Homily Ancestor Sunday 2016

As Preached by Sister Rebecca
Sunday, December 19, 2016

Holy Wisdom Church

Today's celebration of Jesus’ ancestors is very important to the deeper and vaster understanding of the Good News of the Incarnation as taught by Matthew within his diaspora community in the 80’s or earlier, in Syria. 

Jesus was born, lived and died as a religious Jew.  We really need to let this sink in, and reflect on the implications of this reality as we prepare to celebrate this stupendous mystery of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.

There are many Christians who think Jesus was a Jew in the way one would say so and so are Jews, that is, Jewish from a culture point of view. It is most unfortunate that followers of Jesus among our various Christian denominations have pretty much divorced-albeit unconsciously- our Judaic roots except in as much as they see Christianity as supplanting Judaism.  This is not so in the early Christian communities of mostly Jews in Matthew’s community.

Much of the teaching of Jesus, the Gospels, rests upon an implicit and explicit understanding of the Hebrew Bible.  For example when Matthew quotes Jesus saying in metaphor language to build our house on a rock rather than on the sand, he is saying that Jesus is not starting a new religion.  Yet the Word of God ever ancient, ever new needs to be reinterpreted throughout time and place.

I would like to focus on the last 2 sections of Jesus genealogy, the section of 14 generations dealing with the aftermath of the deportation to Babylon and the return to Israel.   During the years in exile the Jews desiring to remain faithful to their God, were faced with the dilemma of how to deal with innumerous laws that were related to the Temple worship that no longer exists.  In fact many exiled Jews were discombobulated in this country of exile where religious practices were so foreign and meaningless to them.  God inspired the prophet Ezekiel to lift and heal their minds and hearts through a vision: the Divine Presence, the Schekinah actually left the sanctuary of the Temple in Jerusalem and accompanied these devastated prisoners of war, wanderers to their destiny in Babylon and continued to remain with and in them.  Of course they wept, hung their harps on the willow branches along the banks the rivers in Babylon and mourned:  how can we sing in this foreign land?  Some of the psalms were composed during this period and upon the return to their devastated land in post exilic times.  Eventually new understanding arose as to how to worship God in Spirit and in Truth as we see in the ps 40:  “You gave me to understand that sacrifice and offerings are not what you desire…not what pleases you.  Then I said “Here I am! As it is written in the scroll, to do what pleases you is my desire, for your law is written in my heart.  The prophet Hosea sums up the whole of the Torah:  ‘You have told me O Lord what is good and what you require of me:  to do good, to love and cling to your presence deep within my heart and to walk humbly with you, my God.’  This and many other passages in the Bible can be practiced no matter where one is on this earth.  This is the whole Torah in a nutshell. They came to see that the true foreigner, prisoner is one who is attached to anything of this early existence even the Temple and particular ways of performing the rituals.   And attachments can be memories, hope and hankering for the way things were done in the past.

Back in their homeland where a second Temple was built, a movement had begun approximately two hundred before Jesus’ birth by sages who realized Jerusalem’s Temple was in jeopardy because of foreign invaders.

They worked to establish new religious practices that would ensure Judaism’s survival apart from the Temple and yet remain true to the commandments of the Torah.

It is in this milieu that Jesus was born and eventually became part of the first century teachers. 

The transitions from the Temple system into what would later be called Rabbinic Judaism was nothing less than extraordinary – and Jesus was at the center of that transformation. 

Jesus does not reinvent religion – he is still part of the Jewish ancestry.  But where are we? Jesus responding to some of his adversaries that accused Jesus of not being faithful to Abraham said “God can raise up stones to be children of Abraham.  The lineage is not necessarily a blood line – in fact Matthew names 4 women all who were foreigners yet became part of Jesus direct lineage.

What makes us part of Jesus’ lineage?  Whoever hears my words and puts them into practice is my mother, my brothers and sisters.

God’s Spirit in and through Jesus lineage tells us: Do not fear; do not worry…embrace, accept the light and the dark with peace of mind and heart and look deeply inside for the light of God to access wisdom to face whatever happens in the future.  And I need to sense that my faith in God is not mine alone and that I do not need to prove anything but to realize I am a leaf on a branch of this tree and by being true to my self and my place I have received and continue to receive the responsibility and grace to contribute to keeping the sap flowing down  into the vast roots that will nourish those that come after me.