For Thanksgiving this year, my family had a mix of people gathered. While we all are related in some way, not everyone might claim each other as family and definitely the ties between us were different depending on who might be describing the scene. With my mom’s very clear absence noted, I spent some time taking in who was and was not present. My dad, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew formed the core group for me. My sister’s in laws—my brother-in-law’s mom and step-father—were there. They’re not my family, but they went on vacation with us and are nice enough. My uncle and godfather, my dad’s youngest brother, was there. My great-uncle Tim, my mom’s uncle, was there—he’s had a hand in raising three generations of our family at this point—as was his wife who he married after my great-aunt Needie passed away. It was Needie who was the blood relative to my mom. My aunt Becky—married to my dad’s older brother—was there as were two of her children—my cousins Emily and Steve—as was Steve’s daughter Evelyn. Jade, one of my sister’s best friends was also there with her two kids, Lorelai and Lex. Jade’s a single mom and her kids have been at so many of our family gatherings that they call my parents MomMom and PopPop. This year Lorelai addressed me as Uncle Bubba, the same name Jack uses for me. Rounding out the bunch were my furry nephews Bogey and Dodger. In addition to my mom, my dad’s older brother was missing, both of my mom’s brothers weren’t there, and my cousin Kathy and her family were unable to get home. We knew that my brother-in-law’s father and my aunt, my mom’s sister, were looking down on us from heaven.
My dad and his brothers are history nerds and are obsessed with genealogy. Give them old family photos or some information about a family member and they will quickly fill in the blanks about who they were, what they did, and much more. Who’s in your family tree? What interesting, absurd, or unfortunate stories are part of your family narrative? Who don’t you know about?
Whether we like it or not, we are each made up of our ancestors, the lives they led, and all their stories, even the stories which have been embellished and those that have been redacted. Some of those people and those stories impact us more than others, but they still remain a part of us. That said, we are also not bound by those stories. Perhaps the greatest shift from early modern Europe to modern and post-modern America was defining a person based on their family rather than their own actions. While family remains important in all our lives, we can move beyond that family if we want or need to move on.
As we continue into the second week of Advent, let’s talk about Jesus’ ancestors. First, we need to remember that this is the line of David starting with Abraham and ending with Jesus—a separate genealogy in Luke 3 goes back even further to Adam. Second, we need to note that situating Jesus in the line of David was an important point for the writer of the Gospel of Matthew. He will often refer to Jesus as the “Son of David” beginning in the genealogy and continuing throughout the gospel. In fact, in Matthew 4 this connection becomes even more important because Jesus makes it clear that he is not David’s equal, but rather David’s lord and savior too. This is why we are presented with a genealogy through Joseph who has no actual part in the creation of the messiah. We might otherwise expect a genealogy through Mary. Luke 3:23 attends to this in part by saying, “[Jesus] was the son (as was thought) of Joseph…”
In Matthew’s genealogy there are 42 men and five women mentioned and they include some notable characters and stories. We start with Abraham then Isaac then Jacob and then Judah and his brothers. The added “and his brothers” reminds us that this genealogy is as much about Jesus being part of this family as he is a part of the history of the Israelites. The twelve tribes will descend from this group of brothers. Judah has at least two sons who are mentioned—Perez and Zerah—whose mother was Tamar, the first women we encounter in this list. Tamar’s story is one of loss and scandal. She’s first married to Judah’s eldest son who we’re told is wicked and is killed by God. Then Judah orders his second son, Onan, to have sex with Tamar so that she might produce children for his dead older brother. Onan, as we know, “spills his seed on the ground” so as to not impregnate Tamar. For that crime, God kills Onan. Judah’s third son is young, and Judah fears he might die as well. He promises Tamar that she will be able to marry him later, but Judah has no plan to keep that promise. Tamar ends up tricking Judah into thinking she’s a sex worker and bears two sons to him. Fooled, Judah admits that she is more righteous than he and marries her. Tamar’s story and her actions prefigure the salvation of the messiah that will come from her own line.
Next comes Hezron who was among the group who left Canaan and moved to Egypt because of a famine. Next is Aram and then his son Aminadab. Though not mentioned in the genealogy, Aminadab had a daughter named Elisheba who was the wife of Aaron, Moses’ brother. Her name is repeated in the Gospels as the name of Mary’s cousin who was descended from Aaron and Elisheba. After Aminadab we come to Nahshon and then to Salmon who married Rahab. Like Tamar before her, Rahab has an interesting story. To discuss Rahab, we have to re-enter the conquest narrative because she’s a Canaanite woman living in Jericho. Different sources interpret her background differently. She may have been a sex worker, the owner or manager of a brothel, or an innkeeper. In any case, she hosted and hid two Israelite spies sent by Joshua, keeping them safe when the king of Jericho sent soldiers to arrest the spies. Rahab becomes a symbol of putting God before country and monarch.
Salmon, we’re told, was the father of Boaz who married Ruth who was a Moabite woman. Hebrew law found in Deuteronomy stated that people of Moabite birth could never be included in the people of Israel. However, not only does Ruth impassionedly declare that she will stay with her mother-in-law Naomi and in time become a member of the Israelites, she becomes one of their recognized leaders. Together Ruth and Boaz have a son named Obed who becomes the father of Jesse.
Jesse is a wealthy man with a large number of children, property, and livestock. Indeed, when the prophet Samuel arrives with news that one of his children has been called by God to one day become king, everyone is shocked that it would be his youngest child, David. David slays Goliath and spends much of his time in the court of King Saul who will go from loving David to loathing him to trying to kill him. Yet, David prevails and becomes king.
David, we should remember, was the passionate friend and possible lover of Saul’s son Jonathan. 1 Samuel 18 tells us that David and Jonathan’s souls were knit together and, in 2 Samuel 1, upon learning that Jonathan had died, David says, “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” When we talk about Queer characters in the Bible we often look to David and Jonathan. Many people also see Ruth as a possibly Queer person. Funny how Jesus’ genealogy might include LGBTQIA+ people as well?
Matthew’s genealogy then notes that “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” The phrasing is intentionally pointed. Recall that Uriah was one of David’s courtiers and military officers. His wife was Bathsheba who we’re told was very beautiful. David lusted after Bathsheba, but couldn’t marry another man’s wife and couldn’t kill Uriah outright, so he has Uriah assigned to a dangerous area. When Uriah is killed in battle, David quickly comforts the widow and then makes her his wife. Matthew is noting here what David did was sinful and though David is important to the Gospel of Matthew, so to is positioning the Messiah as greater than David. David’s own actions impeach his character and integrity.
David’s son and heir was Soloman the greatly wise king who despite all his wisdom struggled to hold his kingdom together. His marriages to foreign women—particularly Ammonites and Moabites—and being influenced by them were cited as reasons for his problems. His son Rehoboam was the last king of the united Hebrew kingdom and the first king of just the southern Kingdom of Judah.
Then we encounter more minor characters including Abijah then Asaph then Jehoshaphat then Joram and then Uzziah who reigned as the King of Judah for 52 years. Given the length of his reign and his contacts with other nations, there is good, non-Hebrew proof that he existed and even where he’s buried. That said he was considered ritually impure for the last ten years of his life because he supposedly had disobeyed God which handed real power to his son Jotham. Then came Ahaz and then his son Hezekiah, whose name should sound familiar to you.
Hezekiah mandated that only Yahweh be worshipped in the Temple and had all other altars and ritual objects for other deities removed. He strengthened Judah’s government and military, successfully repelling an Assyrian invasion. He was the father of Manasseh who is roundly condemned in 2 Kings for reinstituting the worship of many gods. Yet, we know from Undoing Conquest and Dr. Kate that Manasseh was really trying to restore the traditional religious practices to Judah. Manasseh eventually had a son, Amon, who reigned for only two years before being assassinated by his own leaders, was followed by his own son, Josiah.
At this point we know a great deal about Josiah. Like his great-grandfather Hezekiah, he pulled down altars and statues of all gods in the Temple except Yahweh. After he died in battle against the Egyptians, his son Jeconiah became king and the Babylonians captured Judah. If we trust Matthew’s genealogy as accurate, then Jeconiah survives until near the end of the exile but is cursed to never have a descendant sit on the throne of Israel. His son—or possibly his grandson—Shealtiel becomes the second king-in-exile and also dies before the end of the exile. The next person in the genealogy is Shealtiel’s son—maybe his nephew—Zerubbabel who returns to Judah not as king, but as the regional governor for the Persian empire. He is the last person in his family accorded the status of king, prince, or governor. He’s also the last one mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. After Zerubbabel, the genealogy lists nine men found nowhere else in the Bible. Then we reach Joseph and Mary.
In the canonical Gospels, Joesph doesn’t speak, and we get very little information on Mary. However, the second century Infancy Gospel of James gives us a window into their lives. While not included in the final canon of the New Testament, James was widely read by early Christians and provides many pieces of what we have come to associate with the Christmas story. James begins with Mary’s parents Anna and Joachim who are wealthy and devout, but already are old and have no children. Yet, they are told that like Abraham and Sarah they will have a child whose name will never be forgotten. When Mary is born, she is dedicated to God and at age three she is taken to the Temple to live as a pure virgin. There she is fed by an angel and nurtured by the priests and others. When she is approximately 12 to 15 years old the priests seek a sign from God and decide that she is to marry Joseph.
Joseph identifies himself as an “old man with sons” and says that he doesn’t want to take Mary as his wife because she is so young that people will mock him. While he takes her into his home, he doesn’t marry her right away. Once Mary becomes pregnant, Joseph laments being in something of a catch-22: if he says nothing about her pregnancy, he’s violating the law, but if he hands Mary over to the authorities, they will kill her and then the blood of the child in her womb will be on his hands. Eventually, the chief priests find out and put both Joseph and Mary to the test to see if her pregnancy is in fact holy. When the census occurs, Mary travels with Joseph and his sons to Bethlehem, but Mary goes into labor before they arrive. So, Joseph finds a cave and leaves his sons to guard Mary while he finds two midwifes to assist her. For the relatively little we know about Joseph, we see him being both devout to God and protective of his young wife.
There are clear legal and theological reasons for a genealogy of Jesus who is messiah and savior. Even though we know that Joseph was not Jesus’ actual father, he stood in as an earthly and legal father whose ancestors became Jesus’ ancestors. That Jesus would have these ancestors is important for a number of reasons.
First, though thoroughly Jewish and Hebrew, Jesus is not drawn from solely Hebrew people. Inasmuch as he’s human, his ancestry includes people from many ethnic and racial groups—many of which would not be considered white in the racial classification of first century CE Roman Palestine or 21st century America. Jesus would, by our standards, be considered multiracial. Our Lord, our Savior, our God was not a white man.
Second, Jesus’ ancestry includes people who were deemed ritualistically and humanly unclean. The Mosaic Law excluded Moabites from being accepted into Judaism, yet Ruth is not only among Jesus’ ancestors, she’s likely the most prominent woman in the genealogy other than Jesus’ mother. Tamar was almost certainly a sex worker. David had a man killed to marry his wife. There are choice words we could use for Solomon and his sexual escapades. Jesus’ ancestors are far from upright and perfect. They’re a messy bunch. They’re sinners just like us.
Third, whatever word we might use for them, David and Ruth at least were not straight by our standards of sexual orientation. To think that they were the only two in Jesus’ family who weren’t heterosexual would be naïve. Yes, we are looking at people through the lens of concepts which would not be defined for thousands of years, yet it’s clear that some people in Jesus’ family tree are Queer.
Fourth, Jesus’ family is just as messed up as some of our families. There are stories we always tell and there are stories we never tell. There are stories we’ve only heard in whispers or only when, as adults, we’ve started to ask questions. Ancestors once painted in great light become just as human as us and we begin to realize that the people who seemed distant or unconnected were just adulting. [Can I get an Amen?]
Because we are children of God, we too are part of Jesus’ family and part of his story. By claiming us as his own Jesus made sure that his story continues through us. Amen.
(Note - Like with most of my messages, the text above might differ a bit from what I said in the recording.)