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"Why These Women?" Dr.
James L. Mayfield December 23, 2001
Text: Matthew 1:1-3, 5-6, 16 When Rita and I lived in Mathis, one night we attended a Rotary Club dinner for members and wives. As we were gathering, I asked what the program was. "That lady over there is going to talk to us about genealogy." The lady looked like a humorless spinster, lifted from the pages of a Charles Dickens story. Rita and I gave each other a husband - wife look that said we wished we had stayed home. Little did we know. She was not the drab, dry person we had judged her to be. She was a delightful speaker with a marvelous sense of humor. I would never have thought a talk about doing family genealogy could be interesting, much less entertaining and humorous. But that evening it was. One of the comments she made was, "If in researching your family history, you discover your great, great grandfather swam the Mississippi just ahead of the posse that was going to hang him for being a horse thief and all around scoundrel, do not write him out of the family history. Just be grateful he could swim." The passage we read this morning is as deceptive in appearance as that lady who gave the talk that night. On first glance it looks like another boring list of who was the father of whom. But on closer examination, we will discover it is more, much more than that. It is a strange reminder of God's grace at work in history. In this genealogy, Matthew mentions four women in addition to Mary who were among Jesus' ancestors: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. In the male dominated culture, in which the writer of Matthew lived, lineage was traced back through the fathers, and therefore, women were seldom, if ever, included in genealogies. This fact raises the question: "Why did Matthew list these women, and only these women, in the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah?" These four women had at least a couple of things in common. One is they were from other nations; they were women whose upbringing was outside the religion of the Jews. They were outsiders. The other is that if their individual stories were made into movies today and those movies were faithful to what is said and obviously implied in the Bible, each of those movies would, at best, get an R rating because of sexual content. The first one mentioned in Tamar. The 38th chapter of Genesis tells the interesting but rather strange story about her pursuit of justice, that led her to seduce her father in law. The children resulting from that seduction are the twins mentioned in the passage we read: Perez and Zerah. According to long standing tradition, the Rahab mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus is the woman whose story is told in the second chapter of Joshua. Prior to the famous battle of Jericho, Joshua sent two spies into Jericho. They stayed in the home of Rahab, who at the time was a prostitute. If it had not been for Rahab, these spies would have been captured and killed. Rahab hid them from the authorities who were searching for them, and she also helped them escape from the city. The Book of Ruth tells an interesting love story about how Ruth, a widow and a foreigner came with her mother in law, a woman named Naomi, to live in the land of the Jews, and how Ruth was able to entice a distant relative of Namoi's, a man named Boaz, to marry her. It is a tender story, but not one for young children. Of the women Matthew mentions in the genealogy, Bathsheba is probably the best known. She is the woman who committed adultery with David, and when King David discovered Bathsheba was carrying his child, he first tried to trick Bathsheba's husband, a soldier named Urriah, into believing the child was his. When that failed, David had Urriah killed in battle; then David took Bathsheba as one of his wives. Later she gave birth to Solomon. (See II Samuel 11) I think it is significant that Matthew does not mention Bathsheba by name. Rather he rubs the nose of the reader in the grimy bit of history that reveals the great King David to have been guilty of both adultery and murder. Matthew does this by referring to Bathsheba as: "the wife of Uriah." Why begin the story of Jesus the Messiah with these reminders about skeletons in the closet of our family of faith? It is probably because Matthew's Gospel was written for an audience of religious people -- people who were certain they knew what was right and wrong and who was good and bad. They were confident they knew what God would and would not do, what God would and would not bless. They were people a lot like many of us. All too often we religious folks, exclude people because they are different or because we have judged them to be unworthy. We cannot imagine them ever being capable of receiving God's grace. But Matthew begins his Gospel reminding us about some women ancestors of Jesus whose lives are stories with an R rating. And in the process, we are also reminded God's grace not only embraced each of them but was also at work through each of them. In this genealogy Matthew was showing us that God's grace is not limited by our opinions about what God will and will not do, or our beliefs about what God will and will not bless. God's grace was at work in the lives of these women and through the lives of these women. For those of us who are convinced we really understand God and God's will, this may be difficult to believe. But God's grace is not limited by any boundaries we humans draw -- either moral boundaries, social boundaries, or national boundaries. The world and all who live in it belong to God, and God is at work as God chooses to be at work, not merely in the ways we are convinced God works. God's grace is continually surprising us humans in its unconventional ways of expressing itself in our experience. Certainly, it is a surprise to very religious people to discover women such as Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba in the genealogy of Jesus the Christ. What is only implied in this genealogy that begins Matthew's Gospel is made explicit in the final words that end Matthew's Gospel. In those concluding words Jesus told his disciples to go into all the world, making disciples of all people. (28:19-20) Both the implied message at the beginning of Matthew and the explicit message at the end declare that the Gospel, the Good News, made known in Jesus Christ belongs to everyone, not just to those of one heritage, not merely to the people we think are deserving. In reminding us about these women, Matthew reminds us that our ability to make judgments about people and the ways of God is about like the ability Rita and I demonstrated the night we were so very confident that lady did not have anything to offer we could enjoy. God, rescue us from our smug perceptions and opinions that make us insensitive to the surprising and marvelous ways your grace is at work among us humans. Amen. Pastoral Prayer: Let us thank God for the gifts and blessings we have received. We have come here with a variety of concerns and problems. Let us ask God for guidance and help. Let us pray for: God, as we send cards to one another celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace, we are aware we need peace. We need peace between nations and peace between groups within nations. God, the peace we need is much more than merely the absence of fighting. We need the peace that has its source in you, the peace that brings healing and wholeness, the peace that replaces our efforts to get even with one another with efforts to do what is best for one another. God, we also need this kind of healing in our relationships with others. You know the wounds we have caused in others and the wounds others have caused in us. God heal these wounds and rescue us from bitterness and the desires to strike back. Teach us how to move toward healing reconciliation. And God, we also need peace within ourselves. You know the turmoil in our minds and heart; you know what causes us to toss in bed in the middle of the night. Show us how to allow you to take over our lives so that even in the midst of our problems we are able to experience that peace described in the Bible. As we move toward the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus, help us move toward the time when Christ really is in charge of our living. Help us live as he taught us to pray: " Our Father ...."
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