew pulls no punches.

Turns out that Jesus’ family, like most families, is messy.

Pat Conroy is a writer, and most of what he writes is taken from his own family life. In his book The Death of Santini, he describes his abusive father this way:

“I came into the world as the son of a Marine corps fighter pilot as fierce as Achilles. He was … comfortable with machine-gun fire and napalm. He fought well and honorably in three wars and at one time was one of the most highly decorated Marine aviators in the corps. He was also meaner than a … rat, and I remember hating him even when I was in diapers” (Pat Conroy, The Death of Santini, p. 1).

Every family is messy.

There’s one more woman who is a surprise in Jesus’ family tree: Mary. She’s engaged to Joseph, who is of King David’s line. Mary must be of someone’s line, but we don’t know who. We know more than forty generations of Joseph’s family, but Mary just drops out of nowhere. She could be anybody … she could be anybody, which must be the point.

Mary gives birth to the Emmanuel child, and Joseph adopts him. That’s how most read the story. But my wise friend the Reverend Dr. Scott Black Johnston says maybe it’s the other way around. What Joseph hears from the angel is “Pay attention, Joseph. Do you hear what I am saying? It is you who has been adopted; in and through this baby, you and your family (stretching all the way back to Abraham) have been adopted by God” (Scott Black Johnston, “Christmas at Matthew’s House,” preached on Day 1). And because Joseph’s family is as messy as it is, it is clear that at the end of the day we belong to God not because of any goodness in us but because of the persistent goodness in God. And that would be quite a story, but it doesn’t end there.

Remember, we have these family-reunion-crashing magi who have shown up at Matthew’s house. It’s pretty clear why they are here: because the grace of the Messiah extends beyond any family limit. Gentiles, too, are adopted by this holy love. Matthew’s house, with all its Jewish focus, turns into an international bazaar. There are flags of every nation and foods of every ethnicity, for the Gentile party crashers discover we are all in the family now.

I hope you have a joyful Christmas. But given that every family is normal, until you get to know them and then they are all a bit dysfunctional. Because all of us are a bit messy, when we are honest with ourselves — that’s why it’s helpful to spend some time with Matthew, because he will remind us there is no brokenness in you that disqualifies you from being included in the family of God. There is no weakness, no lack, no failure, because with God we are never defined by the worst in us; we are defined by the best in God. And in the grace of this God, our names have been written into the branches of the family tree of the Emmanuel child (Scott Black Johnston, “Christmas at Matthew’s House”).

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church