A Cast of Nobodies

Matthew 1:1-17

April 24, 2016 • Mount Pleasant UMC

“Selfie” Intro Video

A while back, I heard a pastor suggest that every church ought to read through at least one Gospel every year together, and that was a suggestion that stuck with me. It makes sense. These Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—contain our defining story. What they tell us about Jesus ought to shape us like no other story. And so, for the next few weeks, we’re going to start that habit this year by walking together through the Gospel of Matthew. Not only will Pastor Rick and I be preaching through this Gospel, but we’re also inviting—or rather, asking—you to read along in the Gospel with us. We won’t be able to cover every passage on Sunday mornings; we’ll just be hitting the highlights and main themes, so we’re counting on you to do the suggested readings each week. We’ll be doing this reading, too, and together we will delve into what Matthew tells us about Jesus. But, as we begin, it might be helpful to know a little bit about this Gospel.

Matthew was written, most likely, sometime in the 60’s (not the 1960’s), but we don’t know for sure who wrote it. The Gospel itself is anonymous; you won’t find any line that says, “By Matthew.” It is because the early church ascribed this Gospel to Matthew, the disciple of Jesus, that we have historically believed he wrote it. Now, these words were written down probably in Israel and sent to Greek-speaking Jews. That is, Jews who were in danger of losing their identity, their unique self-understanding as God’s people. The Greek culture was threatening to change who they were, and that’s why Matthew’s Gospel is all about identity. Not only does he want the readers to know who Jesus is; he also wants the readers to understand who they are (or can be) as followers of Jesus. Matthew, in writing this Gospel, is trying to answer a question that’s as old as humanity: “Who am I?”

It’s a question we still spend lots and lots of time and energy today trying to answer. Much of our need for counseling and emotional support comes from our struggle to know who we really are. Am I defined by my economic status or my job? Am I defined by my religion or my gender? Am I defined by where my family is from or who I marry (cf. Card, Matthew: The Gospel of Identity, pg. 20)? Or, perhaps the biggest question that has taken over in our culture today: am I defined by how I look? We live in the age of the “selfie,” the obsessive need we have to post pictures of ourselves online, and while we try to act like that’s just the teenagers who do that, that it’s just a youth thing, I’m online. I’m friends with and followers of many of you, and I know, not pointing fingers, but I know and so do you that selfies are not “just a teen thing.” I’ve posted a selfie and so have many of you. Selfies have become one of the primary ways we communicate—and, more than that, they have also become a primary way we look for affirmation. Here’s what I’m getting at: take a listen to these “confessions of a teenager.”

VIDEO: “Confessions of a Teenager”

Now, while that video was all teens, that doesn’t mean the obsession with how we look is only a teen thing; you know in your heart it’s not. Studies report that women alone spend five hours a week taking selfies; a staggering one million selfies are taken each and every day. In their lifetimes, it’s estimated that Millennials (those between ages 18 and 34) will take 25,700 pictures of themselves (but only ten percent of the population admits to being addicted to selfies—can we say “denial”?). We are currently living in the most photo-documented generation ever. Selfies are huge, and one of the biggest reasons we take them (as we heard in the video) is for the “likes,” the affirmation, to somehow feel better about ourselves. So we’ve titled this trip through Matthew’s Gospel, “Death to Selfie,” because in these next few weeks, we want to learn to identify ourselves the way Jesus does rather than the way our culture does. I’ll warn you, though: this journey is not about “likes.” It will probably not be easy. As one author put it, “Only after we arrive at the end of our incomplete and false identities are we ready to receive the final and conclusive answer to the question of who we really are” (Card 20). So are you ready? Let’s let Matthew help us declare, “Death to Selfie.”

So, if you have your Bibles, turn with me to the very beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew chapter 1. We’re going to start where Matthew starts, and that’s with the genealogy of Jesus. Pretty exciting, huh? I mean, who doesn’t love a book that begins with a long list covering centuries of ancestors? All the best books start that way, right? Or maybe not. But Matthew does. He chooses to begin his account of Jesus’ life with a list of people who not only link Jesus to the Old Testament (which is why, historically, Matthew is put first in the New Testament, even though this Gospel wasn’t written first) but also tells us important things about who we are. So, let’s begin, shall we, with verse 1?

“This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of…” (Matthew 1:1-2). Wow, that’s really not that interesting, is it? Hmm. Tell you what—let’s try it this way.

VIDEO: “Matthew’s Begats” by Andrew Peterson

Okay, got all that? There will be a quiz next week! I’m willing to bet that, if you’ve read Matthew before, you tend to skip these verses and go straight to the birth of Jesus. I know I did for a long time! We wonder why these words were preserved; what’s the point? But Hebrew genealogies were not that unusual; if you read the Old Testament, you’ll come across quite a few. The book of 1 Chronicles begins with nine chapters of pretty much nothing but genealogy. Part of the reason for that is to show that history is important; God works in real history with real people (Kalas, Immersion Bible Studies: Matthew, pg. 11). Another reason for genealogies is to establish a link with someone important in the past. For instance, Matthew wants to make sure we know Jesus’ family is connected to both Abraham (the father of the Jewish people) and David (the greatest king of Israel).

What Matthew does, though, isn’t a strict genealogy. He is picky; he leaves out some people in order to make the lists of people even. By that I mean, his genealogy contains three groups of fourteen generations, all evenly spaced from Abraham to David, then from David to the Exile (when the people of Israel were conquered and taken away from their homeland) and then from the Exile to the birth of Jesus. To make it work, he has to leave out some generations, but there’s a point he’s making here. It’s three groups of fourteen, or it could be seen as six groups of seven (seven being the “perfect” number in Scripture), and Jesus is the beginning of the seventh seven. By this numbering, this reasoning, Matthew declares that Jesus is the one Israel has been waiting for; he is the climax of history. Everything that had been promised before, in all of history all the way back to Abraham, finds its fulfillment in Jesus (cf. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part One, pg. 3). Even in what appears to be just a list of names, Matthew is telling us something about Jesus.

A second thing to notice about this genealogy: there are women here! We may not notice that as unusual, but in the first century, in a world where women couldn’t inherit property, couldn’t give testimony in a court of law, a world where a woman basically had no legal rights and was seen as less a person and more as property, this inclusion is downright scandalous. Every day, a good, orthodox Jewish man would thank God he had not been born a slave, a Gentile or a woman. But Matthew dares to include women in the genealogy of Jesus (Green, Matthew for Today, pg. 39; cf. Kalas 11). And not just any women! Listen to who he included. Tamar (1:3) dressed up as a prostitute and tricked her father-in-law into getting her pregnant. Rahab (1:5) was actually a prostitute from pagan Jericho who helped the Jewish spies scout her city; she was saved from the attack on the city because of her help. Ruth (1:5) was not a Jew; she was from Moab, a nation of people who were forbidden to ever enter the assembly of the Lord, according to Deuteronomy. And Bathsheba, who here is only identified as “Uriah’s wife” (1:6), was seduced by King David, became pregnant out of their affair, and married David after he had her husband killed. Four women in the genealogy—not all women of ill repute, as is sometimes said, but not people you would normally brag about at your family gatherings (Green 39). These are the folks who you might not talk about or invite to your reunions.

Then, at the end, is a fifth woman: Mary, wife of Joseph, mother of Jesus. Now, Christians would then and do now recognize Mary as a model of purity and holiness, but the rest of the first-century world did not. Some had spread the rumor that Jesus was the result of an affair between Mary and a Roman soldier. Some just said he was the son of Mary and Joseph, that they had slept together before they were legally married (Green 39). To some people in the first century, Mary fits right in with these other four. She wasn’t any more honorable than the rest of them. Why would Matthew include these women? Wouldn’t it be better to just ignore their stories and hope no one noticed? After all, women were not usually included in genealogies. But Matthew intentionally includes them, going out of his way to include their names, at the very least to highlight what will become more evident in his Gospel: women are welcome, too. Jesus is a life in whom all are welcome. And I think there’s another, bigger reason they are there, but we’ll come back to that in a few moments.

One other thing, though, I want you to notice about the actual genealogy: this is by and large a cast of nobodies. This is, for the most part, a group of names that most people don’t know. Sure, everyone knew of Abraham, and David. Some knew of Josiah and Hezekiah, but especially when you get down to the part from the Exile to Jesus, there are a bunch of names that don’t register with us and probably didn’t register with most people even when Matthew was writing. Azor, Akim, Matthan…nothing else there except a name. Nobodies, as far as we know. And then there’s the way the story continues past the genealogy. Read on into the first part of the Gospel, which you will have the chance to do this week, and you’ll notice some other strange things—like unnamed Magi showing up and asking to see a baby king. Magi, or wise men as we usually call them, were powerful and important people in their own culture. They probably came from somewhere in the area of what is today Iran or Iraq, and they would have been astrologers, possibly even magicians, following the teachings of Zoroastrianism. Yet they are the ones who come seeking the newborn king of the Jews. Something in their studies had alerted them to this birth, they followed a star, they got further directions from King Herod, and they travel to a house in Bethlehem where they bow down in front of a child who is by now a toddler. We don’t know how many of them they were; we only assume three because there are three gifts listed. We don’t know their names, though names were created for them somewhere in the 500’s. They are, in Matthew’s telling of the story, nobodies when compared to Jesus.

Here’s Matthew’s point at the beginning: Jesus is the climax of history. He is the one toward whom all of history has been moving. And compared to him, the ones the world considers to be rich or powerful or important are nobody. But Matthew is also telling us something else: nobodies are exactly who Jesus came to find. He came to draw the rich and the powerful and the lowly and the downcast. He came to find the ones who are discounted and the ones who think they count too much. He came out of a line of kings and misfits, of travelers and wicked men, of prostitutes and preachers. You think your family is a mess? You think your family has problems? Then, find hope here in Jesus’ family because his family tree has all sorts of twisted branches. And so the bigger reason these names here is this: Matthew is painting a  picture of grace. There is no one who is ultimately a nobody in Jesus’ eyes. Rich or poor. Important or unnoticed. Somebody or nobody. All are welcome. All are wanted. All are loved. All that is required is for us to define who we are in relation to him—no one and nothing else will do. We are who he says we are, not who the world says we are—and no amount of “likes” can change who he says he are. We are children of God and recipients of grace.

We like it when grace is offered to us. We like it that the “nobodies” are welcomed, especially when we’re feeling like a nobody. That’s a good message; it makes us feel good. But the other side of this welcome, this genealogy, is this: the call is for us to become people of grace as well, those who welcome the nobody, the stranger, the prostitute and the leper. If we are to define ourselves in relation to Jesus, then the question we have to ask ourselves is this: am I person of grace? That’s this week’s “selfie” question: are you, am I, a person of grace, one who welcomes the outcast, the stranger, the nobody? Later in the Gospel, Matthew will return to this theme when he tells us about Jesus welcoming children (nobodies in their world): “Whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (18:4). And again, Matthew will echo this theme as he tells us what Jesus said about the last judgment: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (25:40). Jesus is among the nobodies, offering them grace. So…am I a person of grace?

Now, we need to remember that “welcoming” someone is not the same as telling them that the way they live is okay. I’ve heard Max Lucado say (though I don’t think it’s original with him) that Jesus loves you so much he’ll welcome you as you are, but he loves you too much to leave you that way. All are invited to come to Jesus, just as all are invited to come to church. But when we encounter Jesus, when we truly encounter him, we can’t help but leave changed. Being “welcomed” is only the first step in our lifelong journey of transformation, of discipleship, of grace. When we truly encounter Jesus, we will be changed. And we get that confused sometimes. In just a couple of weeks, our church’s General Conference will be meeting out in Portland, Oregon; there’s a prayer guide for you in your bulletins this morning in order to help us better pray especially for those who will be there representing Indiana. As I wrote in this month’s “Circuit Reader,” you’re going to hear a lot of—probably mostly negative—press coming out of Portland about the United Methodist Church, and there are bound to be some fights and arguments about what it means to “welcome” everyone in the church. Some believe that welcoming “all” means we therefore condone whatever their lifestyle is; others believe that Jesus calls us to a higher way of life, a denial of ourselves (as he will say in Matthew chapter 16) for the sake of a higher goal. I don’t believe much if anything will change at General Conference, but as I tried to say in my pastor’s article this month, we need to be prayerful, and I’m especially praying that somehow, by some act of God, the works of mercy and grace that come out of our church might shine brighter in the press than the fights and squabbles and arguments that seem to get noticed. The question we ought to be dealing with is how we can be people of grace toward those we disagree with?

I’ve learned much about being a person of grace by experiencing grace myself. Not nearly on the level of a worldwide event like General Conference, I’ve experienced grace over and over again in my own life. I experienced grace when Jesus saved me. I experienced grace when Cathy married me, because she is certainly better than I deserve! I’ve experienced grace countless times when I’ve lost my cool with my kids and others. I experience grace every time I step in the pulpit, and you show up, thinking I have something to offer even thought I’m just one beggar trying to help another beggar find bread. But there is one time in particular where I experienced grace in a way I had not before that time, and it ties into the song that the women’s ensemble is going to sing in a few minutes. The experience, without going into a lot of detail, involved a big misunderstanding between a very good friend of mine and me. We both said things we should not have said, and we both broke promises we should not have broken. I was frustrated and I was angry, and I remember that last phone conversation where I said something hurtful and hung up. You know how you do that, thinking you’ve gotten the last word. So I fumed around at home for a while, and then my phone beeped, telling me I had a text. I went to pick it up and saw that it was my friend, the one I had hung up on. I can’t tell you the exact wording of the text, but it said something like this: “I’m sorry. Can you forgive me? I still want you to be my friend.” That simple text message, that act of grace, broke me, and I don’t remember what I wrote back, but I do remember needing to go somewhere (probably to a church meeting) that evening, and I got in the car and put the iPhone on random music. And, sure enough, the song that popped up was this one, the one our women’s ensemble is coming to sing for you now.

SONG: “There is Nothing Greater Than Grace”

Truly, there is nothing greater than grace. Grace that lets a prostitute and an foreigner into the lineage of the savior of the world. Grace that causes a young carpenter to move ahead with plans to marry a young woman who is carrying a baby that is not his. Grace that causes the somebodies of the world to become nobodies and the nobodies to become somebodies. Grace that transforms you and me and the person sitting next to you into people of grace. Our identity cannot be found in the world, or in the mirror, or on social media. Our identity, Matthew says, must be found in Jesus, the one who is grace embodied, the one whose very family tree asks us: am I a person of grace? Let’s pray.