Sunday before Christmas Fr Daniel York

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The Nativity and Four

Feasts is upon us. Christ is coming to be born

the King of the Jews. the hope of all the Gentiles,

the son of David and the son of Abraham. And

yet, in St. Matthew's male -centered genealogy,

Christ isn't actually the son of David or Abraham

or any of these men. Matthew makes that painstakingly

clear for us. Abraham begat Isaac. Abraham fathered

Isaac. Abraham sired Isaac. And Isaac begat Jacob.

And Jacob begat Judah and his brother. And Jesse

begat David the king. And on and on and on until

Joseph. But Joseph doesn't beget Christ. No,

Joseph is the husband of Mary. Of Mary, Jesus

was born, who is called. In a genealogy that

records the act of beginning by 41 different

men, Matthew intends us to feel this abrupt break.

Christ isn't begotten by Joseph. Rather, he is

in fact born, born of Mary. If Joseph doesn't

beget Christ, then who does? Well, God. God the

Father begets Christ in eternity. Christ is begotten

of the Father before all ages, but born of Mary

in time. And we can spend hours upon hours on

just that statement alone. Christ has no human

father because his father is God who alone begets

him. And yet, by being born of the Virgin, he

assumes the flesh of his mother, Mary. She bears

God in the flesh. That's why we call her the

Theotokos, literally the God birther, the one

who gave birth to God, the mother of God. Although

Joseph isn't Christ's biological father, the

genealogy nevertheless catalogs a people with

whom Christ voluntarily identifies, manifesting

his own divine father's solidarity to these people.

A solidarity so deep, so profound, that Christ's

Father, in fact, assumes their names into his

own title. So, for example, in the Old Testament,

you'll hear this in the New as well. Christ's

Father calls himself the God of Abraham, the

God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Israel,

the God of Judah, the God of David. He considers

these forefathers holy and beloved. They believe

in the Lord. They hope in the Lord. They love

him. They serve him. Nevertheless, in their earthly

lives, none are perfect. In fact, many in this

genealogy fail miserably. You just have to read

the stories about them. But God loves them. And

so, like father, like son, Christ identifies

with these. As the father voluntarily becomes

the God of Abraham and the God of Jacob, the

God of David, Christ now voluntarily assumes

their flesh to become the son of David, the son

of Abraham, to save his people from their sins.

But besides these men, the genealogy also significantly

highlights four women with whom Christ identifies.

Four women who anticipate his own mother, Tamar,

Rahab, Ruth, and Uriah's wife. It's technically

what Matthew calls her, Bathsheba. Unlike Mary,

these women are all foreigners. They are all

Gentiles, two Canaanites, a Moabitess, and a

Hittite. Like Mary, however, these four women

were all involved in highly irregular and scandalous

-looking relationships. After Tamar is widowed

by two of Judah's sons, Judah refuses to give

her in marriage to his youngest, thinking she's

cursed, fearing that his son, his last son, will

die, and disregards the Old Testament leveret.

marriage tradition, which requires a brother

to marry his dead brother's wife and produce

children. To preserve Judah's line, which anticipates

the Christ, Tamar, however, disguises herself

as a prostitute and posts up at one of Judah's

favorite hangout spots in order to be seen taken,

bedded, and impregnated by her father -in -law.

In the end, when all is revealed, Tamar is vindicated

as Judah declares her to be more righteous than

he. Matthew wants us to recall these events when

he includes Tamar in Christ's genealogy. Unlike

Tamar, who disguises herself, Rahab is actually

a prostitute when the two Israelite spies enter

her brothel looking for what men typically look

for. in such unsavory places. The Hebrew in Joshua

explicates their desires to sleep there, as in

to sleep with women. While the two spies are

looking for such things, Rahab is looking for

God. So she hides the spies, she helps them escape,

but not before confessing Israel's God as the

God of the universe and begging to be saved from

Jericho's impending doom. Again, Matthew wants

us to recall these events by preserving Rahab's

memory in Christ's genealogy as the mother of

Boaz. As a Moabitess, Ruth descends from the

incestuous union of Lot and his daughters, where

the daughters uncover their father's nakedness

and sleep with him to continue his line. Ruth,

however, after her husband dies and leaves her

childless, remains faithful to Naomi. her bitter

mother -in -law, and identifies with Naomi's

people and her God. Eventually she meets Boaz

and at the prompting of her mother -in -law dresses

like a harlot and goes into the threshing floor

at night to uncover Boaz's nakedness. In the

book of Ruth, when the author mentions how Ruth

uncovers Boaz's feet, this is a Hebrew euphemism

for uncovering nakedness. offering herself to

him, echoing what the mother of Moab did to her

father Lot. By including Ruth, Matthew again

wants us to recall these things in Christ's genealogy.

The wife of Uriah, that is Bathsheba, found herself

taken by King David after he beheld her bathing

from his roof. David took another man's wife,

his friend, his friend Uriah the Hittite, slept

with her, committed adultery. After realizing

she was pregnant, David then arranged for his

friend's murder, sending him out to battle in

the front lines, telling the rest of his soldiers

to abandon him in order that he would be killed,

freeing David to take Uriah's wife as his own.

After the child of the adultery dies, the couple

produces another child, Solomon, for whom Bathsheba

schemes to preserve his kingship. solidifying

Solomon's place in Christ's genealogy. Through

scandalous events, these four women all take

initiative in preserving a lineage that becomes

Christ's. But through their initiative, the Holy

Spirit manifests his secret activity. Matthew

includes these four women because scandal and

divine activity converge in them to bring about

the Messiah. thus anticipating Mary. Mary's pregnancy

is considered a scandal in ancient Near Eastern

parlance because she hasn't yet lived with Joseph,

her husband, her betrothed one. The son in her

womb, however, was put there not by another man,

but by the Holy Spirit in order to bring forth

the Christ hidden to Joseph. hidden to the public,

but mentioned by Matthew from the very outset,

even before Joseph knows. In Mary, God does something

radically new. In the past, God intervened to

work in spite of moral or biological deficiencies

in human parents, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah.

But in Mary, he works in spite of the total absence

of a human father. No male human begets Christ,

already begotten. He is conceived in the virgin's

womb by the Holy Spirit. In this way, she becomes

the God -bearer, different from every single

woman who preceded her or follows her. There

is no one like her. Christ becomes Emmanuel,

God with us, because the virgin bears God in

her. And knowing that Christ isn't his son, Joseph

has to enter into essentially the very same thing

we heard in Hebrews 11, the epistle reading.

A life of Christ. Joseph must nevertheless identify

with him at the risk of shame, at the risk of

every danger that will come to him and his family.

mirroring in his own life what Christ actually

does for Joseph, what Christ came into this world

to do for Joseph, and the entire line of David

and Abraham and all of humanity. Christ voluntarily

enters into the fullness of human life and identifies

with it, the joys and the sadness, the faith

and the faithlessness, the righteousness and

the sin, the hope. and the shattered dreams,

the kingdom and the exile, the life and the death,

all of it, Christ inhabits it. He assumes it.

He integrates it into himself. He fills it with

divine life, God with us, manifesting how God

is still with them. Abraham and David, all of

the saints, the God of the living, not the God

of the dead. Obeying the angel's command, Joseph

takes Mary into his house, but refrains. for

meritoriously knowing her. Joseph calls Mary's

son Jesus, for he will save his people from their

sins. Yeshua, Hebrew. Jesus. Salvation. Savior.

God saves. The Lord saves. Victory. Healing.

Another chance. In Jesus' coming, he saves from

sin. In Jesus' coming, he conquers death. In

Jesus' coming, he overcomes the demonic powers

of this world. In Jesus' coming, he brings healing

in his wings. In Jesus' coming, he shines his

light and the darkness scatters. Because in his

coming, God comes down. God with us, God for

us, and God in us. Brothers and sisters, he identifies

with our humanity. All of it. Everything that

we are, everything that we carry, the good things,

the faith, the hope, the love, all of it, as

weak as it might be, but also the mess, the brokenness,

the shame, the failures, the darkness of our

life, the cold season prompts us to these things.

What about our own hearts? Jesus invades all

of those things as the God of love that need

to be filled with his life and presence. Let

us prepare. Let us rejoice. Let us shake off

anything that would hinder from us. Let us confess

anything we need to confess for looking at this

genealogy. There can be nothing that disqualifies

us from being loved by Christ. Nothing that would

keep us at arm's length from Christ's love and

mercy and compassion to us. Nothing. No one is

above. No one is... No one. Christ will not let

anyone go. Let us enlarge our hearts, as the

Apostle puts it, so that Christ might come, so

that Christ might enter into us, filling us with

life. light, love, joy, and peace, and even with

himself, Christ dwelling richly, born in our

hearts. Amen?