The
Christmas Stories: the Genealogy
It
was very clear that when I was growing up, the old priest in my town
did not see much sense to the list of "begets" and "begots"
that were read
during the mass of the Vigil of Christmas and on December 17. He mumbled
through the list omitting much of it. As a young priest, I did the
same, as I did not appreciate the meaning and purpose of the genealogies
of Jesus in the Gospels. So, I too used to give them a quick shift.
The
lists are found only in Matthew 1:1-17 and in Luke 3:23-24. If we
compare them we find that they contradict one another. We also find
that the lists in Matthew are in neat bundles of fourteen. So is becomes
clear that they are there not to give us an exact account of the ancestry
of Jesus, but rather they are a Jewish literary form used to teach
us lessons about who Jesus was. What were these lessons?
The
list of ancestors in Matthew goes back to Abraham, our Father in the
faith. They are a very short history of God's dealing with us humans.
Jesus is situated in the story of salvation that begins with Abraham.
The story is telling us that the salvation Jesus brings was intended
for all people.
The
next person highlighted is King David. The ancestry of Jesus is traced
through Joseph back to David, the central kingly figure of the Old
testament. In effect this is saying that Jesus is a king in the line
of David. He is the promised Messiah.
Contrary
to the usual practice amongst Jews, Matthew lists four women amongst
the ancestors of Jesus. They were interesting characters to say the
least and not by any means paragons of virtue. The first woman, Tamar,
merited being listed in the genealogy by posing as a prostitute and
sleeping with her father-in-law, Judah (Genesis 38). The second woman
mentioned is Rahab, the prostitute of Jerico (Josh 2:1-21), who helped
the emissaries of Joshua when they were being pursued by the army
of the king. She concealed them, lied about them, and helped them
escape by letting them down by a rope from her window. She was seen
by the Jews of Jesus' time as a woman of great faith who did everything
possible so that salvation could be accomplished. The third woman,
Ruth, a Moabite, is a foreign woman, who accepts the true God of Israel
and thus becomes part of the community of the people of God and one
of the ancestors of Jesus. Beth-sheba, the fourth woman is included
not because of her adultery with king David, but because she assures
the royal lineage of the Messiah through Solomon. A commonly accepted
explanation of the inclusion of these women is that Matthew was showing
that the salvation that Jesus brought was for all, including outcasts
and sinners.
Matthew
follows the list of the ancestors of Jesus with the story of the birth
of Jesus by immaculate conception. "When his mother Mary was
engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with
child through the power of the Holy Spirit." What is this all
saying? It is answering the question "Who is Jesus?" through
a Jewish literary technique. It is saying in effect, "Here is
someone who is truly human, he has royalty and riff-raf in his ancestry.
He is truly like all of us, a person who lives in time and place,
and he has desirable and undesirable relatives. Yet, this same person
with such human roots is the child of GOD. He was conceived as no
other human being has been conceived, through a direct intervention
of the Holy Spirit.
The
Genealogy Story then is very rich in meaning and should not be passed
over lightly. Through this literary device Matthew tells us of the
two natures of Jesus, that he was human and that he was divine. He
tells us that he is the fulfillment of history and of the prophecies.
"All of this happened to fulfill what the Lord had said through
the prophet;
'The
virgin shall be with child
and give birth to a son,
And they shall call him Emmanuel,'
a name which means 'God is with us.'"
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Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
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