Homily for Tuesday, 17 December 2013– Ferial

Tuesday of the 3rd week in Advent

Readings of the day: Genesis 49:2, 8-10; Psalm 72:1-2, 3-4ab, 7=8, 17; Matthew 1:1-17

Have any of you ever worked out your family’s genealogy, or been interested in doing so?

This past weekend, one of the “Pickles” comics in Rochester's Democrat and Chronicle newspaper was about genealogy. The grandson walks in on his grandfather, who is at his computer working on his genealogy. “What’s up, Grandpa?” the boy asks.

Grandpa replies, “I’m doing my genealogy. Do you know what genealogy is? A word that ends with ‒alogy means the study of something.”

“The study of Jeannie?” the grandson wonders. “Does Grandma know you’re studying Jeannie?”

The Jewish people at and before Jesus’ time kept genealogies just as many of us do today. We hear an example of such a genealogy in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew. However, unlike our genealogies, the genealogies of Biblical times were not primarily historical records of generations. Instead, they served to make a point about who God is and how God has acted in our favor in history.

Matthew’s Gospel begins with just this kind of genealogy, not for the purpose of historical accuracy but to show how God can, did, and does bring order to our often chaotic human situations. From Abraham to Jesus, Matthew lists three sets of fourteen generations; three by two by seven. These numbers in the Bible signify supreme orderliness.

On closer scrutiny, though, God’s orderliness of three by two by seven involves much chaos by Matthew’s own account. The second set of fourteen generations extends from David through the Babylonian exile, the most chaotic period of early Israel’s history during which the royal line of Israel collapsed entirely. But God brings order even to this chaos.

Then Matthew includes five women, rarely included in Biblical genealogies, in his list of names.  These are not just any women, but women we would least expect to be involved in God’s plan to bring us a Savior. We hear of Tamar who, in the Book of Genesis, tricks her father Judah into thinking that she is a prostitute; Rahab who actually was a prostitute; Ruth the foreigner (Moabite) who somehow figures in an Israelite genealogy; Bathsheba the illicit wife of King David; and Mary the virgin.

God chose some strange and sometimes downright disreputable characters to bring about our Savior, Jesus Christ!

If, then, your genealogy includes some strange people; the disreputable; those about whom we prefer not to speak, let us remember that this was Jesus’ genealogy, too. Out of human chaos comes God’s order; God’s salvation. Because God so loves us, he has given us his only Son to live as one of us amid our chaos; to redeem us; to save us.