SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1 2024 - "BIRTH PARENTS & GENEALOGIES"
The choir offered a special tribute to Carolyn and Jay. It is played at the end of the worship service, but you can also find it here on YouTube.
December 1, 2024
Deborah Laforet
“Birth Parents & Genealogies”
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by
your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
Lately I’ve been hearing stories about people searching for their birth families. One story
from a podcast was about a black market for babies in 1960’s Montreal, where babies were being
sold to families in the US, and now these adult babies were back in Montreal discovering the
identity of their parents. Another story was in a recent issue of Broadview, our United Church
magazine, about people feeling they have a right to know the identity of their sperm donor
fathers. People are having their DNA tested, often through ancestry or genealogical sites, which
makes it possible to know more about their origins. These DNA tests are making it a lot harder
to keep secrets.
But why is it so important? Why do people feel they need to know their birth parents?
We are often told that the people who raised us are our parents, whether or not they share DNA.
We are told that a family is about the experiences and the love that are shared. And that may be
true, but there is this deep sense of connection that is shared between people related by blood. It
doesn’t happen for everyone, but those who are adopted or find they’re not related in any way to
the parents raising them sometimes feel a disconnect, or an absence of something that they just
can’t nail down.
My dad died when I was eight. His family was sprawled across the US, and,
unfortunately, my mom was not one for keeping connections, so after he died, I lost touch with
my dad’s family for quite a few years. I vividly remember this time when my uncle, my dad’s
brother, came to visit us in Saskatchewan, my first posting as a minister. We went for a walk
together. We were mostly quiet, without the need to keep up constant conversation. I remember
feeling this kinship with him, a feeling that, wow, I’m not alone. There is another person in the
world like me.
My uncle, the one I just referenced, is a huge family history buff, who also lost his father
at a very young age, to divorce, not death. As an adult, he got to know his dad and his dad’s side
of the family, as well as his mom’s family who were mostly in England. For him, knowing his
family, knowing his roots, was more than just a hobby. There was a need for him to know his
family. He is now in his eighties and has left me with the responsibility to carry on this history.
Genealogy is more than just a tree with names, and I think it’s why so many feel the pull
to explore their family history. Even though family can be irritating and sometimes even
traumatic, it is a part of our identity, deeper than shared experiences, deeper than sharing a home
together, deeper than even the love shared within a family.
We see this in people ripped away from Africa to be slaves in Western nations as they
search for their identities through DNA and ship manifests. We see this in indigenous people
ripped from their families, sometimes to be put in residential schools, sometimes adopted by
white families or put into foster care. In these cases, it’s not just DNA, but a stolen culture and
traumatizing experiences of abuse. Finding families of origin becomes about healing that
trauma, and sometimes the trauma of generations.
Today, we heard the very first words printed in the New Testament of our bibles, or the
Christian Scriptures. And these first seventeen verses are a genealogy, and often, these seventeen
verses are skipped, so that we can get to the good stuff about Mary and Joseph and the birth of
Jesus. Understandably. It’s a lot of hard to pronounce names, most of whom we have never
heard, who just don’t seem relevant to this story of Jesus.
Now, remember there were some ambiguities around Jesus’ birth. Mary was betrothed to
Joseph, but then Mary became pregnant, and not by Joseph. Our stories tell us us that Mary was
pregnant by the Holy Spirit, but how many people would have believed a story like that? We
know that Joseph almost broke the engagement with Mary, but we aren’t told how the
community responded this to this unplanned pregnancy or even how Jesus himself felt about it.
We aren’t told how the community treated Mary and Jesus because of this unusual birth. Was he
an outcast? Was Mary shunned? Was Jesus bullied? Did Jesus feel a connection to Joseph, who
wasn’t his birth father? Think of the stories that could be imagined about this time in Jesus’ life.
Matthew’s genealogy traces Jesus’ lineage from Joseph - not from Mary. Even though we
are told that Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, not by Joseph, the genealogy starts with
Abraham, continues to King David, and ends with Joseph, possibly because it was important to
make this strong connection for Jesus to his earthly father.
There might be another reason for the importance of this genealogy. The past couple of
months we’ve been talking about the Hebrew Scriptures and their importance to understanding
the Christian Scriptures. This genealogy is a case in point. Numbers were very important to the
Hebrew people, and sometimes words were understood for their numerical value. I’ll give you
an example in English.
Let’s say the numerical value of A is 1. The numerical value of B is 2. The numerical
value of C is 3, and so on through the alphabet. The word cab, then, would be 3+1+2, which
would give it a numerical value of 6. With me so far?
In Hebrew, the name David is the letters D-V-D (no vowels in Hebrew). D is the fourth
letter, and V is the sixth letter. D-V-D is 4+6+4, which is fourteen, but why is this significant?
If you look at the genealogy again, the names are grouped in groups of fourteen.
Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience. This audience had been waiting for the son of David
to save them. And everyone knew that David’s name equaled fourteen. So you have these
intentional groupings of people that would have shouted to these people, “Fourteen! Fourteen!
Fourteen!”
Verse 17 reads, "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.” Matthew believes Jesus is the son of David for
whom they’ve been waiting, and his Jewish audience would have understood that from this
genealogy.
By the way, I learned this from Rob Bell in his book, “What is the Bible: How an Ancient
Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About
Everything.” It’s an easy and fun read, if you’re interested.
We find many genealogies throughout our bible and they can be difficult to read, and
many don’t read them, but genealogies can say a lot. We just have to know how to read them.
And depending on who are you, a genealogy may hold a hint to your identity, about your
roots, your history, and the connection to your ancestors. This genealogy that begins the gospel
of Matthew was a hint to this Hebrew audience to Jesus’ connection to King David, and thus, as
the Saviour he was meant to be for the Hebrew people.
We also remember the scandal surrounding his birth, and the many connections that can
be made to our own context, from unplanned pregnancies, to intolerance, to the inability to find a
safe place, and to refugees on the run from tyrants. A lot has changed since the time Mary gave
birth to Jesus, but a lot has also stayed the same.
As we acknowledge this genealogy of Jesus, we remember that he, like each one of us, is
born into a family and a lineage that, doesn’t define who we are, but gives us some context and
some connection to the past that affects our present. As we go into this Advent season, we invite
Jesus into our midst, as we learn who he was, a Jewish man in the land of Palestine, son of Mary,
from the line of King David, and what he meant for an oppressed people living in lands occupied
by the Roman Empire. We also invite Christ to be born into each one of us, each with our own
past, our own struggles, and our own identity, but one in Christ, called to be the hands and feet of
Christ in the world. And for that, we say thanks be to God. Amen.
Matthew 1:1-17
(Introduce yourself. - Do not move or tap microphone.)
Matthew’s gospel begins with seventeen verses of the genealogy of Jesus, from
Abraham, who we read about in the book of Genesis, to Joseph, who married Mary
and raised Jesus as his own. There are a lot of unfamiliar and difficult names to
read and you may feel like nodding off, but Deborah will soon explain why this
genealogy is important to Matthew’s gospel.
We are reading from the first chapter of Matthew, verses one to seventeen.
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, who bore
Jesus, 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.
May the Spirit guide our understanding of this holy scripture.