Joseph the Father of Jesus

Matthew 1:1-16
December 9, 2007                   Ken Whitt

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What do you think? Was that a boring reading of a meaningless text? Did it nearly lull you to sleep? Were you asking yourself a question like, “What is that preacher up to now?” Maybe you were expecting me to stumble more over names like:

Am-min-a-dab
She-al-ti-el
Zer-ub-bab-el

The reading of the genealogy of Jesus, it would seem, ranks right up their with many passages from the book of Numbers for its apparent meaninglessness. Numbers 13:3-15 reads:

"So at the LORD'S command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran. All of them were leaders of the Israelites. These are their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua (Sham-mu-a) son of Zaccur; from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat son of Hori; from the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh (Je-phun-neh); from the tribe of Issachar, Igal son of Joseph; from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea (Ho-she-a) son of Nun; from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti son of Raphu; from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel son of Sodi; from the tribe of Manasseh (a tribe of Joseph), Gaddi son of Susi; from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel son of Gemalli (Gem-al-li); from the tribe of Asher, Sethur son of Michael; from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi son of Vophsi; from the tribe of Gad, Geuel (Geu-el) son of Maki."

Who cares?

Generations of Jews cared! They cared enough to preserve list after list after list in their sacred scriptures. Genealogy established identity. "Who am I? I am a son of Abraham, and let me prove it to you." And a genealogy was recited.

Jesus is first and foremost, in Matthew's Genealogy, a Son of Abraham. He is a Jew. He inherits, along with every other Jew, all the privileges and responsibilities of his heritage. You can not understand Jesus if you do not understand what it means to be a Jew.

And Jesus is also, according to Matthew, a Son of David. David is not just another branch in Jesus' family tree. To be a Son of David also makes Jesus eligible to claim the title of Messiah, the Anointed One of God, the deliverer for whom every Jew waited and waited and waited...

Genealogy can be boring, yet I recall many years ago attending a Christmas service where five generations of men from one family, actually four generations of men and one very little boy, read the genealogy of Jesus to us. The little boy’s part was at the very end of the reading, shouting “Jesus,” into the microphone. Son, father, grandfather, great grandfather and great great-grandfather--as I listened to them read the genealogy of Jesus I found myself feeling a holy awe. Five generations telling us of forty-two generations of Hebrew men that carried the promises of God from Abraham to Jesus. Would that it were possible to parade those forty-two generations of ancient Israelites in front of us so that we could see just exactly how it was that the faithfulness of God moved through history. But we did see that faithfulness right in front of our eyes. We see it all the time. Great-grandfather, grandfather, father, son. So it was in the beginning, and so it shall be.

"Faith of our Fathers, Living still
In spite of dungeon, fire and sword:
O how our hearts beat high with joy
When-e'er we hear that glorious word!
Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death!"

Everyone of us inherits the heritage of our fathers. Who we are is profoundly influenced by who they have been.

(Speaking parenthetically for a moment, some of you may be wondering why I am talking so much in this sermon about fathers and sons and so little about mothers and daughters. The reason is simple. I am preaching today from Matthew's Christmas Story in which men are central and women are marginal--as one might expect in Jewish culture. Matthew speaks of the 42 generations of men who proceed Jesus and the wise men who come to worship him. In Matthew's gospel the role of Joseph is central, while the role of Mary is almost incidental. However, when I preach from Luke's Christmas story--he wrote more for a gentile audience--Mary and Elizabeth are the heroines and Joseph is a marginal character. Luke's story also tells us of the prophetess Anna.)

Though I am preaching today from Matthew, let me balance things a little by sharing a story of my grandmother.

My grandmother Whitt died when she was 93. I had the opportunity to share at her funeral on behalf of dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As I prepared for that service I was overwhelmed by a feeling of loss that ran so deep I feared I would never find the bottom. I feared, literally, that with Grandma Whitt gone--Grandpa Whitt had died about twenty years earlier--I would never be able to find out who I was. Grandpa came from Germany in 1898. He was two years old. His father was fleeing conscription in the Kaiser's army. That's about all I knew. Everything else was lost. My roots were frozen in an unknown past.

Immediately after the service my Aunt Mabel came up to me and handed me some documents rolled up in tissue paper. She said, "These will mean more to you than to anyone else in the family." The documents were my grandmother's birth, confirmation and wedding certificates from a German Lutheran Church. I paid hundreds of dollars to have them restored and mounted and they hang now in our family room. I also began to listen to Aunt Mabel and others in our family who knew pieces of our story. On that fateful day I began about three years of work collecting all the information and photographs I could about both sides of my family. I was feeding a deep need to know my heritage, because I felt that that heritage would help me to know my identity.

That need to know who I am by way of knowing where I have come from has continued into the present in another form. Not too long ago I created a geneogram. One difference between a geneogram and a genealogy is that in developing a geneogram you intentionally look for all of the proverbial "horse-thieves" on the family tree. Rather than trying to hide the truth buried in generations of family history you are exhuming the truth. And it is sometimes deeply painful how others in the family will resist this search.

The Biblical writers did not resist. It is amazing to me that in recording the genealogy of Jesus the Matthew chose to include this commentary in Matthew 1:6:

"David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife...”

That verse tells of one of the "horse-thieves" in the family tree of Jesus. David raped Uriah's wife, Beersheba. From this criminal union Matthew traces the human lineage of Jesus. Matthew does not hide the truth, he reveals it. There is suffering and evil and sin in the genealogy of Jesus. The Biblical writers make no attempt to hide that fact. When I undertake to develop a geneogram I am seeking to uncover the suffering and evil and sin hidden in my personal history. I look for patterns of pre-mature death from heart disease and cancer. I record all the data I can about divorce, mental illness, alcoholism, and all kinds of abuse. Why in the world would I want to uncover this hidden truth? I want to uncover it because it continues to impact my life. It is like a hidden cancer that cannot be treated until it is known. The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children for generation upon generation. I want to know of the brokenness that needs to be healed in my generation.

The sins of my father and grandfather and great-grandfather can all too easily become my sins. Those men who came before me determine me, to a considerable extent. They impact me. But, and this, to me, is the most important statement in this sermon, the fathers in my genealogy do not limit what I may, by God's grace, become.

Their sins do not have to be my sins. Their brokenness does not have to be my brokenness. How many times has an angry mother told a troublesome son, "You are just like your father. He was a drunk. You will be a drunk. He was crazy. You will be crazy." Well, it is just not so. We learn that it does not have to be so in the Christmas Story. We learn in Matthew's Christmas Story that Jesus had a dual parentage--his father was Joseph and his father was God. Every one of us has a dual parentage. We are not limited by what our human fathers have been but only by what our Heavenly Father is. And since God is infinite, the possibilities of our lives are unlimited.

The possibilities for healing are unlimited.
The possibilities for love are unlimited.
The possibilities for service to God are unlimited.
The possibilities for the reconciliation of broken relationships are unlimited.

Every person can be all that they can be. Success in life is not a matter of joining the right organization or landing the right job or meeting the perfect woman or man or finding the right therapist or joining the right church. Your destiny does not depend on luck, manipulation, or fate. Ultimately it is only one relationship that determines who you will be--your relationship with God. As we come to know God as a loving Parent, like Jesus knew God as Abba, Father, Daddy, all limits of genealogy cease to control our lives. Jesus was The Beloved Son of God. We are all beloved children of God. That fact may not appear on your family tree but it shines with the light of Divine Love in the Christmas Story.

Just like Jesus, every one of us has a dual paternity. We are sons and daughters of human fathers and mothers and we are sons and daughters of God. The healing of our lives, the fullest discovery of vocation, and our spiritual maturity all require the belief deeply held that the paternity of God is the primary reality of our lives.

This discovery takes on a unique importance in the Christmas season. The trouble people have with their parents and families at Christmas is tragic testimony to how much unresolved brokenness there is in our lives. For example:

A son returns home for Christmas with his wife and children. The kids love to see grandpa. But dad wonders if he will survive another encounter with his father. Grandpa is an unrepentant drunk and son has never dealt with how that fact has damaged his life. All he knows is that the situation could be explosive. Two years ago he dragged his family out of grandpa's house even before presents had been opened. He is terrified that could happen again.

In another family, life has always been peaceful and filled with love. But during the year dad died, and no one in the family wants to deal with the grief. They will come together at Christmas and do all the things they always do. But when they leave everyone will whisper that the family did not feel close this year. And they will all wonder why.

On Christmas day still another family will gather for Christmas dinner at the home that grandma and grandpa have lived in for 45 years. The table will be filled with a bountiful feast. But there will be empty chairs. There is a son who will not return home this year. Everyone knows why but no one is talking about it. There is a daughter who has been disowned by dad. They had a terrible fight just before her wedding and daughter and father have sworn never to speak to each other again.

There are a thousand times a thousand similar stories.

Even if we do not become conscious of the cause of our dis-ease and even if we take no action to mend what is torn, person after person and family after family will experience during this Christmas season how genealogy determines the climate of their lives. More than any other time of the year, the sins of the fathers and the mothers and the sons and the daughters are visited upon one another. And it hurts. It hurts bad. If the wounds in the family system have not been healed then they will bleed more during the Christmas season than at any other time of the year. Maybe that is one reason why red is a color of this season. You can disown them, you can try to forget them, you can pretend you do not miss them, you can act as if it does not matter. But the wounds will still bleed.

Good friends, it may not have to be this way. There are no guarantees. There are some things over which we have no power. Yet we worship a powerful God. We have a God who heals wounds, if we will become conscious of them and take them to God. We have a God who loves us so perfectly that God makes it possible for us to forgive imperfect parents, even imperfect children. Christmas proves once and for all that we are not unalterably bound by what has been. God has done and is doing a new thing in our midst. The experience of this new work of hope and joy and forgiveness and peace and reconciliation seems to require, if the Christmas Story teaches us anything, scrupulous honesty about our human parentage--an honesty most of us avoid like the plague. And the experience of God's new saving work in our lives requires a trusting acceptance of the fact that God is the only father or mother who is able to give us every gift that we will never need.

CONCLUSION

Imagine, a Christmas long ago in the home of your mother and father. Imagine a profound feeling of disappointment when you discovered on Christmas morning that your parents could not or would not give you the one gift that ever really mattered to you. That gift may have been:

An always perfect love
Or forgiveness
Or acceptance
Or patience
Or simple kindness
Or time, plain and ordinary time.

Imagine what it felt like to be always denied this one most precious gift.

Now imagine that as an adult you have learned to pray. You are able to ask God for that most desired gift. And you know, from many years of experience, that God will give you exactly what you need, not what you want, but what you need. And in your heart of hearts, in your soul within the soul, you know God has gifted you at this very moment with that love, acceptance, and time. And that love flows through you and through time touching and healing theyou of today and the you of yesterday.

Every time that you hear the good news of Jesus Christ this Christmas season, every time that you sing a carol, every time you delight in the lighting of a Christmas candle, every time the light of this season enters your soul, let that love flow through you and through time to heal all the wounds of what has been, setting you free for all that is yet to be. Allow the love of God to flow through you for the healing of your life and the healing of your family.

So be it.

Amen.