Wednesday, September 7, 2016

             According to one of the calendars in our house, this Sunday, September 11^th is grandparents Day. Let me repeat, in case any of our children are reading this; September 11^th is Grandparents Day! A couple of them are going to say “So what, we haven’t given you any grandkids.” Yeah, but you’ve got dogs – close enough.

            Apart from the getting older part, being a grandparent has been great. You get to ooh and aah at how cute they are, hold and cuddle them, laugh at their antics, spoil them rotten, feed them treats, play with them, read them stories, and then hand them back to their parents when they become fussy, overstimulated or need changing. As grandpa and grandma pull out of the driveway to drive home, you can’t wipe the smile off our faces.

            Not a lot is said about grandparents in the Bible. You have to figure who’s who via the various storylines and genealogies that are scattered throughout the Bible. Susan has been working on both our families’ genealogies lately. She has worked one lineage as far back as the 1500’s, and to England and Ireland. I have a multiple-times, great grandfather who came over on the Mayflower.  This process does more than just prove that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. It has given us an appreciation for our heritage, genetics and legacies that our forebears have handed down over the centuries.

            The genealogies of Jesus’ family, one found in the Gospel of Luke (Ch.3) and the other in the Gospel of Matthew (ch.1), are seldom potent sermon fodder. They are tedious to read for the most part; a lot of “begats”. Closer examination will reveal that they are also quite different. Luke begins with Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph, and works all the way back to Adam, “the son of God.” Matthew begins with Abraham and works the other way up to “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born…” Many of the names are different. Matthew included a few women, one of ill repute (Tamar) and one a foreigner (Ruth). Timelines are a little wibbly-wobbly.

            Don’t get all bent out of shape by the differences. Each Gospel writer had a very specific theological point to make by their respective lists and were probably not aiming for exactness anyway. (They didn’t have Ancestry.com to consult.)  But both wanted to emphasize that Jesus the Messiah was rooted in history, more specifically in Jewish history; that Jesus had a very specific place in time. As the Savior he was building God’s Kingdom out of the heritage of the relationship between God and his Chosen People. There was consistency and coherency to God’s Master Plan to redeem and transform his Creation.  Jesus is not some mysterious, alien being from outer space, arriving on earth; he has a proud history, an enduring lineage, a lasting heritage, and a sacred purpose which all has been passed down to him for generations. Jesus is very grounded by the forebears who preceded him and that, too, shaped what he said, what he did and how he did it.

            There have been so many times that I have wished I had recorded the stories that my grandparents and parents, even great aunts and uncles recalled, or had taped the conversations of many of the seniors of my churches who remembered growing up in the church and what it had been like, “back then”.  There is some ‘begatting’ in these stories which are legendary - the birth of faith, commitment, trust, love; stories which I love to hear.  “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come,” (Psalm 71:18).

Dale