Matthew 1:1-17
Worship Guide
Published Sermon
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the first day of the Church Year. For over 1500 years the Church has found it beneficial to follow an annual liturgical calendar. This calendar is anchored to two events: the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. The Church Year immerses us in the story of Jesus: the expectation of his coming, culminating in his birth; then his death, resurrection and ascension, and the gift of the Spirit. We, then, live out our lives in light of this story, in light of what God has done in Christ, and is continuing to do through his Spirit.
For over a thousand years, and still in many Orthodox churches today, this immersion in the story of Jesus goes beyond the text of Scripture and the liturgical calendar. It is enhanced by an iconographic program covering the church interior: mosaics or frescoes portraying significant events from Jesus’ life, with special focus on his birth and on his death and resurrection.
We are not a liturgical church, but we do observe the calendar a couple of times: at Advent and Christmas, and again at Good Friday and Easter Sunday.
Advent is about hope; this is especially so of this first Sunday. This ought to be a happy time of year, but so often it dissolves into stress and heartache, and is something quite different. For all the promise, we often experience disappointment and unmet expectations; a dissonance between what ought to be and what actually is. Dare we hope for a different outcome? Is there a “can be” beyond the disappointing “is”? Advent is about hope. It is about the possibility of moving from the “ought to be” through the “is” to the “can be.”
This year we will take all four Sundays of Advent to consider the events associated with the birth of Jesus. Our guide will be Matthew. His nativity story (Matthew 1-2) divides into four sections. A convenient way to think of these sections is as four questions about this child who is born. Who is he? He is Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. How was he born? Though born from Mary, he is conceived from the Holy Spirit. Where was he born? In Bethlehem. Whence came he? Out of Egypt to Nazareth. In each case this is in fulfillment of the Scriptures, stated five times by Matthew. These are the four questions we will address in this Advent series.
So, I start with the first question, Who IS this child? The text for this first section is Matthew 1:1-17, a genealogy. This does not look like promising material. What hope can there be here? I will spare you a reading of this genealogy with its 94 names and 39 begats. But Matthew considered it important to begin his gospel with this genealogy. He begins,
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (1:1 ESV)
Immediately we are back in the Old Testament with its many genealogies. Most of us find these Biblical genealogies boring and dull, so we skip over them. A genealogy is important for it establishes pedigree, legitimacy and inheritance.
Who is this child? He is Jesus Christ, or Jesus the Christ. Next week we’ll see why he is given the name Jesus. What is his pedigree and legitimacy? He is both the son of David and the son of Abraham. To understand Jesus, then, we have to understand David and Abraham.
This genealogy thrusts us into a story, into Israel’s story. Jesus was not Christian, he was Jewish. How then did we end up with the Aryan, blue-eyed, blond-haired Jesus that hangs on so many walls all around the world? Three weeks ago was the eightieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazi storm troopers ransacked Jewish businesses throughout Germany. In response to this outrage, Marc Chagall painted White Crucifixion, to remind the world that the Christ, in whose name the Nazis were persecuting the Jews, was himself not Aryan but Jewish.
Jesus was Jewish, and he was born into Israel’s story. Jesus must make sense within the Israel s
