If you were writing your own genealogy, if you were recording your ancestry for posterity sake, who would you include? You can't includer everyone, after all, especially if you are going to go back 2000 years. Certainly, you would give the highlight, the big characters; you'd want to record those who shed light on who you are. Well, this Advent we are looking together at the women who are mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus in very beginning of Matthew, the very beginning of the New Testament. And these women show up the depth and breadth of the scandalous mercy of God. We don't have Rebecca or Leah or Rachael, nope, instead we start with Tamar. Tamar and Judah's story is unquestionably one of the more scandalous stories in the Bible, but, after all, we are dealing with a God who comes to bring us his scandalous mercy in Jesus.