“There’s Room for Every Story”
Matthew 1:1-17
Isaiah 2:1-5
Eons before we could spit into a test tube, drop it into the mail, and learn who and where we came from; long, long, long before the tracing of family trees became big business; long before Francis Sick and James Watson discovered the double-helix structure of DNA; long before people started debating nature versus nurture or teaching the science behind the odds of your baby being born with blue eyes; way back before key moments in world history were set in motion by the vagaries of marriage, birth, and royal succession, genealogy was a thing.
Ages before there was such a thing as literature or television, and thousands of years before ABC made a hit sitcom about a mix-and-match family it called “modern” and the U.S. Supreme Court made same-gender marriage legal in all 50 states, families were anything but predictable, linear, gender uniform, or well-behaved. Families were and are and always been mysterious, miraculous, and, perhaps more than anything, messy.
Long before the Word became flesh in the dark womb of a poor Hebrew girl living under Roman occupation, and ages before you were even a twinkle in your parents’ eyes or a hope in their hearts, God began making humans in the divine image. And while we have physics to thank for quarks, protons, bosons, and the so-called “God particle,” science has yet to discover biological evidence of the spark of the divine that dwells within all beings.
Which is to say, beloveds, that if Jesus of Nazareth came from the messy line described at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew and then went on to change the world and us for all time, clearly there is room for every story in the future God continues to create. Which is to say, beloveds, that each and every person is a child of God, and that every family in every generation is a holy family, and that every person from every family is a sign of hope with a holy part to play in the coming realm of peace and unity.
I am beginning to think that Advent has less to do with waiting for Jesus to be born in our hearts than in realizing anew all the ways and all the people in whom he is already and always here. I am beginning to think that Christmas is not only about Love come down in Bethlehem but also about Love made flesh in every family in every generation all over the world. I am beginning to think that Advent is not simply about preparing the way for Jesus, but that our families, our church, our whole lives are about preparing the way for the hope, peace, joy, and love he embodies.
Consider for a moment the genealogy of Jesus or, rather, the genealogies (plural) of Jesus, because there are two of them: the one we just heard, from the Gospel of Matthew, which begins with Abraham, the father of Israel, and runs through King David and to Joseph husband of Mary, and the one from the Gospel of Luke, which goes the other direction, identifying Jesus as the son (as was thought, it says) of Joseph, and then going back through the names of lots of sons of other sons until it arrives at Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.
And isn’t that exactly how it goes? Some of us might describe our family trees one way—highlighting the ancestors who came over on the Mayflower, for example, while skipping over the slaveholders—while other people in the same family might focus on the people from the Old Country or generations of ministers or teachers or a legacy of faith.
But give Matthew bonus points for including five women and some scandalous members of Jesus’ family tree: Jacob, who stole his older brother’s birthright and lied to his dying father; Tamar, who pretended to be a prostitute and tricked her father-in-law into getting her pregnant and supporting her and their child; Rahab, who was a prostitute, as well as a foreigner; and Bathsheba, the woman taken in adultery (which is to say, raped) by King David, after he had sent her warrior husband to his death; Ruth, a foreigner; and Mary, mother of Jesus.
I wonder how Mary and Joseph spoke of their families. Did the boy Jesus sit at his parents’ feet and listen to the stories of his ancestors? Did Jesus know the stories behind the names? Did he see the thread of grace that was woven through the family line, and the web of spiritual belonging that tied them all together? Did he understand that despite everything, God had been faithful to each and every person, down through the generations? Did he understand that each new generation, and every single birth, was yet another sign of God’s hope for the future of humanity and all creation, that every age has the potential to be the one in which different peoples will come together from all over the world and turn away from war and toward peace?
Do we understand that?
Beloveds, the future is formed, in part, by the stories we tell of the past. And what better stories are there than the stories of Jesus’ birth and resurrection—stories of a Love so great and giving that it chose to become one of us, a Love so powerful and transformative that not even death could overcome it?
The past is redeemed, the present empowered, and the future made possible when we understand our place in the family of things, when we come to see our part in God’s dream for all creation.
It is a lot to take in: a truth far beyond our most sophisticated technologies, a mystery that only heart and Spirit can touch: that there is a universal and still unnamed building block of new and abundant life that is activated by a poor girl’s “yes,” a baby’s cry, and the unlikely details of an upside-down world where angels proclaim good news to undocumented field workers and wise ones travel for years on end to reach the humble place where they can offer their gifts at the weirdest baby shower ever.
In all of human history and through our highest artistic, technological, and even spiritual achievements, there has never been a better, purer delivery mechanism for hope, peace, joy, love, and life than this improbable and incomplete story and its corresponding songs, rituals, and traditions.
And yet fewer and fewer people seem to even know this story, much less let their lives be shaped by it. Many years ago now, my friend Peter and I were preparing to go to the “Messiah” sing-along at the Kennedy Center, when a co-worker asked us what it was about. And every year at the lighting of the Merry Maple on the Common, it seems that fewer and fewer children know even the non-religious Christmas songs.
Beloveds, if the genealogy of Jesus tells us anything, it is that there is room in God’s grand story for every story, no matter how small or tragic, unorthodox, scandalous, or seemingly insignificant, and that every person in every generation has a role to play.
This Advent let us open our hearts and minds anew, that the story might again reveal its hopeful truth to us. Let us wait expectantly and faithfully, that we might not only see, but also become, the Light of the World no darkness can overcome.
