Where Are You From

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Readings

  1. Old Testament: Exodus 18:13-27

  2. Psalm 15

  3. Gospel: Matt. 1:1-17

  4. Epistle: 1 Pet. 5:1-14

Devotional
What's the first question you ask somebody when you meet them? The question right after "What's your name?" A peculiar pattern holds in cultures throughout the world. In a large, cosmopolitan city, the first question is "What do you do?" In a smaller city or town, the question is "Who are your parents?" In either case, these questions come first because they give us what we believe is the most information about somebody that can be gained from one question: we learn something about their social status, something about history and background, something about their character, and maybe even something about their intentions.

When Matthew gives us a list of Jesus' parentage, he is not attempting to give us an exhaustive one. Instead, he is attempting to give a bunch of information to his first readers about who Jesus is in one fell swoop. Consider:

  1. the word for the "genealogy" of Jesus is "Genesis," which would have been familiar to first-century Jewish readers as "beginnings." It is in many ways the beginning of the title of Matthew's whole book: the new beginning.

  2. "Jesus" was the every day name of the person, but "Christ" meant annointed, and points back to David, the highest and holiest example in Israel of a righteous king. 

  3. Abraham sits at the headwaters of the Jewish people, and mediated the presence of God to the world.

  4. The names in the list are not uniform: there are men, women, Jews, Gentiles, heroes and prostitutes, and hero-prostitutes. The story of Jesus and God's New Beginning involves everyone. 

Do you see what Matthew is saying? Here, in the person of Jesus, is the New Beginning. God's Kingdom is coming, all things are being made new, as Jesus mediates God's presence to the world! And there is no one who is excluded from this new beginning. Not even us. 

Hymn
Nothing But the Blood

Prayer
O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people;
Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who
calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with
you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.