by Everett Patterson
by Shijun Munns
Matthew 1:1-17
1 An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, 3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, 4 and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, 5 and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, 6 and Jesse the father of King David.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, 7 and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, 8 and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, 9 and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, 10 and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, 11 and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
12 And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, 13 and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, 14 and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, 15 and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
* * *
John 1:1-18
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
A ‘cutting’ of tree wisdom (Genny Tunbridge)
Over Christmas, when I mentioned I was interested in tree wisdom, a friend pointed me to an essay on trees by Hermann Hesse (German-born Swiss poet, novelist and Nobel Laureate, 1877–1962). She said it was “one of those bits of writing that can set your life off in a whole new direction”. The following paragraphs, at the heart of the short piece, speak to today’s theme of beginnings, ancestors and divine calling into being.
"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labour is holy. Out of this trust I live.” [1]
Introduction to the theme (Al Barrett)
So we begin again! A new calendar year, remembering that just a year ago we couldn’t possibly have imagined what 2020 would bring. I’m guessing most of us are carrying a complex mix of emotions at the moment. There might be a little bit of tentative, cautious optimism, that 2021 can’t possibly be any worse than 2020, and might even, in some ways at least, be a bit better. In that caution, there might well also be some deep anxieties about the challenges that lie ahead – personal, local, national and global – many of which seem very present in the news headlines right now. And alongside both of these, for many of us there will still be a profound weariness and exhaustion from what the last year has brought, personal and collective grief and trauma that we’ve barely begun to deal with as yet.
And in the midst of all of that, we’ve had to discover a very different way of ‘doing church’ – which has presented us all with challenges, but has also offered us plenty of unexpected gifts along the way.
From July to December last year, we began a journey ‘together, apart’, that we’ve been calling ‘Trees of Life’. In the midst of COVID19, a time of crisis, profound change, and our physical separation from each other, we started by reflecting together on the ways in which we’ve, nevertheless, been growing: spiritually (our ‘roots’), communally (our shared ‘trunk’), missionally (our outward-reaching ‘branches’), evangelistically (the ‘leaves’ of story, hope and healing), and in the fruit of the Kingdom (‘seeking justice, loving with kindness, walking humbly with God’). And over the months that followed, we explored some of the stories and ‘Big Story’ of the Hebrew bible (what we often call ‘the Old Testament’), meeting the God who created our amazing, complex, interconnected world; who meets us where we are, and calls us to journey together; who grieves in our hiding and hypocrisy, disconnection and division, injustice and exploitation; who liberates us from slavery, makes her home with us in exile, and calls us back to himself in repentance and reconnection, justice and joy.
And all of that before the arrival of Jesus.
As we begin this new year, then, we begin a new chapter in the Story – but it is the same Story, continuing. The main reason some of us resist using the term ‘Old Testament’ is that with Jesus there is no supersedingwhat went before, no abandoning of ‘the Story so far’ as now redundant. Yes, in Jesus God is doing a ‘new thing’ – but it is the same God who journeyed with Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, Moses and the prophets, the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the exiles in Babylon. God’s hesed – faithful love – remains constant. God’s promise to Abraham – that through him all peoples would be blessed – still stands. The coming kingdom, where all creation lives in peace and harmony, and a little child leads the way, is a Jewishvision, a Jewish longing. And it is into that vision, that longing, that Jesus is born.
The technical, theological word that is used for Jesus’ birth is ‘the incarnation’. It simply means ‘becoming flesh’. This week’s reading from John’s gospel tells us, in soaring, poetic language, that when God spoke the universe into being (it’s no coincidence that ‘in the beginning’ is how John begins his gospel, and how the book of Genesis began too), that speaking is literally ‘fleshed out’ in the particular human being called Jesus of Nazareth. The creative power of the cosmos (the Greek word for ‘universe’), entangled in the creation of all things, ‘became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood’, as the Message version of John’s gospel puts it (John 1:14).
But what kind of ‘flesh and blood’ human being is Jesus? That is what we’ll be exploring more deeply over the next few months – at least up until Pentecost, and probably well beyond! If Jesus is God’s creative speaking – God’s ‘Word’ – made flesh and blood, then as we encounter the human person Jesus, what are we discovering about God? If Jesus is, as Christians affirm, the flesh-and-blood embodiment of the Jewish hopes and longings for the coming kingdom, then what do we Christians do with that unavoidable ‘reality check’, as our Jewish siblings will insistently remind us, between the world as it is today and the new creation that God promises to bring into being?
There’s much more to be said about all of this in the coming weeks. For today, let’s just attend to one or two little details. In Matthew’s ‘genealogy’ (the ‘family tree’) of Jesus, we can see plenty of names of ‘the great and the good’ of the Hebrew bible: Abraham, Jacob (Israel), Judah, David, Solomon and Hezekiah (the ‘good king’ we encountered briefly at the latter end of the book of Isaiah). But unusually for Matthew’s Jewish world, this genealogy also mentions four women – and Gentiles too. There is Tamar (a Canaanite, childless widow, who dresses as a prostitute as the only way to produce a son for her dead husband), Rahab (a Canaanite prostitute, who collaborates with the Israelite spies), Ruth (a Moabite, who sleeps with Boaz to secure a future for her mother-in-law Naomi and herself), and Bathsheba (who King David ‘took’, murdering her husband Uriah in the process). There is violence – patriarchal violence – in the stories of these women, and courageous survival and solidarity too. These are Jesus’ ancestors, crucial roots in his family tree – ‘unsung heroes’ from the edges of power, from the edges of the Story. These women, Matthew hints, make critical contributions to making him who he is to become.
And yet, as we glimpsed already in our readings during Advent, a key part of the ‘new thing’ that is Jesus’ birth, is that while honouring the illustrious and courageous men and women of this genealogy, Matthew also makes it clear that it is Mary, and not Joseph, who is Jesus’ biological parent. Mary, another unknown outsider, with no ancestry worth shouting about. And Jesus, God’s-creative-speaking-made-flesh, born ‘not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God’ (John 1:13). What we’ve ended up calling the ‘virgin birth’, is much less about insisting that we must believe in a biological impossibility, and much more about the beginnings of a new kind of family, the ‘beloved community’ of those who are God’s children not biologically, but out of God’s overflowing love for her creation.
Reflection: ‘In the beginning…’ (Sally Nash)
What a contrast our two passages are! One a list of names, the other full of poetic concepts. But they are both about the beginning, they just conceive the beginning in different ways.
If I am honest, I tend to skim read the passage from Matthew as a list of names doesn’t grab my attention – unless I am looking at the Spurs line up! But when I start to look at what commentators say about the passage, I see that I may have been missing some riches.
In the beginning, God created the world in six days and on the seventh he rested. In the Bible seven is a significant number and in offering us three lots of fourteen generations – six lots of seven, those reading Matthew would realise that they were in the seventh generation, the seventh seven when the Messiah was coming, with the hope of a time of justice and peace. Thus, the genealogy would have evoked hope to those who heard it.
At the beginning of a new year and a new phase of our studies together, let’s remember that the story of Jesus is shrouded in hope, a hope for us to hold on to.
The Greek Matthew uses at the beginning of his genealogy contains a form of the word genesis, echoes of the first book of the Bible and in essence, Matthew goes through the some of the key figures of the Hebrew Bible and helps us to begin the gospel with a grasp of what has gone before and a reminder that God has a purpose and a story and that this is the next chapter in it. The Messiah was going to come from the House of David, Matthew shows us how.
We also have a few women in the list, largely women whose stories are challenging to read, whether outcasts like Ruth a Moabite, or a prostitute like Rahab or Tamar both the sister-in-law and mother of Perez, they are not the sort of role models that one might expect perhaps – until we get to Mary. And by mentioning Bathsheba Matthew brings back to our attention the indefensible act of King David in sending her husband Uriah to his death so he could have her. What is encouraging about this is that to play our part in the story of Jesus we don’t have to be perfect, we can come with our flaws, our imperfections, our difficult histories, and be part of the story of Jesus today.
It is likely that Ruth, Rahab, Tamar and Bathsheba were gentiles so in the genealogy we begin to understand that the message of Jesus is for all nations and that all can play their part in the story.
What the genealogy also communicates is that the Messiah isn’t going to be the warrior King type of person they were perhaps hoping for who might come in and kick out the Romans and restore Jerusalem, rebuild the Temple and rule! That challenges us to think about power, Jesus comes as a different sort of King, a baby! How precarious does that sound, even now let alone 2000 years ago without an NHS! That encourages me to look for God in unexpected places, see God through unexpected people, doing unexpected things.
* * *
John 1 is my favourite passage from any of the gospels. There are two things I want to highlight from it, the first is that Jesus is the light of the world and the second that God in Jesus moved into the neighbourhood.
I sat alone in church last month signing the Christmas cards, I was so tempted to light the advent candles – I would only have lit three – it would have been much too naughty to light them all! Candles are so evocative, the light, often light in darkness, the flickering, the vulnerability, the memories perhaps of birthday cakes as a child. Candles can be a symbol of so many different things.
I read this about candles and it evokes some of the thoughts that swirl around my head when I read these very familiar verses:
Being light in the darkness is what candles symbolize.
They are far more than seasonal decorations.
They are candles of hope in the midst of despair
Candles of peace in places of discord and violence
Candles of joy where there is sadness
Candles of courage to ease all fear
Candles of love in the presence of hatred.
I then think about Jesus, the bringing of hope, peace, joy, courage and love. And remember that this passage says he moves into the neighbourhood. One of my friends, Debs, wrote this story based around this verse but bringing it up to date
As Stavros edged out of the Athenia storeroom, he jumped, and screeched considerably higher than a man of his stature might have been expected to, nearly smashing the stack of plates he was carrying.
'Oh God! What are you doing here?'
'I moved into the neighbourhood Stavros, hadn't you heard?'
Stavros had heard. 'Well yeah, the lunchtime crowd were all talking about you. But I didn't know what to think... and I definitely didn't expect to see you here...' God raised an eyebrow, 'Not that I'm not pleased - I really am.' Stavros blinked.
'What's the story with all the plates?' God asked. 'Christmas dinner, innit?' Stavros replied, 'The foodbank are using here as the place to do Christmas dinner tomorrow, I'm getting out extra plates and all that. If you're staying, you can fold those napkins.' God reached over for a pile of holly-covered napkins and carefully started turning them into swans and lotuses.
Stavros watched, remembering a warm feeling from a long time ago. 'It's so good you're here. It'll make such a difference to people.' God laughed,
'Nope, I don't think so. You and the foodbank and a few others are already doing that...'
Stavros smiled. 'Shall I get us some food? Lily made taramasolata this morning.' 'Mmmm. With pitta and olives?' 'There's leftover stuffed vine leaves too.' 'Lovely. Have they got enough food for tomorrow? I could always do the loaves and fishes thing.' Stavros looked up from counting cutlery, 'Nah, there's plenty of food, you take it easy.' 'Perfect.' Said God.
* * *
When I read John 1, I am reminded that Jesus moved into the neighbourhood but that he is no longer here but we are and like Stavros in Debs’ story, we are the ones who need to do the work of Jesus in our areas. We will learn over the coming months more about what those works are as we revisit the stories of Jesus and explore what they might mean for us today.
But perhaps two thoughts to begin with from this passage:
If we want to know what God is like then we look at Jesus – it may perhaps help us vanquish some of the negative ideas we carry with us about God the Father from our childhoods or other experiences.
Jesus was full of grace, how much better might the world be if we acted in a gracious way with each other.
Two very different beginnings, and as we think about the beginning of our journey with Jesus over these coming months let’s remember the hope, the promises, the light and the grace. I finish with a blessing that draws on the imagery from John 1.
A Blessing (Dave Hopwood)
Lord, you have called us and brought light into our lives. And now you ask us to be your light in the continuing darkness. At times we may be like a small, fragile, flickering candle, at times a bright strong, beam of light… Help us this coming week to let your light shine through us in our words and our actions, in our attitudes and relationships. With our hands, our faces, our feet and our smiles. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Reflection: ‘God becomes human’ (Paul Nash)
God becomes human.
What a crazy statement! This is what “The Word (Greek word Logos) becomes flesh” refers to, Jesus, the living Word from Heaven coming to Earth. When the Old Testament law did not seem to be the perfect needful connector between God and humanity, something more drastic, more sacrificial, was called for. God becoming flesh and blood. This is what we mean by, Word because flesh, the Incarnation, God becoming human.
Some of the redeeming features of Covid-19, are the lessons we would not have learnt so effectively without restrictions. The normative understanding of the Jesus becoming flesh, Incarnational, is that it is understand as a passive presence. The Incarnation that Jesus modelled was interventional. After the resent initial intervention of our Christmas celebration of being born, Jesus intervened in people’s lives; “come, go, come down”, healing and forgiving without asking, turning tables, willing to be crucified, resurrected, ascending. We do not have a passive saviour. God did not ask for our permission to become as our suffering flesh.
This becoming flesh, incarnation, has become shorthand for how we primary serve others, being present with people. This is normally a challenge, but during Covid-19 restrictions, it has become even more of a challenge. The incarnation can inspire us to think differently about presence. Previous we have taken for granted that this is a physical behaviour. I shared the idea in our Sunday morning group of how can we do digital hesed, virtual loving kindness? How can we care by being virtual present, by not being physically present?
God showing humanity love by becoming another form, is our inspiration that anything is possible. It has been a credit to our church that we have learnt to be safely present. We have learnt to be Christ like remotely, supportive at a physical distance. Caring by being emotionally present. We have learnt to be creative. I have been sending a daily joke via Instagram to someone who has a long-term illness. Door stopping people has become a positive virtue as long as we back off down the path! We have inverted the Good Samaritan, it is now kind, caring, sacrificial to walk by on the other side of the road, to stand at the end of the garden. But we are being present at a distance. The dropped offed packages, the virtual checking ins, the distanced outside gatherings. We have learnt to be virtual flesh to each other. Our prayers have always been mostly this way. Zoom counts when we add up to see if 2-3 are gathered, prayers are never on mute!
I had hoped we would not need them but we are having virtual hugs cards and glass stones made in the next week. Being spontaneously kind is almost always appreciated, even if the type of chocolate given is not their first choice. In these days, the incarnational gesture is always understood as positive sign of shared loved.
God became flesh for our salvation. Perhaps the most Word becoming flesh that we can imitate is to be creatively and emotionally present with others. To safely intervene, because we perceive needs not being meet for holistic salvation of others.
Reflection: ‘family tree’ (Christine Turner)
To say I'm glad to see the back of 2020 is a huge understatement. To be honest I'd been wishing last year away since my partner Gary was admitted to Heartlands Hospital in May and even more so when my beloved Uncle David passed away at his Blackpool flat in June then Gary was diagnosed with Small Cell Prostate Cancer in Mid-July with chemotherapy starting at the beginning of August until a fortnight before Christmas which made the rest of 2020 go that little bit quicker for me.
December 31st is always a reflective day for me, thinking back on the year that's about to pass, the happy times, the sad times and also the new beginning of a brand new year and what lies ahead. Little did I think on January 1st 2020 that me and my loved ones would go through such heartbreak and sadness that we went through in 2020.
The friendship of Hodge Hill Church and its members knows no bounds. I started to come to the Sunday Morning services in February 2020 when Al invited me to the Sunday Breakfast Service at Church. I quickly made friends. That first Sunday I chatted for the first time to Wendy Millman, it was like I'd known her years, Martin and myself bonded over our love for our beloved Aston Villa. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly.
Coronavirus hit us in March and quickly Zoom calls came into our lives as well as worship packs etc. The only Zoom I knew before then were the ice-lollies. I love our Sunday coffee hours. Zoom also helped me gain level 2 qualifications in Customer Service, Equality and Diversity and also a level 2 qualification in understanding Mental Health qualification through online learning with a North-East based company called Release Potential.
I'm very glad I live where I live as I know Gary and myself wouldn't have the level of love, support and help me from our community friends and Church friends and also Hodge Hill Church that we've had and continue to have. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Every single person who helped us, or enquired about us or gave love, support and advice are heroes. There's too many to name but thank you all and thank you Hodge Hill Church for your love and support during myself and Gary's darkest days in 2020.
From Gary and myself may we wish you a Happy New Year and hope you all have better fortune in 2021. Here's to New Beginnings.
Poem: ‘flesh of our flesh’, by Martin Wroe
what colour are you God
what’s your body like
any disabilities, distinguishing characteristics
would we spot you in a crowd
would we stare at you for some deformity
how many senses have you got
five, six, eighteen, ninety four
and what’s your sense of touch like
is your handshake firm as a vice or slippery as an eel
what do you smell of
anything in particular ‑ the universe, for example
planets, oceans, space, skies
do you smell of petrol like everything else
we believe your Spirit is always willing
but is your flesh ever weak
and if the Word was made flesh
are you flesh of our flesh
bone of our bones
is that you there, meek and mild
all meanly wrapped in swaddling clothes
is that you Baby J, Word of the Father
now in flesh appearing
is that you screaming as you arrived
like the rest of us
screaming at the shock of the new
the shock of the cold and the old and the broken
is that you Baby J
slipping clumsily out from between a Virgin’s legs
covered in blood and gunge and straw
when moments before you had been covered in glory
is that you tied to the mother of God by a fleshy cord
sucking on a woman’s breast for your very life
what a come down
still at least you had an audience
cows was it, a goat or two
did they look on in awe and wonder
were the cattle lowing a bit
or were they a right nuisance
but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes
well, that’s not true is it
the thing about flesh is it makes you cry
for better or worse, you’ve got to cry
who is he in yonder stall
at whose feet the shepherd’s fall
did they fall? did they recognise you up close?
did they know that was you, God, in the flesh
or were they just intrigued by the heavenly host
and the funny star
and did the flesh inconvenience and annoy
and anger you like it does the
rest of us, your fleshy creatures
did your nose run green
your skin flake or bruise red
did you itch
your breath catch from asthma
in that smelly barn
your chest tighten in fear
and later on what did you do about your desires
you know, the fleshly ones
and, just out of interest, where on earth
did you go for your private movements
and are there miraculously fertile plants there today
trees with roots for miles and branches into the heavens
never barren, endlessly ripe...
or are those places where the divine squatted in squalor
feeling quite a lot lower than the angels
‑ wiping his bum with leaves ‑
are they like every other place,
where folks did their business
with no particular supernatural horticultural memento
and when you were tired, when it all was going wrong
when your friends misunderstood, lost interest, wandered off
did you think
what did I get into this body business for
swapping omnipresence for
being somewhere in particular
did you feel trapped in that body
or didn’t you know what it had been like
before you became body
when you were in‑carnate
could you know what it was like out‑carnate
flesh can’t be in more than one place at a time
flesh is limited
flesh is awkward
you must have wondered
at the restrictions of the corporeal
did you ever notice, could you tell the difference?
and did the flesh also exhilarate you, excite you
did you run and laugh and kiss
did you sweat and wrestle and argue
and if you longed to be more...
were you grateful to have lived
on earth
a human
in flesh
to have become one of us
he was little, weak and helpless
tears and smiles like us he knew
and he feeleth for our sadness
and he shareth in our gladness
how’s the old body now
do you wear a halo
or a crown
is it of gold
or is it of thorns
are there marks on your palms
blood on the side of your shirt still?
Jesus of the body, of the flesh, Jesus of the Spirit
welcome to the body God
thank you for being it
putting flesh on the bones of our skeletal lives
fleshing out the way life might be lived
thank you Spirit of Jesus for becoming body among us
thank you that veiled in flesh the Godhead we see
flesh is all we have
but, now you know ‑ as well as any of us ‑
flesh is not all we are
A Creed, by Nathan Nettleton
We believe in God,
the creator and giver of life,
who brought all creation to birth,
who mothers us and fathers us,
protecting, nurturing,
and cherishing us.
We believe in Jesus Christ:
God born among us as a fragile baby,
embodying both love and the need for love,
and calling us to rest in God
as trustingly as a tiny child.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
breathed into us at our birth,
always drawing us on to be born again,
encouraging, exhorting, comforting,
nourishing our growth
and inspiring our living.
We believe in the reconciliation
of the world to God, through Christ.
Hunted at birth
and humiliated at death,
Christ entered our fearful darkness
so that we might enter his glorious light
and share the life of his resurrection.
And we believe that each new child
is a glimpse of the face of God,
a sign of the life to come,
and a call to live in peace
and celebrate living together.
Glory to God in the highest,
and peace to God’s people on earth.
Amen.
(with material from Kathy Galloway, ‘Midwife of our lives’, in Pattern of our Days)
[1] The essay was published in a collection of fragments, Wandering: Notes and Sketches (1920). It can be read in full (it’s not long) at https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/09/21/hermann-hesse-trees/
No comments:
Post a Comment