Sermon Tone Analysis

Two weeks ago, we lit the candle of HOPE.

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We are trusting God to realize our deepest hope … our waiting is a sign of our trust.

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[light 1st candle]

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Last week, we lit the candle of PEACE.

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We are trusting God to bring peace …shalom, wholeness.

And we accept that we are invited to participate in this peace-making even as we long for the full peace that only Jesus can bring when He comes to make all things new.

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[light 2nd candle]

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This week, we light the candle of LOVE.

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We are borrowing words from Kate Bowler to help us express what waiting for LOVE feels like this Advent

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God, we are waiting for love,

not the simple kind or the sweep-you-off-your-feet kind,

but the absurd kind.

The kind wrapped in rags,

resting in a bucket of animal feed.

Love enough to save us all.

Blessed are we who look for Love

deeper, fuller, truer-than we have ever known,

than we could have ever hoped for.

Blessed are we who seek you,

the light that dawned so long ago

in that dark stable.

Love given.

Love received.

Receive this gift, dear one(s).

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Love has come [and is coming] for you.

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[light 3rd candle as O Come O Come Emmanuel begins]

Love that Journeys Matthew 1:1-17

Journey.

What does that word evoke for you?

Do you think of packing up?

Of planning a route?

Or perhaps of choosing a destination?

Or perhaps, you think of the exhausting and/or exciting act of travel.

Of seeing new places.

Of tasting new flavours.

Of diving into history or culture.

Journey.

Keep that word with you as we engage our text.

Today begins our journey through the gospel of Matthew.

If you’ve been tracking with us at SWCC for any length of time, you may have noticed that from Christmas or early January, we tend to focus in on one of the four gospels, immersing ourselves in the life and teaching of Jesus all the way through the story of his death and resurrection at Easter.

This year is no different and our guide will be the first book of the New Testament, which we usually call Matthew or the Gospel according to Matthew.

We’ll take our time introducing ourselves to this gospel in January, but in some ways, these first couple of passages that we’ll look at this week and next will ground us for the rest of our journey.

So, what should we know before we embark?

Matthew cares about continuity.

He wants his readers to see connections.

Matthew is writing to people who are familiar with and steeped in the story of Israel.

He is showing his readers right from the start of his gospel that Jesus is the goal and climax of Israel’s history.

And he’s assuming that his readers know this history and know the stories behind names and references.

Now, family trees might be your thing.

Or maybe they put you to sleep.

But either way, a genealogy of who begat whom doesn’t typically make for exciting reading.

However, there are people named in this text who you may know the stories of.

There are also people in this text whose presence there may surprise you.

And then there are also some names that as you listen to Joyce read, you will simply say a quiet prayer of “thank you God that Andrea didn’t ask me to read today.”

But listen carefully.

Notice what seems recognizable - and let Matthew direct us to see how the story of Israel that we’ve been tracing throughout the fall is connected to the arrival of Jesus the Messiah.

As Joyce comes, will you stand for the reading of God’s Word?

How can we make sense of such a list?

Let’s zoom in on the opening the closing and then we’ll take a few minutes to look at some of the bits in between.

The (most important to Matthew) ancestors… are David & Abraham.

In the very first verse, Matthew shows us his cards, as it were.

He cares about continuity.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus the Messiah.

Christ meaning “the anointed One” … And this anointed One has been long awaited.

Going back to the promises that David’s son would reign forever and ever.

And going way way back to the promises made to Abraham that through him a great nation would come about and that through that nation all the nations of the world would be blessed.

Remember, Matthew is assuming a certain level of knowledge among his readers… they are likely to know that the Messiah, the Chosen One, the anointed One is not God doing something brand new, but in continuity with David and with Abraham.

The First Nations version has such a lovely way of translating names.

They gave Matthew 1:1 like this...

Matthew 1:1 (FNV)

1 Here is the record of the ancestry of Creator Sets Free (Jesus) the Chosen One, a descendant of Much Loved One (David) and of Father of Many Nations (Abraham).

So, right from the beginning, we can see that the Creator who loves deeply and broadly is doing something new…but not something unrelated to all that has led up to this point.

To help us grasp this list, Matthew also is using 14 generations between important milestones in the story is Israel.

First from Abraham to David, then from David to the exile, and then from the exile to the Christ.

The “chapters” of ancestry:

Matthew 1:17 (FNV)

17 And so there were fourteen generations from Father of Many Nations Abraham to Much Loved One David, fourteen more generations from Much Loved One David until the removal to Village of Confusion Babylon, and then fourteen more from the removal to Creator Sets Free Jesus, the Chosen One.

The “chapters” of ancestry:

First from Abraham to David, then from David to the exile - a time of great loss and confusion - and then from the exile to the Christ.

The “chapters” of ancestry help us grasp the movement more broadly.

The time from Abraham to David was a building time with an upward trajectory.

The time from David to exile was not an upward trajectory.

It was an unravelling of the story of Israel.

And then from exile to the Christ, there is a building tension that out of all this destruction and threatened identity, God is promising to bring Messiah.

A slow and hard to father upward trajectory.

The names in between… so drab, so hard to pronounce, so skip-able that you might not notice… there in the midst of a patrilineal ancestry, are WOMEN.

But also, not the women you might expect to be included.

Sarah.

Rebekah.

Leah.

Rachel.

These are the women we might expect to find here if women were included.

But that’s not who we get.

Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba.

Now, what do these four women have in common?

They are Gentiles.

Tamar & Rahab are Canaanites.

Ruth is a Moabite.

And though Bathsheba’s ethnic origins are not clearly stated, she is named here as the wife of Uriah which brings to mind that Uriah was usually referred to as “Uriah the Hittite.”