The first thought coming out of your mind after hearing the genealogy of Jesus might very well be, “So what? Why bother listing all those hard to pronounce names if it’s going to end with Joseph? If Joseph isn’t Jesus’ biological father then what’s the point?”
Indeed,
those are very good questions. For as
far back as we have records of people reading Matthew’s gospel those questions
have arisen. People have invented some
very creative answers to those questions, but those answers are absurd.
But
there’s more. If you were able to follow
the names and do math at the same time you realize that Matthew can’t
count. He says there are fourteen
generations between Abraham and David.
Indeed he listed fourteen generations.
Then he says there are fourteen generations between David and the
deportation. And again he listed
fourteen generation. Then he says there
are fourteen generations between the deportation and Jesus. But he listed only thirteen generations.
Yet
there are more problems still. Much of
the genealogy we cannot verify at all.
But some of it we can. Those
years between David and the deportation – a time period for which we have
reliable records – was actually eighteen generations. Matthew overlooks four of them. Plus, that time period is 400 years – roughly
22 years per generation. But for the
remaining 28 generations, covering 1350 years, the average generation would
have to be 48 years.
And
to further add to the problems, we can contrast Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus to
Luke’s genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3 and immediately realize that they do not
match. No matter how creative you want
to be, and how many excuses you want to make, you just can synchronize them.
What
then do we do with such a text? If the
Bible is authoritative for our lives then how can such an unreliable source
make any claim on us?
You
may remember from several weeks ago that we encountered similar problems when
we were reading from 1 Timothy. It was
the passage where the text said that women should be secondary to men and be
silent in church. We had problems with
that not only because we fundamentally disagreed with it, but because the
author showed he neither knew the scripture he was quoting to back up his
claims, nor were his arguments even logical.
At that point I also said that we’d be turning to Matthew’s gospel soon,
and we’d find some similar dynamics there.
And here we are.
This
past week I spent a good amount of time searching for answers to these
questions. Ancient authorities try to
tap dance around the issues or come up with complicated ways to wiggle out of
it. You see, Matthew is an enigma. He knows his Jewish scripture very well. His writing style uses layers of complex chiasmus
patterns. You have to be both very smart
and very well educated to do that. And
yet, his scriptural interpretation is downright wrong in several places. His genealogy doesn’t work. And as we read on we’re going to see that in
some places he warps things severely so that they say what we wants them to
say.
Well
let that be the beginning of an answer for us.
Matthew’s writing shows that we are reading the work of someone who is
highly educated and in that person’s story that is carefully crafted. Personally, I think Matthew did make an
outright mistake when he listed only thirteen generations rather than
fourteen. But otherwise, his logic and
his conclusions are pretty tight.
How
do we respond to all of the various problems that we can note in the genealogy?
I
like this straightforward answer by Douglas R. Hare in the Interpretation
commentary:
“Our answer to these questions must be based on a single observation:
apparently they posed no serious problem to Matthew and, by extension, to his
first readers. The details of the
genealogy were obviously of secondary importance to the [Gospel writers], as
Matthew shows by his intentional deletion of three generations of Judean
kings. What was important to hi was that
Jesus was truly David’s son. He was this
not by the natural process of male procreation but by the direct will of
God. How God’s intention was effected in
this instance is the topic of the next passage.” (Interpretation Commentary, Matthew, Pg. 9)
Is
that a satisfying answer? Maybe
not. But it is the answer that does take
us to what Matthew really wants us to realize.
Matthew’s
first readers were almost certainly Jews who had decided to follow. And for their belief their lives had become
chaos. Matthew was probably written in
the 80s of the first century. You may remember
that in the year 64 Rome burned. Emperor
Nero, who was probably insane, blamed Christians. Persecution began. In the year 70 the Romans burnt the temple in
Jerusalem and destroyed the city as punishment for Jewish revolts. It was a tumultuous time!
Where
was God in all this chaos? What was God
up to?
If
you look carefully at the genealogy you realize Matthew is giving you
answers. The people listed in the
genealogy, or at least those we know something about, are really a mixed bag.
Some
are prim and proper. Some are
faithful. Some are righteous. Some are wise.
And
some are cruel. Some are killers. Some are faithless. Some are stupid. Some are scoundrels, scandalous liars and
manipulators.
And
the women listed – well, let’s say no one who calls herself a “lady” would have
anything to do with that lot! The thing
that four of the five have in common is infamous sexual scandals. The fifth woman is Mary the mother of
Jesus. And well, in the next scene her
situation is going to get questionable as well!
All
in all, we ask ourselves, is Jesus’ genealogy one of picture-perfect virtuous
people? Is God willing to claim only the
righteous? No. Rich/poor, good/bad, known/unknown, all are
included. God wants us to know he is
rooted in the same messy reality we live in, not something perfect. God will come into this world as a human
connected to all the imperfections of the past.
God embraces and claims as his own: both our good and our bad.
There’s
one more thing to point out about four of the five women. They are all outsiders to Judaism;
foreigners. God is not confining the
origins of his coming to just the chosen people. The very final line of Matthew’s gospel,
Matthew 28:19, is, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”
Being
Jewish may have been a blood line and heritage thing. Being a follower of Jesus was not restricted
at all. Right from the get go, Matthew’s
original Jewish readers are realizing that God has all nations in mind for what
is to come.
Right
or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, the purpose of the genealogy in Matthew is to
show how God has deeply rooted himself into history – into our history. Even though the genealogy goes to Joseph, and
thus shows no actual DNA connection to Jesus, for Matthew this is an important
connection. Matthew wants his readers to
know that God didn’t just pop into the world for a short time and then just pop
back out after the resurrection. Our
human story and God’s story are one in the same.
And
though the genealogy itself doesn’t point it out, Matthew wants us to know that
God is still very much with us and that our story is still God’s story. Matthew begins the gospel with a genealogy
and lets jump to the end again with the absolute final line Matthew
writes. Jesus says, “And remember, I AM
with you always to the end of the age.
Matthew’s fearful original readers were not lost or forgotten. They are not unimportant to God. And the same goes for us too.
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