Homily: Ancestor Sunday 2017

 As preached by Sr. Rebecca     

 December 24, 2017

Holy Wisdom Church

            Matthew's Gospel today focuses on Jesus' origins-his genealogy.  It manifests a struggle within Matthew's diaspora community in Syria some 10 years after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE.  His is a minority Jewish Christian community which takes Jesus as its leader and strives to establish a way life rooted in obedience and love as Jesus lived and taught.  But it is surrounded by some Jewish communities who do not accept Jesus as Messiah.  There is a dire need for Matthew’s community to show Jesus’ person as legitimately rooted in Judaism...  A religious community needs an overarching vision, to know itself under a 'sacred canopy', living in a world where division, up-rootedness prevails along with incredible insecurities not to mention persecutions and poverty. 

       When we begin to unpack the individual lives listed by Matthew, the message resounds loud and clear:  Jesus fully entered our human condition with all its virtues and vices.   It shows the continuity of Jesus in the history and tradition of Israel.  He was the natural development of the long process of God's steadfast relationship with his people and the long-awaited climax.  It responds to the question:  who is this Jesus.  Matthew attempts to unveil who Jesus is for him and his community.

     When we scratch below the surface of the persons in Jesus lineage we cannot help but note that God writes straight on crooked lines.  Matthew makes no effort to 'sanitize' Jesus’ origins or even the members of his immediate family.  Jesus was not born of all saintly ancestors.  Rather, as the genealogy shows, his family tree contains as many sinners as saints.  Among his ancestors were scoundrels, liars, adulterers, murderers, power-mongering men, some scheming women, mostly wicket and or weak kings, corrupt religious authorities, and sinners of all sorts.

     Both persons and the institutions that gave birth to Jesus were a mixture of grace and sin, yet none the less, a mixture that mediated God's favor.  And of it Jesus was born.  This can be scandalous for our sense of propriety and integrity - high ideals of how God ‘should’ come to us that not everything that gave birth to Christmas was immaculately conceived.  The same holds true of what followed after Jesus' birth.  His earthly ministry was also partially shaped and furthered by the self-interest of religious and political authorities of his time and the fear and infidelity of his own disciples.  And this has continued throughout the 2000 years of history since.  No, Jesus' family tree up to our present day has a long list of selfless martyrs and selfish schemers, of virtue and betrayal. But by contemplating the mystery of Jesus Christ in Kairos (=eternal) time, with the innermost lenses of the Spirit, we perceive God's Light, shining in the darkness of our own present Chronos  (=24/7) time. This celebration of Christmas invites us to ponder and trust deeply that a loving a personal God guides each of us as well as in and through the tragic events of contemporary history and in our own personal lives.  This is an enormous challenge to us to today to trust that God is at work in our midst, in and through us, making crooked ways straight and that God's love does and will prevail. This trust is one of the authentic keystones of spirituality.  Matthew is assuring us that God does govern life and that nothing eludes God's power, that there is a guiding plan, beyond our comprehension, which gives meaning to our lives. Like a hidden seed, God's grace works, revealing divinity through people like us, in communities like ours, our very Churches, and in the world at large.

   In ending I would like to draw attention to the photo I posted in the vestibule: a picture of the Golden Repair-a broken pottery put together with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold. Perhaps we may see in this an innate intuition inscribed in the depths of humanity’s heart that brokenness is not the end of the story: the repaired piece is more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with new life.  May we trust that this points to what God’s grace is offering to us to embrace today?

(see added attachment for photo)

 Translated “golden joinery,” Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi, which means “golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold.  Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece.

This repair method celebrates each artifact's unique history by emphasizing its fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with new life.