041127 Sermon Christmas
04 M 1 Jesus birth line… KSS
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and we will pick up the series again later in spring… Today is the first Sunday of Advent: Advent is the season in the Christian year when we look ahead to Christ’s coming by looking back to his first coming…
Rico Tice, an Anglican minister, asks people who are not Christians, what do you think about religion? They say dull, boring, a set of rules…
He opens up the Bible and to one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ… and he explains that word Gospel literally means magnificent News.
But when we open the first Gospel it doesn’t seem to read like good news. It reads more like a telephone book.
One of my seminary professor’s Haddon Robinson said in a typical church when you get up to preach people are a little bored, and they suspect you’re going to make matters worse.
As I read our text for the day, particularly if you are new the to Bible and these names don’t mean anything to you, it may well feel like the service is really going down hill in a hurry, but as Larry King might say, don’t go away… this text may surprise you…
Please turn to Matthew Chapter one. This book is about 3/4s of the way through your Bible and it’s what many call the Newer Testament part of the Bible:
Matthew 1 (tape)1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[1] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[2]
This text seems like just list of names to us--particularly if haven’t read the earlier part of the Bible. To many of us, this text seems about as inspiring as a wide yawn.
But we learn a number of things about the character of God through this text: one of the things we learn about God through this list of names is that God cares about individuals—he remembers our name.
Can you name your great, great grandfather or great, great, grandmother’s name by their first name? I don’t know the first the name of my great, grandfather.
Think about it, we could lead a pretty interesting life, but the fact is that our great, great grandchildren or great, great nephews and nieces may not even remember our names.
Psalm 103 says as for woman and man their days are like grass (pick it up), they flourish like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more…
Our lives are like the flowers (take the orange one), we may flourish for a brief time, but then they are gone… but if we join our lives to the life of God, our personhood will be known by God for all time--our names will appear in what the Bible calls the book of life: the Book of life… God remembers our name…
One of the great ironies is that if we live for fame of our name, our name will one day be forgotten, but if we find our true identity in God’s name, in the name of his son Jesus Christ our name will be forever remembered… (turn to people and say their name…)
In here in the very beginning of what we call the Newer Testament, we see a picture of a God who remembers us…
There are lots of names here, sort of like the bride and groom saying the thank yous at the end of a wedding reception, I don’t want to skip over anyone, but partly in the interest of time, I want to focus in on the four women.
Ancient genealogies did not require women to be included, but Matthew includes four women. This is significant because it shows us something about God.
As we know throughout history, women have tended to be treated as second class citizens. We’re familiar with periods of world history where their testimony has not been regarded as legally admissible, where women have not been given the privilege of citizenship and the right to vote.
There has been a time in the history of Canada—in the last 100 years—where it has been legal to kidnap a woman age 16 or over (it was only illegal to kind an heiress: like Teresa Hinz), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not hire it’s first woman member until 1974, there no laws against sexual harassment until 1983 here in Canada.
Why does Matthew go out of his way to include 4 in this list?
I think he us know in world where women have often been excluded that God includes and values women.
This fact is confirmed as read beyond chapter one of Matthew.
In a time when women were regarded as men’s “property,” in time when men could divorce their wives for the cultural equivalent of burning their toast, in a time when a Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public, Jesus valued women as human beings, Jesus was a powerful mentor and friend to women, but never used his power to exploit women, and when Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest of all time event of all time-- rising from the dead--he appeared first to women, not to men, not to CNN.
While certain so called “Christian” cultures have no doubt oppressed women, Jesus has been called the greatest emancipator of women in the history of the human race.
Great feminists, like Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Gloria Steinem et al. have made very important contributions to the women, but noone as broad and great a contribution to women as Jesus Christ.
Those who have truly followed his teachings have been liberators of women: William Carey the great missionary to India—was a primary catalyst for banning SATI, the practice of burning widows, Christians have been at the forefront for fighting for women’s right to vote, at the forefront of movement to adopt abandon baby girls, fighting for right for girls not to be aborted just because they are girls.
Right here in Vancouver it still the case the women (with exception of modeling industry and sex trade) make less for the same work than men, we have a very prominent golf course on the Westside of our city that will not admit women as members.
Jesus Christ is the great emancipator of women.
Gospel is magnificent news for women.
This fact may be part of the reason why more women than men who have turned to Christ. Why 2/3 of the Christian of modern mission force are women.
Christmas story is a story is magnificent news women:
As I said ancient genealogies did not need to include women, but genealogical records include women if and only if they could somehow ensure the purity of the bloodline or enhance the prestige of genealogy.
But Matthew in his “birthline” includes four who serve these purposes: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba are also racial and cultural outsiders.
Tamar was a Canaanite, Rahab a Jerichoite, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite… These women are not only not Jewish, but are from despised people groups.
There have, of course, always been outsiders.
In places like New York City, as we know, historically there has been a lot of racism against Irish Catholics. But today in North America the prejudice against the Irish is not nearly as apparent.
In the larger cities of North America we’ve seen successive waves of immigrants that followed the Anglo Saxons and the French, like Irish, the Jews, the Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, South Asians, Chinese and people from the Middle East, etc.
Generally what tends to happen is that the most recent group of immigrants is most discriminated against. And immigrant groups once accepted tend to close the door behind them and ignore the racism directed at the newer group that is below them.
Vancouver is liberal and wonderfully tolerant, but let’s not for a moment confuse Vancouver with heaven. Racism and prejudice exist here as well although in more subtle forms.
You belong to a race that either significantly drives up the price of real estate here or significantly drives down the price of real estate, you’re going to experience some backlash against you. If you begin in restaurant in West Vancouver, say you’re a recent immigrant, you’re making say Iranian food, as this is a live example, the city may just pass a odour bylaw could put you out of business.
Philip Jenkins the distinguished professor at Penn State worldwide notes that there is still a correlation worldwide between one’s skin color and one’s wealth. In certain parts of the world, if you look like we had to work literally “under the sun” you’re going to be discriminated against. In a place like Vancouver, where it’s cloudy or wet a good part of year, you need to have money to go a warm place in the winter—there is certain cache in being able to afford to go a kind of place make darker.
Prejudice and racism are not just a problems in places like South Africa or Alabama, they are problems virtually everywhere in some degree or another…
Matthew seems to go out of his way to include women from the despised races: Tamar the Canaanite, Rahab, a Jerichoite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite…
Ray Bakke the urbanologist who spoken a couple times--has said, Jesus wove into his blood stream of people’s of the world and then shed his blood for them….
Ray also says the Christmas story is about a baby was born in a borrowed barn, in Asia and who became an African refugee in African in Egypt, so the Christmas story is about an international migrant….
Gospel is magnificent news for women, and for cultural outsiders…
The four women are not only culturally and racially on outsiders, they are also morally questionable… Tamar dresses up as sex trade worker and tricks her father in law to have sex with her. She has twins and one of them is an ancestor of Jesus Christ (In all fairness her sexual relationship with her father-in-law, under the circumstances was acceptable in her culture); Rahab was a sex trade worker—a prostitute, the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba and she is infamous because of her adulterous affair with King David, Ruth, was virtuous, but as Dale Bruner puts it she was a tad aggressive…
Having these names lineage is a little like having: Madonna (pop star not the original one), Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton… on the genealogical record of some great moral leader…. No doubt these women have virtues, but there is also something scandalous about them…
Again Matthew seems to be going out of his way drawn attention to the fact that there are women in Jesus’ genealogy who are cultural and moral outsiders….
Our children’s pastor Catherine has given me permission to share this story:
When she was 18 years old and not married she became pregnant. Growing up in a pro-choice home she felt pressured to abort her pregnancy, not because she was pro-life, but because she was afraid to… (ask her permission to share this part)
She had her baby, but she knew she didn’t have the support system to raise her child and so she gave her baby up to the government for adoption… She always wondered what had happened to her son, how did he son turned out. Earlier this year Catherine was in touch with a social worker in who is acquainted her son. Through her Catherine was able to connect with her son by letter… Two weeks for the first time she talked to Danny by phone… he’s 25 years old. He’s to married a woman who ended up having cancer and he’s been so supportive of her. He’s a Christian. He’s international director youth mission that uses drama to reach people around the world (North and South America, Asia, and Europe) Today, she flies to Alberta to meet for the first time since he was a new born baby.
Not every story is, of course, is so positive.
But it is as Catherine would attest to, where God takes our sins, our mistakes and he can bring good out of them.
As a result of her out of wedlock pregnancy she became ripe to receive Jesus Christ and her son has become a person is a blessing to a lot of people.
My professor Haddon Robinson says God has habit growing roses out of manure piles. Grace…
Matthew 1, is magnificent news for the moral outsider.
If you allow me be a bit self-indulgent…
Let’s talk about my grandmother. My grandmother turns 91 in two weeks. She still plays tennis.
My grandmother was and is an elegant and beautiful woman. She married a young business stud. He was an entrepreneur, he designed golf courses with like Trent Jones, jr., he was corporate ceo. He was powerful businessman. He was also a womanizer, he had a series of mistress and was verbally and at times physically abusive toward my grandmother--in a time when it was not socially acceptable to divorce.
A few years ago I was with my grandmother and she said my life has hard… I had unhappy marriage. But I know that my life has meaning, because I had your mom and your mom had you… and you are minister…
(She is, of course, proud of all of her children and grandchildren)
What her story and Tamar’s and Bathsheba story is telling us is that even when our lives are complicated and messy, and even have marred by our sins or the sins of others, God able to accomplish his purpose through us.
In the view of commentator Raymond Brown: Matthew includes these scandalous women in the genealogy of Jesus as a way to bring comfort to a pregnant, unwed teenager named Mary, who’s trying really hard to “explain” her pregnancy to others.
Stephen Neil, points out there is an international parenthesis around Matthew’s Gospel, it begins and ends with message that the Gospel is good news for all peoples.
Matthew’s phone book, his cemetery tour, shows us the Gospel is Good New for all and that is why we have reason to celebrate Christmas.
041127 Sermon Christmas
04 M 1 Jesus birth line… KSS
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and we will pick up the series again later in spring… Today is the first Sunday of Advent: Advent is the season in the Christian year when we look ahead to Christ’s coming by looking back to his first coming…
Rico Tice, an Anglican minister, asks people who are not Christians, what do you think about religion? They say dull, boring, a set of rules…
He opens up the Bible and to one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ… and he explains that word Gospel literally means magnificent News.
But when we open the first Gospel it doesn’t seem to read like good news. It reads more like a telephone book.
One of my seminary professor’s Haddon Robinson said in a typical church when you get up to preach people are a little bored, and they suspect you’re going to make matters worse.
As I read our text for the day, particularly if you are new the to Bible and these names don’t mean anything to you, it may well feel like the service is really going down hill in a hurry, but as Larry King might say, don’t go away… this text may surprise you…
Please turn to Matthew Chapter one. This book is about 3/4s of the way through your Bible and it’s what many call the Newer Testament part of the Bible:
Matthew 1 (tape)1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[1] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[2]
This text seems like just list of names to us--particularly if haven’t read the earlier part of the Bible. To many of us, this text seems about as inspiring as a wide yawn.
But we learn a number of things about the character of God through this text: one of the things we learn about God through this list of names is that God cares about individuals—he remembers our name.
Can you name your great, great grandfather or great, great, grandmother’s name by their first name? I don’t know the first the name of my great, grandfather.
Think about it, we could lead a pretty interesting life, but the fact is that our great, great grandchildren or great, great nephews and nieces may not even remember our names.
Psalm 103 says as for woman and man their days are like grass (pick it up), they flourish like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more…
Our lives are like the flowers (take the orange one), we may flourish for a brief time, but then they are gone… but if we join our lives to the life of God, our personhood will be known by God for all time--our names will appear in what the Bible calls the book of life: the Book of life… God remembers our name…
One of the great ironies is that if we live for fame of our name, our name will one day be forgotten, but if we find our true identity in God’s name, in the name of his son Jesus Christ our name will be forever remembered… (turn to people and say their name…)
In here in the very beginning of what we call the Newer Testament, we see a picture of a God who remembers us…
There are lots of names here, sort of like the bride and groom saying the thank yous at the end of a wedding reception, I don’t want to skip over anyone, but partly in the interest of time, I want to focus in on the four women.
Ancient genealogies did not require women to be included, but Matthew includes four women. This is significant because it shows us something about God.
As we know throughout history, women have tended to be treated as second class citizens. We’re familiar with periods of world history where their testimony has not been regarded as legally admissible, where women have not been given the privilege of citizenship and the right to vote.
There has been a time in the history of Canada—in the last 100 years—where it has been legal to kidnap a woman age 16 or over (it was only illegal to kind an heiress: like Teresa Hinz), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not hire it’s first woman member until 1974, there no laws against sexual harassment until 1983 here in Canada.
Why does Matthew go out of his way to include 4 in this list?
I think he us know in world where women have often been excluded that God includes and values women.
This fact is confirmed as read beyond chapter one of Matthew.
In a time when women were regarded as men’s “property,” in time when men could divorce their wives for the cultural equivalent of burning their toast, in a time when a Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public, Jesus valued women as human beings, Jesus was a powerful mentor and friend to women, but never used his power to exploit women, and when Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest of all time event of all time-- rising from the dead--he appeared first to women, not to men, not to CNN.
While certain so called “Christian” cultures have no doubt oppressed women, Jesus has been called the greatest emancipator of women in the history of the human race.
Great feminists, like Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Gloria Steinem et al. have made very important contributions to the women, but noone as broad and great a contribution to women as Jesus Christ.
Those who have truly followed his teachings have been liberators of women: William Carey the great missionary to India—was a primary catalyst for banning SATI, the practice of burning widows, Christians have been at the forefront for fighting for women’s right to vote, at the forefront of movement to adopt abandon baby girls, fighting for right for girls not to be aborted just because they are girls.
Right here in Vancouver it still the case the women (with exception of modeling industry and sex trade) make less for the same work than men, we have a very prominent golf course on the Westside of our city that will not admit women as members.
Jesus Christ is the great emancipator of women.
Gospel is magnificent news for women.
This fact may be part of the reason why more women than men who have turned to Christ. Why 2/3 of the Christian of modern mission force are women.
Christmas story is a story is magnificent news women:
As I said ancient genealogies did not need to include women, but genealogical records include women if and only if they could somehow ensure the purity of the bloodline or enhance the prestige of genealogy.
But Matthew in his “birthline” includes four who serve these purposes: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba are also racial and cultural outsiders.
Tamar was a Canaanite, Rahab a Jerichoite, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite… These women are not only not Jewish, but are from despised people groups.
There have, of course, always been outsiders.
In places like New York City, as we know, historically there has been a lot of racism against Irish Catholics. But today in North America the prejudice against the Irish is not nearly as apparent.
In the larger cities of North America we’ve seen successive waves of immigrants that followed the Anglo Saxons and the French, like Irish, the Jews, the Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, South Asians, Chinese and people from the Middle East, etc.
Generally what tends to happen is that the most recent group of immigrants is most discriminated against. And immigrant groups once accepted tend to close the door behind them and ignore the racism directed at the newer group that is below them.
Vancouver is liberal and wonderfully tolerant, but let’s not for a moment confuse Vancouver with heaven. Racism and prejudice exist here as well although in more subtle forms.
You belong to a race that either significantly drives up the price of real estate here or significantly drives down the price of real estate, you’re going to experience some backlash against you. If you begin in restaurant in West Vancouver, say you’re a recent immigrant, you’re making say Iranian food, as this is a live example, the city may just pass a odour bylaw could put you out of business.
Philip Jenkins the distinguished professor at Penn State worldwide notes that there is still a correlation worldwide between one’s skin color and one’s wealth. In certain parts of the world, if you look like we had to work literally “under the sun” you’re going to be discriminated against. In a place like Vancouver, where it’s cloudy or wet a good part of year, you need to have money to go a warm place in the winter—there is certain cache in being able to afford to go a kind of place make darker.
Prejudice and racism are not just a problems in places like South Africa or Alabama, they are problems virtually everywhere in some degree or another…
Matthew seems to go out of his way to include women from the despised races: Tamar the Canaanite, Rahab, a Jerichoite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite…
Ray Bakke the urbanologist who spoken a couple times--has said, Jesus wove into his blood stream of people’s of the world and then shed his blood for them….
Ray also says the Christmas story is about a baby was born in a borrowed barn, in Asia and who became an African refugee in African in Egypt, so the Christmas story is about an international migrant….
Gospel is magnificent news for women, and for cultural outsiders…
The four women are not only culturally and racially on outsiders, they are also morally questionable… Tamar dresses up as sex trade worker and tricks her father in law to have sex with her. She has twins and one of them is an ancestor of Jesus Christ (In all fairness her sexual relationship with her father-in-law, under the circumstances was acceptable in her culture); Rahab was a sex trade worker—a prostitute, the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba and she is infamous because of her adulterous affair with King David, Ruth, was virtuous, but as Dale Bruner puts it she was a tad aggressive…
Having these names lineage is a little like having: Madonna (pop star not the original one), Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton… on the genealogical record of some great moral leader…. No doubt these women have virtues, but there is also something scandalous about them…
Again Matthew seems to be going out of his way drawn attention to the fact that there are women in Jesus’ genealogy who are cultural and moral outsiders….
Our children’s pastor Catherine has given me permission to share this story:
When she was 18 years old and not married she became pregnant. Growing up in a pro-choice home she felt pressured to abort her pregnancy, not because she was pro-life, but because she was afraid to… (ask her permission to share this part)
She had her baby, but she knew she didn’t have the support system to raise her child and so she gave her baby up to the government for adoption… She always wondered what had happened to her son, how did he son turned out. Earlier this year Catherine was in touch with a social worker in who is acquainted her son. Through her Catherine was able to connect with her son by letter… Two weeks for the first time she talked to Danny by phone… he’s 25 years old. He’s to married a woman who ended up having cancer and he’s been so supportive of her. He’s a Christian. He’s international director youth mission that uses drama to reach people around the world (North and South America, Asia, and Europe) Today, she flies to Alberta to meet for the first time since he was a new born baby.
Not every story is, of course, is so positive.
But it is as Catherine would attest to, where God takes our sins, our mistakes and he can bring good out of them.
As a result of her out of wedlock pregnancy she became ripe to receive Jesus Christ and her son has become a person is a blessing to a lot of people.
My professor Haddon Robinson says God has habit growing roses out of manure piles. Grace…
Matthew 1, is magnificent news for the moral outsider.
If you allow me be a bit self-indulgent…
Let’s talk about my grandmother. My grandmother turns 91 in two weeks. She still plays tennis.
My grandmother was and is an elegant and beautiful woman. She married a young business stud. He was an entrepreneur, he designed golf courses with like Trent Jones, jr., he was corporate ceo. He was powerful businessman. He was also a womanizer, he had a series of mistress and was verbally and at times physically abusive toward my grandmother--in a time when it was not socially acceptable to divorce.
A few years ago I was with my grandmother and she said my life has hard… I had unhappy marriage. But I know that my life has meaning, because I had your mom and your mom had you… and you are minister…
(She is, of course, proud of all of her children and grandchildren)
What her story and Tamar’s and Bathsheba story is telling us is that even when our lives are complicated and messy, and even have marred by our sins or the sins of others, God able to accomplish his purpose through us.
In the view of commentator Raymond Brown: Matthew includes these scandalous women in the genealogy of Jesus as a way to bring comfort to a pregnant, unwed teenager named Mary, who’s trying really hard to “explain” her pregnancy to others.
Stephen Neil, points out there is an international parenthesis around Matthew’s Gospel, it begins and ends with message that the Gospel is good news for all peoples.
Matthew’s phone book, his cemetery tour, shows us the Gospel is Good New for all and that is why we have reason to celebrate Christmas.
041127 Sermon Christmas
04 M 1 Jesus birth line… KSS
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and we will pick up the series again later in spring… Today is the first Sunday of Advent: Advent is the season in the Christian year when we look ahead to Christ’s coming by looking back to his first coming…
Rico Tice, an Anglican minister, asks people who are not Christians, what do you think about religion? They say dull, boring, a set of rules…
He opens up the Bible and to one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ… and he explains that word Gospel literally means magnificent News.
But when we open the first Gospel it doesn’t seem to read like good news. It reads more like a telephone book.
One of my seminary professor’s Haddon Robinson said in a typical church when you get up to preach people are a little bored, and they suspect you’re going to make matters worse.
As I read our text for the day, particularly if you are new the to Bible and these names don’t mean anything to you, it may well feel like the service is really going down hill in a hurry, but as Larry King might say, don’t go away… this text may surprise you…
Please turn to Matthew Chapter one. This book is about 3/4s of the way through your Bible and it’s what many call the Newer Testament part of the Bible:
Matthew 1 (tape)1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[1] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[2]
This text seems like just list of names to us--particularly if haven’t read the earlier part of the Bible. To many of us, this text seems about as inspiring as a wide yawn.
But we learn a number of things about the character of God through this text: one of the things we learn about God through this list of names is that God cares about individuals—he remembers our name.
Can you name your great, great grandfather or great, great, grandmother’s name by their first name? I don’t know the first the name of my great, grandfather.
Think about it, we could lead a pretty interesting life, but the fact is that our great, great grandchildren or great, great nephews and nieces may not even remember our names.
Psalm 103 says as for woman and man their days are like grass (pick it up), they flourish like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more…
Our lives are like the flowers (take the orange one), we may flourish for a brief time, but then they are gone… but if we join our lives to the life of God, our personhood will be known by God for all time--our names will appear in what the Bible calls the book of life: the Book of life… God remembers our name…
One of the great ironies is that if we live for fame of our name, our name will one day be forgotten, but if we find our true identity in God’s name, in the name of his son Jesus Christ our name will be forever remembered… (turn to people and say their name…)
In here in the very beginning of what we call the Newer Testament, we see a picture of a God who remembers us…
There are lots of names here, sort of like the bride and groom saying the thank yous at the end of a wedding reception, I don’t want to skip over anyone, but partly in the interest of time, I want to focus in on the four women.
Ancient genealogies did not require women to be included, but Matthew includes four women. This is significant because it shows us something about God.
As we know throughout history, women have tended to be treated as second class citizens. We’re familiar with periods of world history where their testimony has not been regarded as legally admissible, where women have not been given the privilege of citizenship and the right to vote.
There has been a time in the history of Canada—in the last 100 years—where it has been legal to kidnap a woman age 16 or over (it was only illegal to kind an heiress: like Teresa Hinz), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not hire it’s first woman member until 1974, there no laws against sexual harassment until 1983 here in Canada.
Why does Matthew go out of his way to include 4 in this list?
I think he us know in world where women have often been excluded that God includes and values women.
This fact is confirmed as read beyond chapter one of Matthew.
In a time when women were regarded as men’s “property,” in time when men could divorce their wives for the cultural equivalent of burning their toast, in a time when a Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public, Jesus valued women as human beings, Jesus was a powerful mentor and friend to women, but never used his power to exploit women, and when Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest of all time event of all time-- rising from the dead--he appeared first to women, not to men, not to CNN.
While certain so called “Christian” cultures have no doubt oppressed women, Jesus has been called the greatest emancipator of women in the history of the human race.
Great feminists, like Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Gloria Steinem et al. have made very important contributions to the women, but noone as broad and great a contribution to women as Jesus Christ.
Those who have truly followed his teachings have been liberators of women: William Carey the great missionary to India—was a primary catalyst for banning SATI, the practice of burning widows, Christians have been at the forefront for fighting for women’s right to vote, at the forefront of movement to adopt abandon baby girls, fighting for right for girls not to be aborted just because they are girls.
Right here in Vancouver it still the case the women (with exception of modeling industry and sex trade) make less for the same work than men, we have a very prominent golf course on the Westside of our city that will not admit women as members.
Jesus Christ is the great emancipator of women.
Gospel is magnificent news for women.
This fact may be part of the reason why more women than men who have turned to Christ. Why 2/3 of the Christian of modern mission force are women.
Christmas story is a story is magnificent news women:
As I said ancient genealogies did not need to include women, but genealogical records include women if and only if they could somehow ensure the purity of the bloodline or enhance the prestige of genealogy.
But Matthew in his “birthline” includes four who serve these purposes: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba are also racial and cultural outsiders.
Tamar was a Canaanite, Rahab a Jerichoite, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite… These women are not only not Jewish, but are from despised people groups.
There have, of course, always been outsiders.
In places like New York City, as we know, historically there has been a lot of racism against Irish Catholics. But today in North America the prejudice against the Irish is not nearly as apparent.
In the larger cities of North America we’ve seen successive waves of immigrants that followed the Anglo Saxons and the French, like Irish, the Jews, the Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, South Asians, Chinese and people from the Middle East, etc.
Generally what tends to happen is that the most recent group of immigrants is most discriminated against. And immigrant groups once accepted tend to close the door behind them and ignore the racism directed at the newer group that is below them.
Vancouver is liberal and wonderfully tolerant, but let’s not for a moment confuse Vancouver with heaven. Racism and prejudice exist here as well although in more subtle forms.
You belong to a race that either significantly drives up the price of real estate here or significantly drives down the price of real estate, you’re going to experience some backlash against you. If you begin in restaurant in West Vancouver, say you’re a recent immigrant, you’re making say Iranian food, as this is a live example, the city may just pass a odour bylaw could put you out of business.
Philip Jenkins the distinguished professor at Penn State worldwide notes that there is still a correlation worldwide between one’s skin color and one’s wealth. In certain parts of the world, if you look like we had to work literally “under the sun” you’re going to be discriminated against. In a place like Vancouver, where it’s cloudy or wet a good part of year, you need to have money to go a warm place in the winter—there is certain cache in being able to afford to go a kind of place make darker.
Prejudice and racism are not just a problems in places like South Africa or Alabama, they are problems virtually everywhere in some degree or another…
Matthew seems to go out of his way to include women from the despised races: Tamar the Canaanite, Rahab, a Jerichoite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite…
Ray Bakke the urbanologist who spoken a couple times--has said, Jesus wove into his blood stream of people’s of the world and then shed his blood for them….
Ray also says the Christmas story is about a baby was born in a borrowed barn, in Asia and who became an African refugee in African in Egypt, so the Christmas story is about an international migrant….
Gospel is magnificent news for women, and for cultural outsiders…
The four women are not only culturally and racially on outsiders, they are also morally questionable… Tamar dresses up as sex trade worker and tricks her father in law to have sex with her. She has twins and one of them is an ancestor of Jesus Christ (In all fairness her sexual relationship with her father-in-law, under the circumstances was acceptable in her culture); Rahab was a sex trade worker—a prostitute, the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba and she is infamous because of her adulterous affair with King David, Ruth, was virtuous, but as Dale Bruner puts it she was a tad aggressive…
Having these names lineage is a little like having: Madonna (pop star not the original one), Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton… on the genealogical record of some great moral leader…. No doubt these women have virtues, but there is also something scandalous about them…
Again Matthew seems to be going out of his way drawn attention to the fact that there are women in Jesus’ genealogy who are cultural and moral outsiders….
Our children’s pastor Catherine has given me permission to share this story:
When she was 18 years old and not married she became pregnant. Growing up in a pro-choice home she felt pressured to abort her pregnancy, not because she was pro-life, but because she was afraid to… (ask her permission to share this part)
She had her baby, but she knew she didn’t have the support system to raise her child and so she gave her baby up to the government for adoption… She always wondered what had happened to her son, how did he son turned out. Earlier this year Catherine was in touch with a social worker in who is acquainted her son. Through her Catherine was able to connect with her son by letter… Two weeks for the first time she talked to Danny by phone… he’s 25 years old. He’s to married a woman who ended up having cancer and he’s been so supportive of her. He’s a Christian. He’s international director youth mission that uses drama to reach people around the world (North and South America, Asia, and Europe) Today, she flies to Alberta to meet for the first time since he was a new born baby.
Not every story is, of course, is so positive.
But it is as Catherine would attest to, where God takes our sins, our mistakes and he can bring good out of them.
As a result of her out of wedlock pregnancy she became ripe to receive Jesus Christ and her son has become a person is a blessing to a lot of people.
My professor Haddon Robinson says God has habit growing roses out of manure piles. Grace…
Matthew 1, is magnificent news for the moral outsider.
If you allow me be a bit self-indulgent…
Let’s talk about my grandmother. My grandmother turns 91 in two weeks. She still plays tennis.
My grandmother was and is an elegant and beautiful woman. She married a young business stud. He was an entrepreneur, he designed golf courses with like Trent Jones, jr., he was corporate ceo. He was powerful businessman. He was also a womanizer, he had a series of mistress and was verbally and at times physically abusive toward my grandmother--in a time when it was not socially acceptable to divorce.
A few years ago I was with my grandmother and she said my life has hard… I had unhappy marriage. But I know that my life has meaning, because I had your mom and your mom had you… and you are minister…
(She is, of course, proud of all of her children and grandchildren)
What her story and Tamar’s and Bathsheba story is telling us is that even when our lives are complicated and messy, and even have marred by our sins or the sins of others, God able to accomplish his purpose through us.
In the view of commentator Raymond Brown: Matthew includes these scandalous women in the genealogy of Jesus as a way to bring comfort to a pregnant, unwed teenager named Mary, who’s trying really hard to “explain” her pregnancy to others.
Stephen Neil, points out there is an international parenthesis around Matthew’s Gospel, it begins and ends with message that the Gospel is good news for all peoples.
Matthew’s phone book, his cemetery tour, shows us the Gospel is Good New for all and that is why we have reason to celebrate Christmas.
041127 Sermon Christmas
04 M 1 Jesus birth line… KSS
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and we will pick up the series again later in spring… Today is the first Sunday of Advent: Advent is the season in the Christian year when we look ahead to Christ’s coming by looking back to his first coming…
Rico Tice, an Anglican minister, asks people who are not Christians, what do you think about religion? They say dull, boring, a set of rules…
He opens up the Bible and to one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ… and he explains that word Gospel literally means magnificent News.
But when we open the first Gospel it doesn’t seem to read like good news. It reads more like a telephone book.
One of my seminary professor’s Haddon Robinson said in a typical church when you get up to preach people are a little bored, and they suspect you’re going to make matters worse.
As I read our text for the day, particularly if you are new the to Bible and these names don’t mean anything to you, it may well feel like the service is really going down hill in a hurry, but as Larry King might say, don’t go away… this text may surprise you…
Please turn to Matthew Chapter one. This book is about 3/4s of the way through your Bible and it’s what many call the Newer Testament part of the Bible:
Matthew 1 (tape)1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[1] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[2]
This text seems like just list of names to us--particularly if haven’t read the earlier part of the Bible. To many of us, this text seems about as inspiring as a wide yawn.
But we learn a number of things about the character of God through this text: one of the things we learn about God through this list of names is that God cares about individuals—he remembers our name.
Can you name your great, great grandfather or great, great, grandmother’s name by their first name? I don’t know the first the name of my great, grandfather.
Think about it, we could lead a pretty interesting life, but the fact is that our great, great grandchildren or great, great nephews and nieces may not even remember our names.
Psalm 103 says as for woman and man their days are like grass (pick it up), they flourish like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more…
Our lives are like the flowers (take the orange one), we may flourish for a brief time, but then they are gone… but if we join our lives to the life of God, our personhood will be known by God for all time--our names will appear in what the Bible calls the book of life: the Book of life… God remembers our name…
One of the great ironies is that if we live for fame of our name, our name will one day be forgotten, but if we find our true identity in God’s name, in the name of his son Jesus Christ our name will be forever remembered… (turn to people and say their name…)
In here in the very beginning of what we call the Newer Testament, we see a picture of a God who remembers us…
There are lots of names here, sort of like the bride and groom saying the thank yous at the end of a wedding reception, I don’t want to skip over anyone, but partly in the interest of time, I want to focus in on the four women.
Ancient genealogies did not require women to be included, but Matthew includes four women. This is significant because it shows us something about God.
As we know throughout history, women have tended to be treated as second class citizens. We’re familiar with periods of world history where their testimony has not been regarded as legally admissible, where women have not been given the privilege of citizenship and the right to vote.
There has been a time in the history of Canada—in the last 100 years—where it has been legal to kidnap a woman age 16 or over (it was only illegal to kind an heiress: like Teresa Hinz), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not hire it’s first woman member until 1974, there no laws against sexual harassment until 1983 here in Canada.
Why does Matthew go out of his way to include 4 in this list?
I think he us know in world where women have often been excluded that God includes and values women.
This fact is confirmed as read beyond chapter one of Matthew.
In a time when women were regarded as men’s “property,” in time when men could divorce their wives for the cultural equivalent of burning their toast, in a time when a Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public, Jesus valued women as human beings, Jesus was a powerful mentor and friend to women, but never used his power to exploit women, and when Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest of all time event of all time-- rising from the dead--he appeared first to women, not to men, not to CNN.
While certain so called “Christian” cultures have no doubt oppressed women, Jesus has been called the greatest emancipator of women in the history of the human race.
Great feminists, like Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Gloria Steinem et al. have made very important contributions to the women, but noone as broad and great a contribution to women as Jesus Christ.
Those who have truly followed his teachings have been liberators of women: William Carey the great missionary to India—was a primary catalyst for banning SATI, the practice of burning widows, Christians have been at the forefront for fighting for women’s right to vote, at the forefront of movement to adopt abandon baby girls, fighting for right for girls not to be aborted just because they are girls.
Right here in Vancouver it still the case the women (with exception of modeling industry and sex trade) make less for the same work than men, we have a very prominent golf course on the Westside of our city that will not admit women as members.
Jesus Christ is the great emancipator of women.
Gospel is magnificent news for women.
This fact may be part of the reason why more women than men who have turned to Christ. Why 2/3 of the Christian of modern mission force are women.
Christmas story is a story is magnificent news women:
As I said ancient genealogies did not need to include women, but genealogical records include women if and only if they could somehow ensure the purity of the bloodline or enhance the prestige of genealogy.
But Matthew in his “birthline” includes four who serve these purposes: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba are also racial and cultural outsiders.
Tamar was a Canaanite, Rahab a Jerichoite, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite… These women are not only not Jewish, but are from despised people groups.
There have, of course, always been outsiders.
In places like New York City, as we know, historically there has been a lot of racism against Irish Catholics. But today in North America the prejudice against the Irish is not nearly as apparent.
In the larger cities of North America we’ve seen successive waves of immigrants that followed the Anglo Saxons and the French, like Irish, the Jews, the Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, South Asians, Chinese and people from the Middle East, etc.
Generally what tends to happen is that the most recent group of immigrants is most discriminated against. And immigrant groups once accepted tend to close the door behind them and ignore the racism directed at the newer group that is below them.
Vancouver is liberal and wonderfully tolerant, but let’s not for a moment confuse Vancouver with heaven. Racism and prejudice exist here as well although in more subtle forms.
You belong to a race that either significantly drives up the price of real estate here or significantly drives down the price of real estate, you’re going to experience some backlash against you. If you begin in restaurant in West Vancouver, say you’re a recent immigrant, you’re making say Iranian food, as this is a live example, the city may just pass a odour bylaw could put you out of business.
Philip Jenkins the distinguished professor at Penn State worldwide notes that there is still a correlation worldwide between one’s skin color and one’s wealth. In certain parts of the world, if you look like we had to work literally “under the sun” you’re going to be discriminated against. In a place like Vancouver, where it’s cloudy or wet a good part of year, you need to have money to go a warm place in the winter—there is certain cache in being able to afford to go a kind of place make darker.
Prejudice and racism are not just a problems in places like South Africa or Alabama, they are problems virtually everywhere in some degree or another…
Matthew seems to go out of his way to include women from the despised races: Tamar the Canaanite, Rahab, a Jerichoite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite…
Ray Bakke the urbanologist who spoken a couple times--has said, Jesus wove into his blood stream of people’s of the world and then shed his blood for them….
Ray also says the Christmas story is about a baby was born in a borrowed barn, in Asia and who became an African refugee in African in Egypt, so the Christmas story is about an international migrant….
Gospel is magnificent news for women, and for cultural outsiders…
The four women are not only culturally and racially on outsiders, they are also morally questionable… Tamar dresses up as sex trade worker and tricks her father in law to have sex with her. She has twins and one of them is an ancestor of Jesus Christ (In all fairness her sexual relationship with her father-in-law, under the circumstances was acceptable in her culture); Rahab was a sex trade worker—a prostitute, the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba and she is infamous because of her adulterous affair with King David, Ruth, was virtuous, but as Dale Bruner puts it she was a tad aggressive…
Having these names lineage is a little like having: Madonna (pop star not the original one), Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton… on the genealogical record of some great moral leader…. No doubt these women have virtues, but there is also something scandalous about them…
Again Matthew seems to be going out of his way drawn attention to the fact that there are women in Jesus’ genealogy who are cultural and moral outsiders….
Our children’s pastor Catherine has given me permission to share this story:
When she was 18 years old and not married she became pregnant. Growing up in a pro-choice home she felt pressured to abort her pregnancy, not because she was pro-life, but because she was afraid to… (ask her permission to share this part)
She had her baby, but she knew she didn’t have the support system to raise her child and so she gave her baby up to the government for adoption… She always wondered what had happened to her son, how did he son turned out. Earlier this year Catherine was in touch with a social worker in who is acquainted her son. Through her Catherine was able to connect with her son by letter… Two weeks for the first time she talked to Danny by phone… he’s 25 years old. He’s to married a woman who ended up having cancer and he’s been so supportive of her. He’s a Christian. He’s international director youth mission that uses drama to reach people around the world (North and South America, Asia, and Europe) Today, she flies to Alberta to meet for the first time since he was a new born baby.
Not every story is, of course, is so positive.
But it is as Catherine would attest to, where God takes our sins, our mistakes and he can bring good out of them.
As a result of her out of wedlock pregnancy she became ripe to receive Jesus Christ and her son has become a person is a blessing to a lot of people.
My professor Haddon Robinson says God has habit growing roses out of manure piles. Grace…
Matthew 1, is magnificent news for the moral outsider.
If you allow me be a bit self-indulgent…
Let’s talk about my grandmother. My grandmother turns 91 in two weeks. She still plays tennis.
My grandmother was and is an elegant and beautiful woman. She married a young business stud. He was an entrepreneur, he designed golf courses with like Trent Jones, jr., he was corporate ceo. He was powerful businessman. He was also a womanizer, he had a series of mistress and was verbally and at times physically abusive toward my grandmother--in a time when it was not socially acceptable to divorce.
A few years ago I was with my grandmother and she said my life has hard… I had unhappy marriage. But I know that my life has meaning, because I had your mom and your mom had you… and you are minister…
(She is, of course, proud of all of her children and grandchildren)
What her story and Tamar’s and Bathsheba story is telling us is that even when our lives are complicated and messy, and even have marred by our sins or the sins of others, God able to accomplish his purpose through us.
In the view of commentator Raymond Brown: Matthew includes these scandalous women in the genealogy of Jesus as a way to bring comfort to a pregnant, unwed teenager named Mary, who’s trying really hard to “explain” her pregnancy to others.
Stephen Neil, points out there is an international parenthesis around Matthew’s Gospel, it begins and ends with message that the Gospel is good news for all peoples.
Matthew’s phone book, his cemetery tour, shows us the Gospel is Good New for all and that is why we have reason to celebrate Christmas.
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and we will pick up the series again later in spring… Today is the first Sunday of Advent: Advent is the season in the Christian year when we look ahead to Christ’s coming by looking back to his first coming…
Rico Tice, an Anglican minister, asks people who are not Christians, what do you think about religion? They say dull, boring, a set of rules…
He opens up the Bible and to one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ… and he explains that word Gospel literally means magnificent News.
But when we open the first Gospel it doesn’t seem to read like good news. It reads more like a telephone book.
One of my seminary professor’s Haddon Robinson said in a typical church when you get up to preach people are a little bored, and they suspect you’re going to make matters worse.
As I read our text for the day, particularly if you are new the to Bible and these names don’t mean anything to you, it may well feel like the service is really going down hill in a hurry, but as Larry King might say, don’t go away… this text may surprise you…
Please turn to Matthew Chapter one. This book is about 3/4s of the way through your Bible and it’s what many call the Newer Testament part of the Bible:
Matthew 1 (tape)1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[1] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[2]
This text seems like just list of names to us--particularly if haven’t read the earlier part of the Bible. To many of us, this text seems about as inspiring as a wide yawn.
But we learn a number of things about the character of God through this text: one of the things we learn about God through this list of names is that God cares about individuals—he remembers our name.
Can you name your great, great grandfather or great, great, grandmother’s name by their first name? I don’t know the first the name of my great, grandfather.
Think about it, we could lead a pretty interesting life, but the fact is that our great, great grandchildren or great, great nephews and nieces may not even remember our names.
Psalm 103 says as for woman and man their days are like grass (pick it up), they flourish like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more…
Our lives are like the flowers (take the orange one), we may flourish for a brief time, but then they are gone… but if we join our lives to the life of God, our personhood will be known by God for all time--our names will appear in what the Bible calls the book of life: the Book of life… God remembers our name…
One of the great ironies is that if we live for fame of our name, our name will one day be forgotten, but if we find our true identity in God’s name, in the name of his son Jesus Christ our name will be forever remembered… (turn to people and say their name…)
In here in the very beginning of what we call the Newer Testament, we see a picture of a God who remembers us…
There are lots of names here, sort of like the bride and groom saying the thank yous at the end of a wedding reception, I don’t want to skip over anyone, but partly in the interest of time, I want to focus in on the four women.
Ancient genealogies did not require women to be included, but Matthew includes four women. This is significant because it shows us something about God.
As we know throughout history, women have tended to be treated as second class citizens. We’re familiar with periods of world history where their testimony has not been regarded as legally admissible, where women have not been given the privilege of citizenship and the right to vote.
There has been a time in the history of Canada—in the last 100 years—where it has been legal to kidnap a woman age 16 or over (it was only illegal to kind an heiress: like Teresa Hinz), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not hire it’s first woman member until 1974, there no laws against sexual harassment until 1983 here in Canada.
Why does Matthew go out of his way to include 4 in this list?
I think he us know in world where women have often been excluded that God includes and values women.
This fact is confirmed as read beyond chapter one of Matthew.
In a time when women were regarded as men’s “property,” in time when men could divorce their wives for the cultural equivalent of burning their toast, in a time when a Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public, Jesus valued women as human beings, Jesus was a powerful mentor and friend to women, but never used his power to exploit women, and when Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest of all time event of all time-- rising from the dead--he appeared first to women, not to men, not to CNN.
While certain so called “Christian” cultures have no doubt oppressed women, Jesus has been called the greatest emancipator of women in the history of the human race.
Great feminists, like Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Gloria Steinem et al. have made very important contributions to the women, but noone as broad and great a contribution to women as Jesus Christ.
Those who have truly followed his teachings have been liberators of women: William Carey the great missionary to India—was a primary catalyst for banning SATI, the practice of burning widows, Christians have been at the forefront for fighting for women’s right to vote, at the forefront of movement to adopt abandon baby girls, fighting for right for girls not to be aborted just because they are girls.
Right here in Vancouver it still the case the women (with exception of modeling industry and sex trade) make less for the same work than men, we have a very prominent golf course on the Westside of our city that will not admit women as members.
Jesus Christ is the great emancipator of women.
Gospel is magnificent news for women.
This fact may be part of the reason why more women than men who have turned to Christ. Why 2/3 of the Christian of modern mission force are women.
Christmas story is a story is magnificent news women:
As I said ancient genealogies did not need to include women, but genealogical records include women if and only if they could somehow ensure the purity of the bloodline or enhance the prestige of genealogy.
But Matthew in his “birthline” includes four who serve these purposes: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba are also racial and cultural outsiders.
Tamar was a Canaanite, Rahab a Jerichoite, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite… These women are not only not Jewish, but are from despised people groups.
There have, of course, always been outsiders.
In places like New York City, as we know, historically there has been a lot of racism against Irish Catholics. But today in North America the prejudice against the Irish is not nearly as apparent.
In the larger cities of North America we’ve seen successive waves of immigrants that followed the Anglo Saxons and the French, like Irish, the Jews, the Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, South Asians, Chinese and people from the Middle East, etc.
Generally what tends to happen is that the most recent group of immigrants is most discriminated against. And immigrant groups once accepted tend to close the door behind them and ignore the racism directed at the newer group that is below them.
Vancouver is liberal and wonderfully tolerant, but let’s not for a moment confuse Vancouver with heaven. Racism and prejudice exist here as well although in more subtle forms.
You belong to a race that either significantly drives up the price of real estate here or significantly drives down the price of real estate, you’re going to experience some backlash against you. If you begin in restaurant in West Vancouver, say you’re a recent immigrant, you’re making say Iranian food, as this is a live example, the city may just pass a odour bylaw could put you out of business.
Philip Jenkins the distinguished professor at Penn State worldwide notes that there is still a correlation worldwide between one’s skin color and one’s wealth. In certain parts of the world, if you look like we had to work literally “under the sun” you’re going to be discriminated against. In a place like Vancouver, where it’s cloudy or wet a good part of year, you need to have money to go a warm place in the winter—there is certain cache in being able to afford to go a kind of place make darker.
Prejudice and racism are not just a problems in places like South Africa or Alabama, they are problems virtually everywhere in some degree or another…
Matthew seems to go out of his way to include women from the despised races: Tamar the Canaanite, Rahab, a Jerichoite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite…
Ray Bakke the urbanologist who spoken a couple times--has said, Jesus wove into his blood stream of people’s of the world and then shed his blood for them….
Ray also says the Christmas story is about a baby was born in a borrowed barn, in Asia and who became an African refugee in African in Egypt, so the Christmas story is about an international migrant….
Gospel is magnificent news for women, and for cultural outsiders…
The four women are not only culturally and racially on outsiders, they are also morally questionable… Tamar dresses up as sex trade worker and tricks her father in law to have sex with her. She has twins and one of them is an ancestor of Jesus Christ (In all fairness her sexual relationship with her father-in-law, under the circumstances was acceptable in her culture); Rahab was a sex trade worker—a prostitute, the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba and she is infamous because of her adulterous affair with King David, Ruth, was virtuous, but as Dale Bruner puts it she was a tad aggressive…
Having these names lineage is a little like having: Madonna (pop star not the original one), Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton… on the genealogical record of some great moral leader…. No doubt these women have virtues, but there is also something scandalous about them…
Again Matthew seems to be going out of his way drawn attention to the fact that there are women in Jesus’ genealogy who are cultural and moral outsiders….
Our children’s pastor Catherine has given me permission to share this story:
When she was 18 years old and not married she became pregnant. Growing up in a pro-choice home she felt pressured to abort her pregnancy, not because she was pro-life, but because she was afraid to… (ask her permission to share this part)
She had her baby, but she knew she didn’t have the support system to raise her child and so she gave her baby up to the government for adoption… She always wondered what had happened to her son, how did he son turned out. Earlier this year Catherine was in touch with a social worker in who is acquainted her son. Through her Catherine was able to connect with her son by letter… Two weeks for the first time she talked to Danny by phone… he’s 25 years old. He’s to married a woman who ended up having cancer and he’s been so supportive of her. He’s a Christian. He’s international director youth mission that uses drama to reach people around the world (North and South America, Asia, and Europe) Today, she flies to Alberta to meet for the first time since he was a new born baby.
Not every story is, of course, is so positive.
But it is as Catherine would attest to, where God takes our sins, our mistakes and he can bring good out of them.
As a result of her out of wedlock pregnancy she became ripe to receive Jesus Christ and her son has become a person is a blessing to a lot of people.
My professor Haddon Robinson says God has habit growing roses out of manure piles. Grace…
Matthew 1, is magnificent news for the moral outsider.
If you allow me be a bit self-indulgent…
Let’s talk about my grandmother. My grandmother turns 91 in two weeks. She still plays tennis.
My grandmother was and is an elegant and beautiful woman. She married a young business stud. He was an entrepreneur, he designed golf courses with like Trent Jones, jr., he was corporate ceo. He was powerful businessman. He was also a womanizer, he had a series of mistress and was verbally and at times physically abusive toward my grandmother--in a time when it was not socially acceptable to divorce.
A few years ago I was with my grandmother and she said my life has hard… I had unhappy marriage. But I know that my life has meaning, because I had your mom and your mom had you… and you are minister…
(She is, of course, proud of all of her children and grandchildren)
What her story and Tamar’s and Bathsheba story is telling us is that even when our lives are complicated and messy, and even have marred by our sins or the sins of others, God able to accomplish his purpose through us.
In the view of commentator Raymond Brown: Matthew includes these scandalous women in the genealogy of Jesus as a way to bring comfort to a pregnant, unwed teenager named Mary, who’s trying really hard to “explain” her pregnancy to others.
Stephen Neil, points out there is an international parenthesis around Matthew’s Gospel, it begins and ends with message that the Gospel is good news for all peoples.
Matthew’s phone book, his cemetery tour, shows us the Gospel is Good New for all and that is why we have reason to celebrate Christmas.
041127 Sermon Christmas
04 M 1 Jesus birth line… KSS
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and we will pick up the series again later in spring… Today is the first Sunday of Advent: Advent is the season in the Christian year when we look ahead to Christ’s coming by looking back to his first coming…
Rico Tice, an Anglican minister, asks people who are not Christians, what do you think about religion? They say dull, boring, a set of rules…
He opens up the Bible and to one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ… and he explains that word Gospel literally means magnificent News.
But when we open the first Gospel it doesn’t seem to read like good news. It reads more like a telephone book.
One of my seminary professor’s Haddon Robinson said in a typical church when you get up to preach people are a little bored, and they suspect you’re going to make matters worse.
As I read our text for the day, particularly if you are new the to Bible and these names don’t mean anything to you, it may well feel like the service is really going down hill in a hurry, but as Larry King might say, don’t go away… this text may surprise you…
Please turn to Matthew Chapter one. This book is about 3/4s of the way through your Bible and it’s what many call the Newer Testament part of the Bible:
Matthew 1 (tape)1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[1] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[2]
This text seems like just list of names to us--particularly if haven’t read the earlier part of the Bible. To many of us, this text seems about as inspiring as a wide yawn.
But we learn a number of things about the character of God through this text: one of the things we learn about God through this list of names is that God cares about individuals—he remembers our name.
Can you name your great, great grandfather or great, great, grandmother’s name by their first name? I don’t know the first the name of my great, grandfather.
Think about it, we could lead a pretty interesting life, but the fact is that our great, great grandchildren or great, great nephews and nieces may not even remember our names.
Psalm 103 says as for woman and man their days are like grass (pick it up), they flourish like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more…
Our lives are like the flowers (take the orange one), we may flourish for a brief time, but then they are gone… but if we join our lives to the life of God, our personhood will be known by God for all time--our names will appear in what the Bible calls the book of life: the Book of life… God remembers our name…
One of the great ironies is that if we live for fame of our name, our name will one day be forgotten, but if we find our true identity in God’s name, in the name of his son Jesus Christ our name will be forever remembered… (turn to people and say their name…)
In here in the very beginning of what we call the Newer Testament, we see a picture of a God who remembers us…
There are lots of names here, sort of like the bride and groom saying the thank yous at the end of a wedding reception, I don’t want to skip over anyone, but partly in the interest of time, I want to focus in on the four women.
Ancient genealogies did not require women to be included, but Matthew includes four women. This is significant because it shows us something about God.
As we know throughout history, women have tended to be treated as second class citizens. We’re familiar with periods of world history where their testimony has not been regarded as legally admissible, where women have not been given the privilege of citizenship and the right to vote.
There has been a time in the history of Canada—in the last 100 years—where it has been legal to kidnap a woman age 16 or over (it was only illegal to kind an heiress: like Teresa Hinz), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not hire it’s first woman member until 1974, there no laws against sexual harassment until 1983 here in Canada.
Why does Matthew go out of his way to include 4 in this list?
I think he us know in world where women have often been excluded that God includes and values women.
This fact is confirmed as read beyond chapter one of Matthew.
In a time when women were regarded as men’s “property,” in time when men could divorce their wives for the cultural equivalent of burning their toast, in a time when a Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public, Jesus valued women as human beings, Jesus was a powerful mentor and friend to women, but never used his power to exploit women, and when Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest of all time event of all time-- rising from the dead--he appeared first to women, not to men, not to CNN.
While certain so called “Christian” cultures have no doubt oppressed women, Jesus has been called the greatest emancipator of women in the history of the human race.
Great feminists, like Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Gloria Steinem et al. have made very important contributions to the women, but noone as broad and great a contribution to women as Jesus Christ.
Those who have truly followed his teachings have been liberators of women: William Carey the great missionary to India—was a primary catalyst for banning SATI, the practice of burning widows, Christians have been at the forefront for fighting for women’s right to vote, at the forefront of movement to adopt abandon baby girls, fighting for right for girls not to be aborted just because they are girls.
Right here in Vancouver it still the case the women (with exception of modeling industry and sex trade) make less for the same work than men, we have a very prominent golf course on the Westside of our city that will not admit women as members.
Jesus Christ is the great emancipator of women.
Gospel is magnificent news for women.
This fact may be part of the reason why more women than men who have turned to Christ. Why 2/3 of the Christian of modern mission force are women.
Christmas story is a story is magnificent news women:
As I said ancient genealogies did not need to include women, but genealogical records include women if and only if they could somehow ensure the purity of the bloodline or enhance the prestige of genealogy.
But Matthew in his “birthline” includes four who serve these purposes: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba are also racial and cultural outsiders.
Tamar was a Canaanite, Rahab a Jerichoite, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite… These women are not only not Jewish, but are from despised people groups.
There have, of course, always been outsiders.
In places like New York City, as we know, historically there has been a lot of racism against Irish Catholics. But today in North America the prejudice against the Irish is not nearly as apparent.
In the larger cities of North America we’ve seen successive waves of immigrants that followed the Anglo Saxons and the French, like Irish, the Jews, the Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, South Asians, Chinese and people from the Middle East, etc.
Generally what tends to happen is that the most recent group of immigrants is most discriminated against. And immigrant groups once accepted tend to close the door behind them and ignore the racism directed at the newer group that is below them.
Vancouver is liberal and wonderfully tolerant, but let’s not for a moment confuse Vancouver with heaven. Racism and prejudice exist here as well although in more subtle forms.
You belong to a race that either significantly drives up the price of real estate here or significantly drives down the price of real estate, you’re going to experience some backlash against you. If you begin in restaurant in West Vancouver, say you’re a recent immigrant, you’re making say Iranian food, as this is a live example, the city may just pass a odour bylaw could put you out of business.
Philip Jenkins the distinguished professor at Penn State worldwide notes that there is still a correlation worldwide between one’s skin color and one’s wealth. In certain parts of the world, if you look like we had to work literally “under the sun” you’re going to be discriminated against. In a place like Vancouver, where it’s cloudy or wet a good part of year, you need to have money to go a warm place in the winter—there is certain cache in being able to afford to go a kind of place make darker.
Prejudice and racism are not just a problems in places like South Africa or Alabama, they are problems virtually everywhere in some degree or another…
Matthew seems to go out of his way to include women from the despised races: Tamar the Canaanite, Rahab, a Jerichoite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite…
Ray Bakke the urbanologist who spoken a couple times--has said, Jesus wove into his blood stream of people’s of the world and then shed his blood for them….
Ray also says the Christmas story is about a baby was born in a borrowed barn, in Asia and who became an African refugee in African in Egypt, so the Christmas story is about an international migrant….
Gospel is magnificent news for women, and for cultural outsiders…
The four women are not only culturally and racially on outsiders, they are also morally questionable… Tamar dresses up as sex trade worker and tricks her father in law to have sex with her. She has twins and one of them is an ancestor of Jesus Christ (In all fairness her sexual relationship with her father-in-law, under the circumstances was acceptable in her culture); Rahab was a sex trade worker—a prostitute, the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba and she is infamous because of her adulterous affair with King David, Ruth, was virtuous, but as Dale Bruner puts it she was a tad aggressive…
Having these names lineage is a little like having: Madonna (pop star not the original one), Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton… on the genealogical record of some great moral leader…. No doubt these women have virtues, but there is also something scandalous about them…
Again Matthew seems to be going out of his way drawn attention to the fact that there are women in Jesus’ genealogy who are cultural and moral outsiders….
Our children’s pastor Catherine has given me permission to share this story:
When she was 18 years old and not married she became pregnant. Growing up in a pro-choice home she felt pressured to abort her pregnancy, not because she was pro-life, but because she was afraid to… (ask her permission to share this part)
She had her baby, but she knew she didn’t have the support system to raise her child and so she gave her baby up to the government for adoption… She always wondered what had happened to her son, how did he son turned out. Earlier this year Catherine was in touch with a social worker in who is acquainted her son. Through her Catherine was able to connect with her son by letter… Two weeks for the first time she talked to Danny by phone… he’s 25 years old. He’s to married a woman who ended up having cancer and he’s been so supportive of her. He’s a Christian. He’s international director youth mission that uses drama to reach people around the world (North and South America, Asia, and Europe) Today, she flies to Alberta to meet for the first time since he was a new born baby.
Not every story is, of course, is so positive.
But it is as Catherine would attest to, where God takes our sins, our mistakes and he can bring good out of them.
As a result of her out of wedlock pregnancy she became ripe to receive Jesus Christ and her son has become a person is a blessing to a lot of people.
My professor Haddon Robinson says God has habit growing roses out of manure piles. Grace…
Matthew 1, is magnificent news for the moral outsider.
If you allow me be a bit self-indulgent…
Let’s talk about my grandmother. My grandmother turns 91 in two weeks. She still plays tennis.
My grandmother was and is an elegant and beautiful woman. She married a young business stud. He was an entrepreneur, he designed golf courses with like Trent Jones, jr., he was corporate ceo. He was powerful businessman. He was also a womanizer, he had a series of mistress and was verbally and at times physically abusive toward my grandmother--in a time when it was not socially acceptable to divorce.
A few years ago I was with my grandmother and she said my life has hard… I had unhappy marriage. But I know that my life has meaning, because I had your mom and your mom had you… and you are minister…
(She is, of course, proud of all of her children and grandchildren)
What her story and Tamar’s and Bathsheba story is telling us is that even when our lives are complicated and messy, and even have marred by our sins or the sins of others, God able to accomplish his purpose through us.
In the view of commentator Raymond Brown: Matthew includes these scandalous women in the genealogy of Jesus as a way to bring comfort to a pregnant, unwed teenager named Mary, who’s trying really hard to “explain” her pregnancy to others.
Stephen Neil, points out there is an international parenthesis around Matthew’s Gospel, it begins and ends with message that the Gospel is good news for all peoples.
Matthew’s phone book, his cemetery tour, shows us the Gospel is Good New for all and that is why we have reason to celebrate Christmas.
041127 Sermon Christmas
04 M 1 Jesus birth line… KSS
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and we will pick up the series again later in spring… Today is the first Sunday of Advent: Advent is the season in the Christian year when we look ahead to Christ’s coming by looking back to his first coming…
Rico Tice, an Anglican minister, asks people who are not Christians, what do you think about religion? They say dull, boring, a set of rules…
He opens up the Bible and to one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ… and he explains that word Gospel literally means magnificent News.
But when we open the first Gospel it doesn’t seem to read like good news. It reads more like a telephone book.
One of my seminary professor’s Haddon Robinson said in a typical church when you get up to preach people are a little bored, and they suspect you’re going to make matters worse.
As I read our text for the day, particularly if you are new the to Bible and these names don’t mean anything to you, it may well feel like the service is really going down hill in a hurry, but as Larry King might say, don’t go away… this text may surprise you…
Please turn to Matthew Chapter one. This book is about 3/4s of the way through your Bible and it’s what many call the Newer Testament part of the Bible:
Matthew 1 (tape)1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[1] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[2]
This text seems like just list of names to us--particularly if haven’t read the earlier part of the Bible. To many of us, this text seems about as inspiring as a wide yawn.
But we learn a number of things about the character of God through this text: one of the things we learn about God through this list of names is that God cares about individuals—he remembers our name.
Can you name your great, great grandfather or great, great, grandmother’s name by their first name? I don’t know the first the name of my great, grandfather.
Think about it, we could lead a pretty interesting life, but the fact is that our great, great grandchildren or great, great nephews and nieces may not even remember our names.
Psalm 103 says as for woman and man their days are like grass (pick it up), they flourish like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more…
Our lives are like the flowers (take the orange one), we may flourish for a brief time, but then they are gone… but if we join our lives to the life of God, our personhood will be known by God for all time--our names will appear in what the Bible calls the book of life: the Book of life… God remembers our name…
One of the great ironies is that if we live for fame of our name, our name will one day be forgotten, but if we find our true identity in God’s name, in the name of his son Jesus Christ our name will be forever remembered… (turn to people and say their name…)
In here in the very beginning of what we call the Newer Testament, we see a picture of a God who remembers us…
There are lots of names here, sort of like the bride and groom saying the thank yous at the end of a wedding reception, I don’t want to skip over anyone, but partly in the interest of time, I want to focus in on the four women.
Ancient genealogies did not require women to be included, but Matthew includes four women. This is significant because it shows us something about God.
As we know throughout history, women have tended to be treated as second class citizens. We’re familiar with periods of world history where their testimony has not been regarded as legally admissible, where women have not been given the privilege of citizenship and the right to vote.
There has been a time in the history of Canada—in the last 100 years—where it has been legal to kidnap a woman age 16 or over (it was only illegal to kind an heiress: like Teresa Hinz), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not hire it’s first woman member until 1974, there no laws against sexual harassment until 1983 here in Canada.
Why does Matthew go out of his way to include 4 in this list?
I think he us know in world where women have often been excluded that God includes and values women.
This fact is confirmed as read beyond chapter one of Matthew.
In a time when women were regarded as men’s “property,” in time when men could divorce their wives for the cultural equivalent of burning their toast, in a time when a Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public, Jesus valued women as human beings, Jesus was a powerful mentor and friend to women, but never used his power to exploit women, and when Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest of all time event of all time-- rising from the dead--he appeared first to women, not to men, not to CNN.
While certain so called “Christian” cultures have no doubt oppressed women, Jesus has been called the greatest emancipator of women in the history of the human race.
Great feminists, like Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Gloria Steinem et al. have made very important contributions to the women, but noone as broad and great a contribution to women as Jesus Christ.
Those who have truly followed his teachings have been liberators of women: William Carey the great missionary to India—was a primary catalyst for banning SATI, the practice of burning widows, Christians have been at the forefront for fighting for women’s right to vote, at the forefront of movement to adopt abandon baby girls, fighting for right for girls not to be aborted just because they are girls.
Right here in Vancouver it still the case the women (with exception of modeling industry and sex trade) make less for the same work than men, we have a very prominent golf course on the Westside of our city that will not admit women as members.
Jesus Christ is the great emancipator of women.
Gospel is magnificent news for women.
This fact may be part of the reason why more women than men who have turned to Christ. Why 2/3 of the Christian of modern mission force are women.
Christmas story is a story is magnificent news women:
As I said ancient genealogies did not need to include women, but genealogical records include women if and only if they could somehow ensure the purity of the bloodline or enhance the prestige of genealogy.
But Matthew in his “birthline” includes four who serve these purposes: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba are also racial and cultural outsiders.
Tamar was a Canaanite, Rahab a Jerichoite, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite… These women are not only not Jewish, but are from despised people groups.
There have, of course, always been outsiders.
In places like New York City, as we know, historically there has been a lot of racism against Irish Catholics. But today in North America the prejudice against the Irish is not nearly as apparent.
In the larger cities of North America we’ve seen successive waves of immigrants that followed the Anglo Saxons and the French, like Irish, the Jews, the Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, South Asians, Chinese and people from the Middle East, etc.
Generally what tends to happen is that the most recent group of immigrants is most discriminated against. And immigrant groups once accepted tend to close the door behind them and ignore the racism directed at the newer group that is below them.
Vancouver is liberal and wonderfully tolerant, but let’s not for a moment confuse Vancouver with heaven. Racism and prejudice exist here as well although in more subtle forms.
You belong to a race that either significantly drives up the price of real estate here or significantly drives down the price of real estate, you’re going to experience some backlash against you. If you begin in restaurant in West Vancouver, say you’re a recent immigrant, you’re making say Iranian food, as this is a live example, the city may just pass a odour bylaw could put you out of business.
Philip Jenkins the distinguished professor at Penn State worldwide notes that there is still a correlation worldwide between one’s skin color and one’s wealth. In certain parts of the world, if you look like we had to work literally “under the sun” you’re going to be discriminated against. In a place like Vancouver, where it’s cloudy or wet a good part of year, you need to have money to go a warm place in the winter—there is certain cache in being able to afford to go a kind of place make darker.
Prejudice and racism are not just a problems in places like South Africa or Alabama, they are problems virtually everywhere in some degree or another…
Matthew seems to go out of his way to include women from the despised races: Tamar the Canaanite, Rahab, a Jerichoite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite…
Ray Bakke the urbanologist who spoken a couple times--has said, Jesus wove into his blood stream of people’s of the world and then shed his blood for them….
Ray also says the Christmas story is about a baby was born in a borrowed barn, in Asia and who became an African refugee in African in Egypt, so the Christmas story is about an international migrant….
Gospel is magnificent news for women, and for cultural outsiders…
The four women are not only culturally and racially on outsiders, they are also morally questionable… Tamar dresses up as sex trade worker and tricks her father in law to have sex with her. She has twins and one of them is an ancestor of Jesus Christ (In all fairness her sexual relationship with her father-in-law, under the circumstances was acceptable in her culture); Rahab was a sex trade worker—a prostitute, the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba and she is infamous because of her adulterous affair with King David, Ruth, was virtuous, but as Dale Bruner puts it she was a tad aggressive…
Having these names lineage is a little like having: Madonna (pop star not the original one), Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton… on the genealogical record of some great moral leader…. No doubt these women have virtues, but there is also something scandalous about them…
Again Matthew seems to be going out of his way drawn attention to the fact that there are women in Jesus’ genealogy who are cultural and moral outsiders….
Our children’s pastor Catherine has given me permission to share this story:
When she was 18 years old and not married she became pregnant. Growing up in a pro-choice home she felt pressured to abort her pregnancy, not because she was pro-life, but because she was afraid to… (ask her permission to share this part)
She had her baby, but she knew she didn’t have the support system to raise her child and so she gave her baby up to the government for adoption… She always wondered what had happened to her son, how did he son turned out. Earlier this year Catherine was in touch with a social worker in who is acquainted her son. Through her Catherine was able to connect with her son by letter… Two weeks for the first time she talked to Danny by phone… he’s 25 years old. He’s to married a woman who ended up having cancer and he’s been so supportive of her. He’s a Christian. He’s international director youth mission that uses drama to reach people around the world (North and South America, Asia, and Europe) Today, she flies to Alberta to meet for the first time since he was a new born baby.
Not every story is, of course, is so positive.
But it is as Catherine would attest to, where God takes our sins, our mistakes and he can bring good out of them.
As a result of her out of wedlock pregnancy she became ripe to receive Jesus Christ and her son has become a person is a blessing to a lot of people.
My professor Haddon Robinson says God has habit growing roses out of manure piles. Grace…
Matthew 1, is magnificent news for the moral outsider.
If you allow me be a bit self-indulgent…
Let’s talk about my grandmother. My grandmother turns 91 in two weeks. She still plays tennis.
My grandmother was and is an elegant and beautiful woman. She married a young business stud. He was an entrepreneur, he designed golf courses with like Trent Jones, jr., he was corporate ceo. He was powerful businessman. He was also a womanizer, he had a series of mistress and was verbally and at times physically abusive toward my grandmother--in a time when it was not socially acceptable to divorce.
A few years ago I was with my grandmother and she said my life has hard… I had unhappy marriage. But I know that my life has meaning, because I had your mom and your mom had you… and you are minister…
(She is, of course, proud of all of her children and grandchildren)
What her story and Tamar’s and Bathsheba story is telling us is that even when our lives are complicated and messy, and even have marred by our sins or the sins of others, God able to accomplish his purpose through us.
In the view of commentator Raymond Brown: Matthew includes these scandalous women in the genealogy of Jesus as a way to bring comfort to a pregnant, unwed teenager named Mary, who’s trying really hard to “explain” her pregnancy to others.
Stephen Neil, points out there is an international parenthesis around Matthew’s Gospel, it begins and ends with message that the Gospel is good news for all peoples.
Matthew’s phone book, his cemetery tour, shows us the Gospel is Good New for all and that is why we have reason to celebrate Christmas.
041127 Sermon Christmas
04 M 1 Jesus birth line… KSS
We’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount and we will pick up the series again later in spring… Today is the first Sunday of Advent: Advent is the season in the Christian year when we look ahead to Christ’s coming by looking back to his first coming…
Rico Tice, an Anglican minister, asks people who are not Christians, what do you think about religion? They say dull, boring, a set of rules…
He opens up the Bible and to one of the Gospels of Jesus Christ… and he explains that word Gospel literally means magnificent News.
But when we open the first Gospel it doesn’t seem to read like good news. It reads more like a telephone book.
One of my seminary professor’s Haddon Robinson said in a typical church when you get up to preach people are a little bored, and they suspect you’re going to make matters worse.
As I read our text for the day, particularly if you are new the to Bible and these names don’t mean anything to you, it may well feel like the service is really going down hill in a hurry, but as Larry King might say, don’t go away… this text may surprise you…
Please turn to Matthew Chapter one. This book is about 3/4s of the way through your Bible and it’s what many call the Newer Testament part of the Bible:
Matthew 1 (tape)1A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, 4Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, 6and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife, 7Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, 8Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, 9Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, 11and Josiah the father of Jeconiah[1] and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. 12After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, Abiud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, 14Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Eliud, 15Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.[2]
This text seems like just list of names to us--particularly if haven’t read the earlier part of the Bible. To many of us, this text seems about as inspiring as a wide yawn.
But we learn a number of things about the character of God through this text: one of the things we learn about God through this list of names is that God cares about individuals—he remembers our name.
Can you name your great, great grandfather or great, great, grandmother’s name by their first name? I don’t know the first the name of my great, grandfather.
Think about it, we could lead a pretty interesting life, but the fact is that our great, great grandchildren or great, great nephews and nieces may not even remember our names.
Psalm 103 says as for woman and man their days are like grass (pick it up), they flourish like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone and its place remembers it no more…
Our lives are like the flowers (take the orange one), we may flourish for a brief time, but then they are gone… but if we join our lives to the life of God, our personhood will be known by God for all time--our names will appear in what the Bible calls the book of life: the Book of life… God remembers our name…
One of the great ironies is that if we live for fame of our name, our name will one day be forgotten, but if we find our true identity in God’s name, in the name of his son Jesus Christ our name will be forever remembered… (turn to people and say their name…)
In here in the very beginning of what we call the Newer Testament, we see a picture of a God who remembers us…
There are lots of names here, sort of like the bride and groom saying the thank yous at the end of a wedding reception, I don’t want to skip over anyone, but partly in the interest of time, I want to focus in on the four women.
Ancient genealogies did not require women to be included, but Matthew includes four women. This is significant because it shows us something about God.
As we know throughout history, women have tended to be treated as second class citizens. We’re familiar with periods of world history where their testimony has not been regarded as legally admissible, where women have not been given the privilege of citizenship and the right to vote.
There has been a time in the history of Canada—in the last 100 years—where it has been legal to kidnap a woman age 16 or over (it was only illegal to kind an heiress: like Teresa Hinz), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not hire it’s first woman member until 1974, there no laws against sexual harassment until 1983 here in Canada.
Why does Matthew go out of his way to include 4 in this list?
I think he us know in world where women have often been excluded that God includes and values women.
This fact is confirmed as read beyond chapter one of Matthew.
In a time when women were regarded as men’s “property,” in time when men could divorce their wives for the cultural equivalent of burning their toast, in a time when a Jewish Rabbi would not speak to a woman in public, Jesus valued women as human beings, Jesus was a powerful mentor and friend to women, but never used his power to exploit women, and when Jesus Christ pulled off the greatest of all time event of all time-- rising from the dead--he appeared first to women, not to men, not to CNN.
While certain so called “Christian” cultures have no doubt oppressed women, Jesus has been called the greatest emancipator of women in the history of the human race.
Great feminists, like Harriet Tubman, Emma Goldman, and Gloria Steinem et al. have made very important contributions to the women, but noone as broad and great a contribution to women as Jesus Christ.
Those who have truly followed his teachings have been liberators of women: William Carey the great missionary to India—was a primary catalyst for banning SATI, the practice of burning widows, Christians have been at the forefront for fighting for women’s right to vote, at the forefront of movement to adopt abandon baby girls, fighting for right for girls not to be aborted just because they are girls.
Right here in Vancouver it still the case the women (with exception of modeling industry and sex trade) make less for the same work than men, we have a very prominent golf course on the Westside of our city that will not admit women as members.
Jesus Christ is the great emancipator of women.
Gospel is magnificent news for women.
This fact may be part of the reason why more women than men who have turned to Christ. Why 2/3 of the Christian of modern mission force are women.
Christmas story is a story is magnificent news women:
As I said ancient genealogies did not need to include women, but genealogical records include women if and only if they could somehow ensure the purity of the bloodline or enhance the prestige of genealogy.
But Matthew in his “birthline” includes four who serve these purposes: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba are also racial and cultural outsiders.
Tamar was a Canaanite, Rahab a Jerichoite, Ruth a Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite… These women are not only not Jewish, but are from despised people groups.
There have, of course, always been outsiders.
In places like New York City, as we know, historically there has been a lot of racism against Irish Catholics. But today in North America the prejudice against the Irish is not nearly as apparent.
In the larger cities of North America we’ve seen successive waves of immigrants that followed the Anglo Saxons and the French, like Irish, the Jews, the Italians, Eastern Europeans, Latin Americans, South Asians, Chinese and people from the Middle East, etc.
Generally what tends to happen is that the most recent group of immigrants is most discriminated against. And immigrant groups once accepted tend to close the door behind them and ignore the racism directed at the newer group that is below them.
Vancouver is liberal and wonderfully tolerant, but let’s not for a moment confuse Vancouver with heaven. Racism and prejudice exist here as well although in more subtle forms.
You belong to a race that either significantly drives up the price of real estate here or significantly drives down the price of real estate, you’re going to experience some backlash against you. If you begin in restaurant in West Vancouver, say you’re a recent immigrant, you’re making say Iranian food, as this is a live example, the city may just pass a odour bylaw could put you out of business.
Philip Jenkins the distinguished professor at Penn State worldwide notes that there is still a correlation worldwide between one’s skin color and one’s wealth. In certain parts of the world, if you look like we had to work literally “under the sun” you’re going to be discriminated against. In a place like Vancouver, where it’s cloudy or wet a good part of year, you need to have money to go a warm place in the winter—there is certain cache in being able to afford to go a kind of place make darker.
Prejudice and racism are not just a problems in places like South Africa or Alabama, they are problems virtually everywhere in some degree or another…
Matthew seems to go out of his way to include women from the despised races: Tamar the Canaanite, Rahab, a Jerichoite, Ruth the Moabite, and Bathsheba, likely a Hittite…
Ray Bakke the urbanologist who spoken a couple times--has said, Jesus wove into his blood stream of people’s of the world and then shed his blood for them….
Ray also says the Christmas story is about a baby was born in a borrowed barn, in Asia and who became an African refugee in African in Egypt, so the Christmas story is about an international migrant….
Gospel is magnificent news for women, and for cultural outsiders…
The four women are not only culturally and racially on outsiders, they are also morally questionable… Tamar dresses up as sex trade worker and tricks her father in law to have sex with her. She has twins and one of them is an ancestor of Jesus Christ (In all fairness her sexual relationship with her father-in-law, under the circumstances was acceptable in her culture); Rahab was a sex trade worker—a prostitute, the wife of Uriah is Bathsheba and she is infamous because of her adulterous affair with King David, Ruth, was virtuous, but as Dale Bruner puts it she was a tad aggressive…
Having these names lineage is a little like having: Madonna (pop star not the original one), Winona Ryder, Monica Lewinsky, and Paris Hilton… on the genealogical record of some great moral leader…. No doubt these women have virtues, but there is also something scandalous about them…
Again Matthew seems to be going out of his way drawn attention to the fact that there are women in Jesus’ genealogy who are cultural and moral outsiders….
Our children’s pastor Catherine has given me permission to share this story:
When she was 18 years old and not married she became pregnant. Growing up in a pro-choice home she felt pressured to abort her pregnancy, not because she was pro-life, but because she was afraid to… (ask her permission to share this part)
She had her baby, but she knew she didn’t have the support system to raise her child and so she gave her baby up to the government for adoption… She always wondered what had happened to her son, how did he son turned out. Earlier this year Catherine was in touch with a social worker in who is acquainted her son. Through her Catherine was able to connect with her son by letter… Two weeks for the first time she talked to Danny by phone… he’s 25 years old. He’s to married a woman who ended up having cancer and he’s been so supportive of her. He’s a Christian. He’s international director youth mission that uses drama to reach people around the world (North and South America, Asia, and Europe) Today, she flies to Alberta to meet for the first time since he was a new born baby.
Not every story is, of course, is so positive.
But it is as Catherine would attest to, where God takes our sins, our mistakes and he can bring good out of them.
As a result of her out of wedlock pregnancy she became ripe to receive Jesus Christ and her son has become a person is a blessing to a lot of people.
My professor Haddon Robinson says God has habit growing roses out of manure piles. Grace…
Matthew 1, is magnificent news for the moral outsider.
If you allow me be a bit self-indulgent…
Let’s talk about my grandmother. My grandmother turns 91 in two weeks. She still plays tennis.
My grandmother was and is an elegant and beautiful woman. She married a young business stud. He was an entrepreneur, he designed golf courses with like Trent Jones, jr., he was corporate ceo. He was powerful businessman. He was also a womanizer, he had a series of mistress and was verbally and at times physically abusive toward my grandmother--in a time when it was not socially acceptable to divorce.
A few years ago I was with my grandmother and she said my life has hard… I had unhappy marriage. But I know that my life has meaning, because I had your mom and your mom had you… and you are minister…
(She is, of course, proud of all of her children and grandchildren)
What her story and Tamar’s and Bathsheba story is telling us is that even when our lives are complicated and messy, and even have marred by our sins or the sins of others, God able to accomplish his purpose through us.
In the view of commentator Raymond Brown: Matthew includes these scandalous women in the genealogy of Jesus as a way to bring comfort to a pregnant, unwed teenager named Mary, who’s trying really hard to “explain” her pregnancy to others.
Stephen Neil, points out there is an international parenthesis around Matthew’s Gospel, it begins and ends with message that the Gospel is good news for all peoples.
Matthew’s phone book, his cemetery tour, shows us the Gospel is Good New for all and that is why we have reason to celebrate Christmas.
posted by Shigematsu at 9:37 PM
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