"Jesus is the Son of Sinners"

Christmas Day – 2019                                                                                               LSB #’s 379, 380, 374
Text – Matthew 1:6b
 
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.
 
JESUS IS THE SON OF SINNERS
 
 
Months before December, the time arrives to begin planning for the annual children’s Christmas program.  You know how the events will unfold, again.  Several boys will be conscripted to wear bathrobes and pretend that they know something about shepherds.  A dozen girls will gleefully volunteer to be angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven.  
Crepe paper and glitter will be combined to create colorful crowns for the magi who will undoubtedly sing off-key, We Three Kings of Orient Are.  Others will be drafted to join the ranks of choirs who through the ages have memorized lyrics to O Little Town of Bethlehem, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and Joy to the World.
Then, to unleash the church’s greatest controversy since the outdoor picnic was rained out, a boy and a girl will be chosen to play Joseph and Mary.  Add to this cast a newborn baby, an innkeeper, a few straggly sheep and presto – the program will be just about ready to launch!
But one important component is still missing.  Who will the church get to direct the pageant?  After a thorough search, a director is “specially selected” and given this mandate, “Keep the bathrobes one color, make sure everyone remembers their lines, and please, no angels with crooked halos this year!”  
Six weeks of rehearsals and costume making lead up to the night of nights.  Anticipation will fill the air!  The unstated goal is that after everyone reverently sings Silent Night they will return home saying, “This year’s program was the best yet!” 
Should we expect anything less from Matthew’s Christmas pageant?  Why, if anyone can pull this off without a hitch it will be an organized and efficient tax accountant like Matthew!  Looking at his genealogy, Matthew began impressively by organizing his presentation of Jesus into three groups of fourteen (Mt 1:17).  In all likelihood, Matthew’s 14 x 3 patterns is a play on the name of David, whose Hebrew consonants daleth waw daleth add up to fourteen.  This indicates that Jesus is The Son of David three times over!  Quite impressive theology! 
Studying his gospel more broadly, we see that Matthew plans to perfectly structure his narrative to highlight our Lord’s five teaching blocks (Mt 5:1-7:29; 8:1-11:1; 11:2-13:58; 14:1-19:1; & 19:2-26:1).  “The old timers will love it,” we exclaim with joy.  “They will be reminded of Moses’s five-part book that we call the Pentateuch.”  
With great anticipation the children’s Christmas program meeting concludes on this high note: “If anyone is going to direct a ‘lights out’ Christmas presentation it’s going to be Matthew!”  But at the next meeting we look at Matthew’s genealogy with greater scrutiny.  
Within moments the committee is shell-shocked.  Matthew has placed four huge eyesores into the program!  Their names are Tamar (Mt 1:3), Rahab, Ruth (Mt 1:5), and a certain “wife of Uriah” (Mt 1:6).  How dare Matthew go against the conventional wisdom of the day by letting women into his genealogy!  
One committee member sighs in frustration: “Well!  If he has to include women, why not invoke the names of our three lovely matriarchs – Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel?”  
Another person adds this caustic critique, “Doesn’t Matthew remember that lineage is traced through men, not women, and that the function of a genealogy is to give solemn honor to the final descendant, Jesus?  Matthew breaks both of these time-honored rules!”  A vote is taken and it is unanimous.  Stop the presses! 
The chairman then asks the inevitable question, “Who picked Matthew to direct this program in the 1st place?”  Someone grabs a Bible and reads from Matthew 9:9, “As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and He said to him, ‘Follow me.’”  The room becomes quiet enough to hear a pin drop!  The reading continues with these words of Jesus, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mt 9:13). 
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba demonstrate how God chooses “what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” and how He chooses “what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor 1:27).  Their presence in Christ’s lineage foreshadows Jesus’s love for other outcasts – like a Roman centurion’s servant (Mt 8:5-13) and a Canaanite woman’s daughter (Mt 15:21-28). 
At the heart of Matthew’s genealogy is this grand gospel.  Jesus loves people who are victims as well as perpetrators  of family dysfunction and deceit (Tamar);   who feel used and worthless (Rahab); who bury loved ones and endure the pain of leaving their homeland (Ruth); and who are used by others for pleasure only to witness the death of so many dreams (Bathsheba).  
In the end, the lives of those four women are amazing testimonies to what Joseph told his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gn 50:20). 
So Matthew knew what he was doing all along!  Could this be the reason he includes this saying of Jesus, twice?  “But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mt 19:30; 20:16).  
Then, Matthew adds a fifth woman to his genealogy – Mary.  Mary also knew about this good news that turns everything upside down.  In Luke 1:52 she sings of her God, “He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.”  Just like Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba, Mary encountered disgrace and anxiety:  
“She was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly” (Mt 1:18–19).  But Mary’s life was vindicated by God.  She became the very mother of Immanuel – God with us (Matthew 1:23; cf. Isaiah 7:14).   Matthew’s Christmas genealogy prepares us to follow his gospel and to revel in the multitude of His messages of grace.  Jesus chooses fishermen instead of Pharisees, sinners instead of Sadducees, and whores instead of Herodians.  Climactically, Jesus chooses thorns for His crown instead of silver and gold.  He chooses spit and blood instead of sweetness and light.  His choices lead to torment and torture, darkness and death. 
This led to the greatest shock of all: “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here, for He is risen, as He said” (Mt 28:5–6).  Jesus is Life overriding death and making all things new. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.  This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Mt 21:42; cf. Ps 118:22–23). 
Let’s face it.  Try as we might, our Christmas pageants are never exactly perfect.  Isaiah 9:2 might be misquoted.  The babe’s swaddling clothes may slip off at the most inopportune time.  The Christmas tree may remind us of Charlie Brown’s sorry-looking stick, and the inn keeper may forget his lines, again!  That’s okay. 
Let those “failings” remind you of how Matthew introduces Jesus.  It is not with glitter or Hollywood glitz.  There are no fireworks or fine pedigrees.  Matthew does not incorporate the kind of people who are finalists on American Idol.  Rather, Matthew selects four broken and outcast women, who in so many ways, are just like us.  
No wonder he records this stunning promise just after his genealogy; “She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21).  Thank God for annual Christmas pageants.  Thank God all the more for the one inspired by the Holy Spirit and penned by a man named Matthew.  Merry Christmas!  Amen. 
 
 
Hail, the heaven born Prince of Peace!  Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!  Light and life to all He brings, risen with healing in His wings.  Mild He lays His glory by; born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.  Hark the herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King!”