Roots of our Saviour

Nativity of Blessed Virgin Mary (8 September 2018)

“Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary; of her was born Jesus who is called Christ.”

As we celebrate the Birthday of Mother Mary today, the liturgy gives us a strange gospel passage: the genealogy of Jesus Christ. A boring list of names that we most of us gloss over. Or even if we read we do it so quickly that we don’t understand the meaning of it. The list, though monotonous, has some interesting things for our reflection. We must bear in mind it is not an exhaustive list of the family history of Jesus. But it certainly shows the “earthly” connection of our divine Saviour.

Jesus’ genealogy is an illustrious one, including Jacob, Judah, David, Solomon and Hezekiah. But there is another side to this family tree. For instance, most of the kings named in this list are sinners, murderers, unfaithful persons. And the evangelist is not embarrassed to admit that the Saviour is born from this line. The origin and roots of the Sinless One are not completely a matter of pride, but a dark truth. He comes from a line of both holiness and sin.

There are only five women named in this genealogy. We must understand that in Matthew’s Jewish world, genealogies typically mentioned only men. The inclusion of women in a list is itself something wonderful. But what is more suprising is that our Blessed Mother is named along with four other women who have somewhat spotty reputations: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and “the wife of Uriah” (that is, Bathsheba, whom the evangelist doesn’t even dare to name). What prompted Matthew to include a prostitute (Rahab), a woman who pretended to be a prostitute (Tamar), a sexually forward widow (Ruth), and a woman taken in adultery (Bathsheba) in his genealogy of Jesus the Messiah?

These women, mostly poor, mostly misfits, widows, unimportant, unknown, sinful women who changed the course of history by their simple, obedient lives. One might suppose that the women in Jesus the Messiah’s genealogy should have all been the finest Jewish women, but they weren’t. Most weren’t even Jewish at all. And except for Ruth and Mary, they had tarnished sexual histories. They were ordinary women, trying to get life right, but missing the goal. In other words, they were women just like us: ordinary, tarnished by sin, unlikely to shape the course of history. They are in the Saviour’s genealogy to give us hope, and to foreshadow the kind of people Jesus the Messiah came to save.

Jesus Christ came from a lineage of sinners to save sinners. God does not shy away from the disorder and mess of our human lives. He is born into a line of sinners and imperfect people, perhaps just to reiterate His Divine love. Nothing human can stop the flow of divine love; we cannot undo the eternal pattern of God’s love even by our worst sin.