The Sunday before Nativity: The Forefathers

Introduction: This morning is the Sunday of the Forefathers of Christ. We read in the Holy Gospel the first chapter of St. Matthew's gospel, which records for us our Savior's genealogy. The first seventeen verses focus upon his earthly genealogy and the remaining eight verses touch upon his heavenly genealogy.

Jesus' Earthly Genealogy: This last week I was in Kansas, and on that trip I had the occasion to view Bishop BASIL's family tree. I discovered something very important while studying his family tree, and Khouria Lesley will be very happy to know this. I had always wondered why Bishop BASIL was such a wonderful person, and now I know one of the reasons. His great-grandmother was a pureblooded Englishwoman from Sheffield! That makes him1/8 English! He even gave me a book entitled Orthodoxy and the English Tradition. It is all starting to make sense now.

We all love to think about our family trees. It is important to understand your familial roots, even if your study leads you to discover that you have certain criminals in your line. Ask Deacon Scott about that!! Isn't that right Deacon? The most important family tree ever is the family tree, the genealogy of our Sweet Savior, Jesus Christ, recorded for us in St. Matthew's gospel. One of the reasons St. Matthew included such a detailed description of Jesus' genealogy was because St. Matthew wrote his gospel with a Jewish audience in mind. St. Matthew wished to convince them very firmly that Jesus was, in fact, the longed for Messiah and Hope of Israel. He was their King: the Ultimate Descendant of the Patriarch Abraham and King David. This emphasis is reflected is the division of the genealogy into three groups of fourteen generations from Abraham to David, from David to the deportation to Babylon, and from the deportation to Babylon until the birth of Christ.

Our Lord's genealogy is the most impressive and glorious line of faith including the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Continuing through the line of Judah with Jesse and his son, King David. We see King Solomon and Hezekiah and my patron the zealot-king Josiah the tenderhearted. On and on we go. No family tree is more glorious. What providential care the Father undertook to prepare the way for the birth of His Only-Begotten Son. The Nativity is no parenthesis in the history of the world. The Nativity is the center of history. It is the longed-for goal that the entire world (even the gentile world as shown by the Magi) had been prepared for and was anticipating.

By way of encouragement I would like to point out one more aspect of our Savior's family tree. This is to encourage the Deacon Scott's in the world. Jesus' genealogy isn't all wonder and perfection. There are several very serious messes, which St. Matthew doesn't hesitate to highlight. "To Judah were born Perez and Zerah by Tamar." Remember Tamar. Her story is recorded in the 34th chapter of the book of Genesis. She was the daughter-in-law of Judah the son of the Patriarch Jacob. God punished her husband Er with death at a very young age because he was wicked. Then she married Er's brother Onan, according to Jewish levirate law, and because Onan spilled his seed in intercourse and refused to raise up a descendant for his brother he too was struck down in judgment. Her father-in-law Judah told her to live as a widow until his youngest son was old enough to marry her, but Judah ended up forgetting her and leaving her in her sorrow. As a result she disguised herself as a pagan temple-prostitute and made herself available to Judah. She demanded as surety for payment that Judah give her his staff and seal until he send her a kid from his flock as payment. She returned home with his staff and seal, conceived, and three months later it was told Judah that she had played the harlot and was with child. Judah demanded that she be brought out and stoned! On the way she showed him his staff and seal and said, "I am with child by him who owns these!" Not a pretty circumstance

Then think of a second incident mentioned by St. Matthew in the genealogy. He writes, "To David was born Solomon, by her who had been the wife of Uriah." No doubt we all remember the sad circumstances of King David's procuring Bathsheba through adultery and the murder of her husband.

Think lastly of the mention of Manasseh the King, the son of the great King Hezekiah. Manasseh sought to turn the entire Kingdom of Judah away from the Lord, and completely rejected his father's inheritance of piety. So sinful was Manasseh that it was under his reign that the Lord decided that he was going to raze his holy city Jerusalem to the ground and give it into the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar and the plundering Babylonians. Even the extreme righteousness of devotion of Manasseh's grandson Josiah couldn't reverse the course of fate for Jerusalem. All St. Josiah could do by his devotion was to buy a reprieve of four generations so that he wouldn't have to see the exile with his own eyes.

Why am I telling you these things and why did St. Matthew and the Holy Spirit wish mention of these very unsavory characters and incidents in our Lord Jesus' line? For instruction and encouragement. Our Savior came into this world not to be sheltered from its tragedies and sorrows, but to bear them and redeem them! Do you have sorrow and tragedy in your family? This is nothing new, and nothing that our Savior does not understand. All our catastrophes are redeemable as the presence of Tamar, Bathsheba, and Manasseh in Jesus' geneaology clearly demonstrates. Not only are these tragedies redeemable, they are capable of being transformed into something valuable and beautiful. How? By repentance.

When Judah was confronted by Tamar his daughter-in-law with his injustice what did he do? He repented, and declared his sin saying before all that Tamar was more righteous than he! What did King David do when the Prophet Nathan confronted him with his adultery and murder? He bitterly repented in tears and wrote Psalm 50, bequeathing to all future generations both the supreme model and words of repentance as the tenth of the priestly Orthros prayers states. "O Lord our God, who hast granted unto men pardon through repentance and hast set for us the repentance of the prophet David as an example of the acknowledgment of sin and of confession which is unto forgiveness" (Liturgikon, Orthros, p. 137). And lastly, King Manasseh? What did he do at the end of his life after he had turned so many away from the Lord? He humbled himself before God, and repented. The Church has his very prayer of repentance, and it is audibly prayed by the priest in the service of Great Compline during Lent.

The Lord redeems by repentance beloved! Whatever your pain or family difficulty. Heal it by repentance. If the pain isn't caused by you then repent for the one who is the source. Redemption always follows repentance. Always. And there is no redemption without it.

Jesus' Divine Geneaology: I end with a note on the remaining portion of our gospel text. Having described Jesus' family tree according to the flesh St. Matthew presents Jesus' divine genealogy. This glorious Nativity we are about to celebrate is no ordinary birth. It is a divine birth of a Virgin-maid without an earthly father. It was a seed-less birth. From start to finish the conception and birth of Christ is a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. "When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her, desired to put her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit" (1:18-20).

His origin pre-dates the conception in the womb of the Virgin. Indeed, his origin is past tracing out for from all eternity the Son has dwelt in the bosom of the Father. Never has there been a time when He was not, and when He did not commune with the Father and the Holy Spirit in a perfect bond of love. From this heavenly glory the Son descended by the power of the Holy Spirit to be formed in the womb of the Virgin, to forever unite himself to humanity. One has come to redeem our tragedies, to overcome our sordid histories, and to be formed and born inside of each of us spiritually as he was physically in the womb of the Virgin. "And you shall call His name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins" (St. Matt. 1:21). To the Father of love who has sent the world His most precious possession and the greatest gift, and to the Son who did not despise our lowliness but has bent down to kiss the earth, and to the divine Spirit through whose powerful agency the Son of God took up His abode in the womb of the Virgin be all glory and our fervent praise now and forever. Amen.