Family Trees

I’ll admit that I think Matthew gives quite an uninspiring beginning to his gospel. I read through the first 17 verses and I start thinking, “I thought I left this dreadful genealogy stuff behind in Numbers. That was hundreds of pages ago.”

Seriously, in the art of storytelling you usually have a couple of lines to catch someone’s attention (like I’m trying to do right now!) and Matthew straight out fails. Matthew starts with the yawns before getting on to the good stuff. Bad writing. Unless you’re Jewish or attentive or both.

Hidden in the names, most of which are unpronounceable, is Matthew’s slow building argument regarding the fleshiness and connectedness of Jesus to God’s people and to humanity. Folks of high reputation and ill repute are found in that genealogy. It is a select list of folks that make the cut for the genealogy and many of them are seen in scripture with glaring faults.

Matthew is grounding Jesus in a long story of redemption full of acts of God and promises and unlikely heroes and broken leaders. Jesus’ family is full of the kinds of people that get talked about when they are out of the room at family reunions. There are refugees and criminals and sex addicts  throughout that genealogy. There are some more ‘decent’ folks as well. The general impression one gets is that Jesus fits into the stories of people not much different than ourselves.

All of this is good news for us. We, too, fit somewhere in that family tree.

Another thing this genealogy ought to motivate us to do is to look at our more immediate family trees. Those claimed by Christ are more our brothers and sisters than anyone found in our earthly families. By God’s grace earthly and spiritual family trees sometimes overlap. Take this Christmas as an opportunity to love both families well.

There may be some family feuds to lay down. If God felt it important enough to make sure we knew that Jesus came from a less-than-perfect family, perhaps we can find it in our hearts to extend a bit more love, forgiveness, grace, and mercy to our own less-than-perfect families.

The holidays seem to bring out extra stresses for many because of the extra time with family. This Christmas, take a holiday from those old habits and attitudes and remind yourself that, as a child in God’s family, he is at work to make you more and more into his likeness. Allow God to remove those stresses, grudges, and quarrelsome habits from your life as he fills you with his Spirit.