Luke begins his gospel with the famous story of Christmas. His story includes the angels, the

shepherds, the wonder and awe of the well-known Christmas story. Matthew, by contrast,

begins the Christmas story with…wait for it… a genealogy. What many of us pass over as dull

and tedious was anything but dull when Matthew’s original audience read his story because

they knew the backstories of all the people in Jesus’ family tree. In fact, Matthew seems to go

out of his way to allude to the scandalous lives of the people who made up the family tree of

Jesus. Matthew didn’t include them despite his gospel story. Matthew included them because

they were the point of the gospel story.