From Generation to Generation:
There’s Room for Every Story
Matthew 1:1-17
November 27, 2022
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Image: Genealogy of Christ by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman
©A Sanctified Art LLC sanctifiedart.org
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/t5gGGdtZwxs
My part of the Donley family, which included my grandparents, their five sons and spouses and their children used to gather for Thanksgiving in mid-October. We did it then because my grandparents spent the winter in Florida and they left their home in Illinois by November 1. When I was growing up, that October weekend included a family cider-making project. Downed apples were harvested from a local orchard and we spent all day washing apples and running them through a cider press. By nightfall, every household had 4 or 5 gallons of cider to take home. One time I asked my grandfather how they came to own the cider press. He said to me, “Your grandmother thought she would enjoy it. She asks for so little that I wanted to get it for her.”
He was speaking about my grandmother who had gone to work in the local Motorola factory assembling radios during World War II. She raised her children through the Great Depression. Later those sons would pick buckets of wild blackberries which she made into jam to sell to earn the money to show their cows at the state fair. She was a frugal, resourceful woman.
I once told Jim the story of how my grandfather bought the cider press for my grandmother. Every so often, if I mention something that might be nice to have, Jim will say “You ask for so little. We should get that.” Of course, Jim is being ironic. My life experiences are very different from my grandmother’s and my wish list has been quite long in comparison.
The cider-making days were over long before Jim joined the family, but he knows that story. And he keeps it alive by quoting my grandfather to me every now and then. We undoubtedly all have stories like that. A tradition, a memory, an heirloom, a family rule that started in a previous generation.
Matthew’s version of Jesus’ family tree is full of all kinds of stories. Stories about cowardice and courage, about people who were so well-behaved that they barely made history, stories of heartache and betrayal and resilience and faithfulness.
We see the expected patterns, like when the eldest son carries the line forward, and surprises, when it is the second-born (Jacob) or even the fourth-born (Judah) who becomes God’s primary covenantal partner. A big surprise is the inclusion of five women in this time when the fathers and grandfathers were considered the only ones who mattered.
Each of these women has a remarkable story to tell. Many were Gentiles who came to play an important role in Jewish history. If you’ve been at Emmanuel for a while, you might remember that one year, we spent all four weeks of Advent remembering Ruth’s story. Another year, we spent the time with the other women named in Jesus’ family tree. Most were connected to some scandal or impropriety, which was not usually their doing. Each was resilient and resourceful, surviving and even thriving in a world where they held little power.
Some actions have consequences that bear on generations far into the future. Joseph who ended up in Egypt because his brothers hated him, became the Pharoah’s right-hand man. He exploited the disaster of a 7-year famine to enrich the Pharoah and make the people of Egypt into slaves. In Genesis 47, we read “All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them; and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.” In tragic irony, the next book of the Bible, Exodus, opens with Joseph’s own descendants having been made slaves in Egypt.[1]
If we delve into the family tree, we see that God is at work in the particularity of individual lives and also in a bigger pattern across history. God makes a way for a baby named Moses to survive the genocidal intentions of one Pharaoh. Then God delivers God’s people from another Pharoah through the leadership of the adult Moses in the Exodus.
Pharaohs and kings are powerful, but not strong enough to thwart God’s purposes. Babylon was ultimately no threat to God’s intentions, and Matthew wants to say to his readers fourteen generations later, that Rome will not prevail either.[2]
The last man named in Jesus’ family tree is Joseph. The ancestral line is traced through his side of the family, which is another kind of surprise, because Matthew will insist that Mary had not known Joseph in any physical way when she became pregnant with Jesus. One scholar suggests that the entire genealogy is a “parody of pedigree,” [3] that Matthew is poking fun at the ways human beings find meaning in knowing who our ancestors were and continuing to identify with our heroes and against our enemies. Our history is important, but it is not destiny. The inclusion of Joseph is a reminder that kinship is not just biological. It encourages us to dig deeper into the complexities and contradictions of human existence. Our lineage includes all those who nurture and confront us, protect us and change us.[4] This message will be especially important to the new community that Jesus is forming, the community that will require allegiance to him over loyalty to fathers and mothers and siblings.
The genealogy underscores, over and over again, that Jesus is born into the human family with all of our triumphs and trials, all of our plans and good intentions and best efforts and disappointments and shameful memories. If we read closer, it also reveals the very nature of God. God is the one who, time and time again, welcomes outsiders, redeems scoundrels and schemers, honors those who pursue justice, and invites siblings to be reconciled.
Today, the church year begins again. We receive again the stories and scriptures and traditions of faith that have come down to us from generation to generation. The work of God is always unfolding in each of us, in this historical time and place, and there is room for every story. If you come to this season with the wide-eyed wonder of a child on Christmas Eve or the cynicism of a skeptic who has experienced too many years of human interactions, you belong here. If you come burdened by the consequences of history, fighting for justice or shamed by trauma, there is a place for you. Whether you are joyful or grieving or faking it ‘til you make it, God is at work for your good. This Advent, may we remember that we belong to a story etched into the wrinkles of time, to generations that have come before us and will come after, a story of a love that will not let us go. Amen.
[1] Bert Newton, Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew’s Gospel,
[2] Warren Carter, Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations (Harrisburg, PA : Trinity Press International, 2001) p. 162
[3] Bert Newton, Bible Study: Parody and Subversion in Matthew’s Gospel,
[4] Susan R. Andrews, in Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew, Volume 1, Cynthia Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2013) p. 4.