Text: Matthew 1:1-17<\/p>\n
The very name of our church, Immanuel, means \u201cGod-with-us.\u201d
\nGod is with us.
\nRight here in this very time and place.
\nLiving, moving, breathing. <\/p>\n
In times past, we relegated God to the heavens while we mundane humans continued our life here below.
\nAnd then we cried out in times of tragedy\u2026 \u201cGod, where are you?!\u201d<\/p>\n
In other times, the suffering in our midst was so stark that we thought surely God was dead\u2026 or even worse, didn\u2019t care. <\/p>\n
But that is not who God claims to be.
\nGod takes on flesh and makes a home among us.
\nAnd his name is Immanuel.
\nGod is here. <\/p>\n
Diana Butler Bass is a respected Christian academic whose books offer hope and meaning to many. In particular, she is helping us all to navigate what it means to live as people of faith in a world that increasingly doesn\u2019t care about what Christianity has to offer the world.
\nIn her book, Grounded, she wrestles with what it means to really understand that God is with us. She describes it as \u201ca social and political question with sweeping consequences for the future.\u201d If we really focus on rediscovering and relocating and reacquainting ourselves with God, Immanuel, with us right here\u2026 it will reground our lives.
\nIt will center us.
\nGive us purpose.
\nRemind us of who we are.
\nAnd\u2026
\nIt will call us to a new way of being in this world.
\nAs Butler Bass writes,
\n\u201cGod is.. that which grounds us. We experience this when we understand that soil is holy, water gives life, the sky opens the imagination, our roots matter, home is a divine place, and our lives are linked with our neighbors\u2019 and those around the globe. This world, not heaven, is the sacred stage of our times.\u201d (p 26) <\/p>\n
We are turning the corner on the Christian year and preparing for Christ to be born among us once again.
\nSo I wanted to invite us to look at some of those relationships throughout the month of November that Butler Bass claims ground us in the life of God. Our roots \u2013 or our history and ancestors\u2026. Our home lives\u2026 our neighborhoods\u2026 and this common, kingdom life to which we all belong.
\nHow should we look upon those relationships if God is truly present in the midst of them?
\nHow might our relationship with one another change? <\/p>\n
Today, we celebrate the saints who have completed the race and now rest in the presence of God.
\nWe remember their lives.
\nWe cherish their memories.
\nEach one planted seeds of faith and hope and love in us and have shaped us.
\nI asked you to share with me some of your own stories of these saints in your individual lives. <\/p>\n
One of you told me about Gramma Gert \u2013 or GG \u2013 the nucleus of your family. She never drove, but either walked or got a ride to church every Sunday. If you had anything to pray for\u2026 you took it to GG\u2026 because you knew it would get plenty of Godly time and attention. <\/p>\n
Someone else fondly remembered their third grade Sunday School teacher, Mr. Going who taught them the Lord\u2019s Prayer. Rather than simply memorizing it, they took it line by line and rewrote it in words that were easier for a child to understand. Mr. Going made faith real. <\/p>\n
Another of you shared with me the story of your great grandmother who came to Iowa from Norway in 1862 at the age of six. She dictated her own life story and left these words at the end\u2026 Love one another, Jesus has said, \u201cIf you don\u2019t love one another you don\u2019t love me\u201d\u2026 and she addressed her children and their future families saying, \u201cI have prayed for you all, I put you all in the Lord\u2019s hands\u2026 God bless you all, may we me up yonder where there is no parting anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n
Whether it was a parent, or teacher, a neighbor or great-grandparent, these people of faith left a mark on your life. <\/p>\n
One of the things I have been challenged by in Butler Bass\u2019s book, however, is to remember that our roots are far deeper than our memory.
\nWe are shaped and influenced by generations that have come and gone\u2026 and yet we seem to have forgotten their stories. <\/p>\n
I actually thought I was doing pretty good by this account.
\nMy mom and I have done a bit of genealogy work on our families. We have spent hours researching names through the Mormon genealogy center. We\u2019ve created family trees that go back not just hundreds, but thousands of years. In fact, one line that we traced goes back all the way to the year 6!
\nTogether with great-aunts and cousins, we have trampled through cemeteries in south central Iowa to find tombstones of relatives long dead and gone.
\nWe\u2019ve even gathered iris bulbs from one of those long forgotten places and brought them home to bring a piece of the family back with us. <\/p>\n
But Butler Bass notes that we save things and we gather information, but we don\u2019t often collect what those details mean to our lives. \u201cWe have more information about the past,\u201d she writes, \u201cbut less actual connection to it than those in previous ages.\u201d
\nThe truth is, I don\u2019t know the stories of most of those names I have collected together in my family history. I can tell you where they lived and died and where they are buried\u2026 but what did they experience in this life? What brought them joy? What struggles did they over come? Their stories are largely forgotten because we stopped handing them down.
\nAnd even on days like today, when we celebrate communion with the saints of God, with those who have gone before us, when we invoke their presence and their memory\u2026 do we have any sense of whom we are eating with today? <\/p>\n
Our text for this morning is in essence a family tree. It is a genealogy of Jesus Christ shared with us by the apostle Matthew in his gospel.
\nAnd truth be told, often we glance at those names and the same sense of dryness and lack of life and history overcomes us.
\nWe gloss over their names as a boring list of people we don\u2019t know.
\nBut they are our spiritual ancestors.
\nAnd who they were matters.
\nAnd who was included in those histories matters.
\nOne of the things that you might notice if you compare the genealogy of Matthew and Luke is that Matthew actually includes the names of some women!
\nWe find the story of Tamar\u2026 who was left widowed and childless in an age in which that was a death sentence. This family tree continues only because she tricked her father-in-law, Judah, into getting her pregnant by dressing up as a prostitute.
\nRahab was an actual prostitute who was part of the battle of Jericho\u2026 Joshua sent spies into the city to scout it out and Rahab is the one who sheltered them. As a result, her family was rescued and she married into one of the important families of Israel.
\nHer son, Boaz, married an foreign immigrant, Ruth, who tricked him into the relationship by getting him drunk one night.
\nWe are reminded in this genealogy that Solomon\u2019s mother was Bathsheba. His family story is one of adultery and murder as Bathsheba was taken advantage of by David. <\/p>\n
These are stories of scandal, but also intense strength, compassion, resolve, and determination. These women and the lives they led are our spiritual ancestry!
\nI wonder if Matthew perhaps included these women in his ancestry of Jesus as one way of grounding the story of Mary and Joseph and rumors and scandal circulating around his birth. But also, it was a testimony to the faithful ancestors that gave someone like Mary the courage to keep trusting God would be with her in the midst of the journey. <\/p>\n
How does knowing these stories ground our sense of purpose, identity, and ability to navigate the trials and tribulations of our lives? Might we call upon these ancestors and their faith in God to help us persevere in our own journey? <\/p>\n
Another thing you\u2019ll notice if you look at the family tree included in Matthew as opposed to the one in Luke, you\u2019ll actually find two very different stories of where Jesus comes from and what his life means, claiming political and spiritual authority from different sources!
\nMatthew grounds the life of Jesus in the history of the Jewish people. As verse 1 proudly states: A record of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham. He is the heir of the Kingdom of David and of the covenant of Abraham. He is the King of the Jews.
\nLuke\u2019s version ignores most of kings and focuses on ordinary, everyday folks who don\u2019t appear in grand stories of scripture. And his version goes all the way back, not just to Abraham, but to Adam\u2026 emphasizing the whole family of earth.
\nThere was actually a joke I heard frequently growing up that all the Czechs on the south side of the Cedar River were related to one another. Not originally, of course, but because \u201cbohemies\u201d couldn\u2019t swim, we all ended up marrying one another.
\nI saw this in my own lifetime\u2026 My Babi (grandma) was a Benesh and my Deda (grandpa) was a Ziskovsky.
\nJust two generations later, a second cousin from the Ziskovsky side married a fourth cousin from the Benesh side\u2026
\nThat\u2019s in essence Luke\u2019s point\u2026 Instead of emphasizing one thread of one famous family, he brings home the point that we\u2019re all eventually related to everyone else. His is a family tree that is a lot like the image on the front of your bulletin\u2026 with a single origin for us all.
\nWhat does it mean for our relationships with one another, if we recognized our common ancestory and inheritance as children of God? If we remembered that our stories all start in the same place, grounded in the same history, created by the same God? <\/p>\n
Today, we feast with our ancestors.
\nWe remember the lives they lived.
\nWe remember the faith they handed down.
\nAnd their lives help us to become even more grounded in our relationship with the one who not only created us, but who is right here with us.
\nA God who was, and is, and is to come.
\nImmanuel\u2026
\nGod with us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Text: Matthew 1:1-17 The very name of our church, Immanuel, means \u201cGod-with-us.\u201d God is with us. Right here in this very time and place. Living, moving, breathing. In times past, we relegated God to the heavens while we mundane humans continued our life here below. And then we cried out in times of tragedy\u2026 \u201cGod,…<\/span><\/p>\n