A Reflection on Matthew 1 and Luke 3: The Genealogies
By Brother David
Over the altar in our temple of Holy Wisdom is a Cross in a circle surrounded by a band. When I first saw it I was stunned: it’s a double helix. I frequently take a moment to go and contemplate this figure, this strand of DNA, to reinforce the essential truth and necessity of the Christ’s humanity and the central truth and necessity of the Cross. But there can be the tendency to restrict Christ’s humanity as if he exists in some kind of vacuum contained in divinity – that he is so unique as to be separate. And yet the Gospels, by presenting the genealogies of Jesus, forcefully remind and teach us that this is not so.
The eternal Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, becomes flesh in a context. The Anointed One of God becomes matter and spirit. He carries DNA from all of his ancestors, and he has a lineage. He enters into time and even more important, he enters into history. Families carry stories about themselves and their people: what does it mean to be Irish, Ukrainian, Iranian, Jewish? What did this or that ancestor do, and how does that influence a given identity within the family? My father once told me how we are related to Franz Josef, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Jesus is also a descendant of kings, notably King David, but also a descendent of scoundrels, notably King David. As a Jew, he was a son of Abraham; as a human, he was a son of Adam.
Like all of us, Jesus also had a culture that included certain politico-religious sensibilities; he also belonged to a specific socioeconomic class. He had to deal with Pharisees and Sadducees of Jerusalem as well as pagans from Rome. He had to deal with the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the physically, mentally, and spiritually sick as well as the healthy.
We have similar issues: what does it mean to be Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist? What does it mean to be rich, poor, middle class? To be a doctor, a blue collar worker, unemployed? What does it mean to have cancer, AIDS, alcohol or drug addiction, depression or schizophrenia, or despair? Or to deal with such people? And, from a given cultural, politico-religious, and socioeconomic position, what does it mean to deal with people different from us – and the same as us?
Jesus had to deal with sex, sexuality, sexual mores, sexual attitudes. He had to deal with politics and issues around authority both religious and secular. He had to deal with living in an occupied country. He had to deal with the religion, spirituality, and superstition of his day.
We also have to deal with sex, sexuality, and sexual mores, and with religious and secular authority issues. We also have to deal with living in a world occupied by violence, racism, sexism, and in a global society rife with sectarianism, atheism, and superstition.
Jesus also had to deal with the geography and weather of his time and place — and we know, given recent events, how important and shaping those can be.
Jesus came out of a family system which was – like any family – somewhat and to some extent dysfunctional (and this we know only because every family is somewhat and to some extent dysfunctional – the longer you live with people, the more the crazy comes out). Jesus’ mother and brothers even think that he is crazy at one point (Mark 3) and go to collect him – possibly because he was seen as an embarrassment and his behavior reflected badly on the family.
We, too, have come out of our families, which are or were more or less functional. Some people have managed to flourish and grow because of or in spite of their families, even as others have barely survived similar situations.
But perhaps it is exactly Jesus’ experience of his family and his take on what family and other relationships in general are about that bespeak the message of the genealogies. In the synoptic gospels, when Jesus is told that his mother and brothers are there to see him, he answers in each instance that his mother and his brothers are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Again, when the 12-year-old Jesus is found in the temple, he asks if his parents did not know that he would be about his father’s business (much to Mary and Joseph’s chagrin and confusion). And once more, from the Cross, Jesus commends his mother to his disciple’s care with the words “Here is your son” and “Here is your mother.” (John 19:26–27)
When Jesus refers to himself as Son of Man (Hebrew ben-‘adam, son of Adam), I believe that he did so in the sentiment of the Roman writer Terence: “I am human and consider nothing human as alien to me.” This is why Jesus could touch a leper, forgive an adulteress, speak to a woman (a Samaritan, no less), grant the request of a Roman soldier, pray for his executioners, guarantee salvation to a criminal: he contains them all; nothing human is alien to him.
As St Paul says: “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (Colossians 3:11) Perhaps even more to the point: “So, in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28) Jesus, the Anointed One of God, has not merely transcended his history, his family, his society, his context. Rather, he has become the context within which we in our humanity find meaning.
And our meaning is to transcend our context as well and by our embrace of the Cross through faith in Jesus, the Christ of God, and our living the life of Love as exemplified in the life of Love himself, to become the context for our times: to forgive, to heal, to feed, to thirst for justice and holiness, and to draw living water from the well that is Christ to water the earth.
And, like Jesus, we, too, are called to be more than sons and daughters of Adam. Rather, we are called to become the new Adam and so, like Jesus, to fulfill the genealogy by recognizing that we, too, like Jesus, are sons and daughters of God.
Over the altar in our temple of Holy Wisdom is a Cross in a circle surrounded by a band. When I first saw it I was stunned: it’s a double helix. I frequently take a moment to go and contemplate this figure, this strand of DNA, to reinforce the essential truth and necessity of the Christ’s humanity and the central truth and necessity of the Cross. But there can be the tendency to restrict Christ’s humanity as if he exists in some kind of vacuum contained in divinity – that he is so unique as to be separate. And yet the Gospels, by presenting the genealogies of Jesus, forcefully remind and teach us that this is not so.
The eternal Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, becomes flesh in a context. The Anointed One of God becomes matter and spirit. He carries DNA from all of his ancestors, and he has a lineage. He enters into time and even more important, he enters into history. Families carry stories about themselves and their people: what does it mean to be Irish, Ukrainian, Iranian, Jewish? What did this or that ancestor do, and how does that influence a given identity within the family? My father once told me how we are related to Franz Josef, Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Jesus is also a descendant of kings, notably King David, but also a descendent of scoundrels, notably King David. As a Jew, he was a son of Abraham; as a human, he was a son of Adam.
Like all of us, Jesus also had a culture that included certain politico-religious sensibilities; he also belonged to a specific socioeconomic class. He had to deal with Pharisees and Sadducees of Jerusalem as well as pagans from Rome. He had to deal with the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the physically, mentally, and spiritually sick as well as the healthy.
We have similar issues: what does it mean to be Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist? What does it mean to be rich, poor, middle class? To be a doctor, a blue collar worker, unemployed? What does it mean to have cancer, AIDS, alcohol or drug addiction, depression or schizophrenia, or despair? Or to deal with such people? And, from a given cultural, politico-religious, and socioeconomic position, what does it mean to deal with people different from us – and the same as us?
Jesus had to deal with sex, sexuality, sexual mores, sexual attitudes. He had to deal with politics and issues around authority both religious and secular. He had to deal with living in an occupied country. He had to deal with the religion, spirituality, and superstition of his day.
We also have to deal with sex, sexuality, and sexual mores, and with religious and secular authority issues. We also have to deal with living in a world occupied by violence, racism, sexism, and in a global society rife with sectarianism, atheism, and superstition.
Jesus also had to deal with the geography and weather of his time and place — and we know, given recent events, how important and shaping those can be.
Jesus came out of a family system which was – like any family – somewhat and to some extent dysfunctional (and this we know only because every family is somewhat and to some extent dysfunctional – the longer you live with people, the more the crazy comes out). Jesus’ mother and brothers even think that he is crazy at one point (Mark 3) and go to collect him – possibly because he was seen as an embarrassment and his behavior reflected badly on the family.
We, too, have come out of our families, which are or were more or less functional. Some people have managed to flourish and grow because of or in spite of their families, even as others have barely survived similar situations.
But perhaps it is exactly Jesus’ experience of his family and his take on what family and other relationships in general are about that bespeak the message of the genealogies. In the synoptic gospels, when Jesus is told that his mother and brothers are there to see him, he answers in each instance that his mother and his brothers are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Again, when the 12-year-old Jesus is found in the temple, he asks if his parents did not know that he would be about his father’s business (much to Mary and Joseph’s chagrin and confusion). And once more, from the Cross, Jesus commends his mother to his disciple’s care with the words “Here is your son” and “Here is your mother.” (John 19:26–27)
When Jesus refers to himself as Son of Man (Hebrew ben-‘adam, son of Adam), I believe that he did so in the sentiment of the Roman writer Terence: “I am human and consider nothing human as alien to me.” This is why Jesus could touch a leper, forgive an adulteress, speak to a woman (a Samaritan, no less), grant the request of a Roman soldier, pray for his executioners, guarantee salvation to a criminal: he contains them all; nothing human is alien to him.
As St Paul says: “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (Colossians 3:11) Perhaps even more to the point: “So, in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28) Jesus, the Anointed One of God, has not merely transcended his history, his family, his society, his context. Rather, he has become the context within which we in our humanity find meaning.
And our meaning is to transcend our context as well and by our embrace of the Cross through faith in Jesus, the Christ of God, and our living the life of Love as exemplified in the life of Love himself, to become the context for our times: to forgive, to heal, to feed, to thirst for justice and holiness, and to draw living water from the well that is Christ to water the earth.
And, like Jesus, we, too, are called to be more than sons and daughters of Adam. Rather, we are called to become the new Adam and so, like Jesus, to fulfill the genealogy by recognizing that we, too, like Jesus, are sons and daughters of God.
