Word to the Wise
Saturday, December 17, 2016 -
[Genesis 49:2, 8-10 and Matthew 1:1-17]The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.....[Genesis]
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2016 DECEMBER 17 IN THE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS
[Genesis 49: 2, 8-10 and Matthew 1:1-17]
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.....[Genesis]
The lectionary begins a kind of "countdown" before Christmas, with the days literally labeled by the date rather than the day of the week. It's a kind of "Octave BEFORE Christmas," even though we are still in Advent. The sequence begins with a gospel passage that strikes terror into the one who must read it at Mass, and glazes the eyes of the simple misalet reader - the genealogy of Jesus. All those multi-syllabic names are hard to digest. But nothing goes to waste in the gospels and the genealogy has an important purpose. It situates Jesus in the broad narrative of Jewish history and gives him impeccable credentials. Genealogy buffs beware, this genealogy has gaps in it and is not the sort of thing you get from Ancestry.com. Matthew is telling a story or preaching a truth, and that sort of detail is not intended.
What IS intended is that Jesus is from the ancestral line of Abraham and David. The latter connection is mentioned in both Matthew and Luke in the stories of the announcement to Mary (Luke) and Joseph (Matthew). The early Christian community saw right away a connection for Jesus with the passage from Genesis and the prominence of the tribe of Judah, David's tribe.
So, now that we begin the liturgical countdown to Christmas, we have been given more than we probably needed to know about Jesus' human ancestry. But it is important to know that Jesus has a history in human time, even if he is eternal. AMEN