Advent 22

Sunday, Fourth Week of Advent
18 December 2022
 
Over the summer, my family gathered to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of my great aunt Janet. She was one of our family historians, so her apartment was filled with treasures to be sorted through and gifted down through the generations. One such treasure was a well-used family bible. On the inside cover, in beautiful script handwriting, was a long list of family members, alongside the dates of their births, baptisms, and marriages. We were excited to dig into the list of names…until we realized we didn’t know anything about them. They all lived long enough ago that their stories had been lost over time. So all we could do was comment on the very Norwegian sounding names and joke about which ones we might continue…and which ones we would retire.
 
This is probably why most of us don’t read Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus very often. Without a robust knowledge of the Bible and Jewish history, the genealogy of Jesus is just a list of hard-to-pronounce names. It starts out fine enough, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but by the time we get to Aminadab and Zerubbabel our eyes start to glaze over. 
 
But Jesus’ lineage  isn’t a family heirloom we keep around, gathering dust on a shelf, because it meant something to the people who came before us. It is a testament of God’s bold choice to enter into the world through a profoundly flawed and messed up family. It’s as if Matthew goes out of his way to highlight the family scandals. The fact that Matthew includes women in the genealogy at all is unique, but the women he chooses to name – Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth – are those marked by scandal, because they used their sexuality to survive. Matthew also includes Manasseh, a king who restored idol worship and Uzziah, a king who was struck down with leprosy for disobeying God. So much for a glowing, pristine, royal family tree to prove Jesus is worthy to be the messiah. 
 
To me, this is part of the miracle of Advent. Every year I seek to make this season more spiritual, more grounded, less chaotic. And every year I fail. Because I’m imperfect and life gets in the way. Luckily, God knows this to be true and shows up anyway, every year, without fail. The fact that God chose to save the world through a family such as this is a reminder that God enters into our mess and stays with us. If God could work through them, there can be no doubt that God can work in and through us too. Thanks be to God.
 
Carrie Cabush ’15