Upside-Down Christmas
Part 1: All in the Family
Pastor Rick Henderson December 7-8, 2024
Today, we’re kicking off a series that will take us through Christmas Eve. We’re calling it Upside Down Christmas because of an honest look at this holiday—and by honest, I mean pushing past the sentimentality that gets attached to it. Now, by all means, go enjoy holiday traditions from the silly to the sacred. But if we are able to rise above that and really see the Jesus of Christmas stripped of all the cultural trappings that mute him. If we are able to see him and what he brings, it will mess with us in good ways. It will upend us. He might wreck our expectations. And if you put the weight of your life on him, it will all get flipped upside down.
Grab a Bible and open it up to the very first book of the New Testament. It’s the Gospel of Matthew chapter 1. This is his up close and personal biography of Jesus’ life from a man who was not just an eyewitness but a close companion of Jesus. As you turn to it, I might have some disappointing news. There’s a chance that you’re going to feel like this is mind-numbingly boring.
When you read the Bible, how many of you skip the genealogies? I know, right? Why read some dude’s name you can’t pronounce who was the father of some other dude whose name you can’t pronounce? It feels like a waste of time. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I’m just a Bible nerd. But I’m convinced there is stuff to be found in it that might give you the hope that you didn’t know you needed.
A genealogy looks like a list of names, and it is. But each name is a story, and they're linked together in a long chain, telling a grand story. And I don’t want you to miss that story.
Some of you know that even though I go by Rick, my legal name is James Patrick Henderson. This ended with me, but in the Henderson line, the firstborn son is named James. And for reasons I can’t explain, we all go by our middle name or a derivative of our middle name. That is by far the least weird thing about my family.
This was my grandfather, James Horace Henderson. He grew up in rural southern Georgia. Even though that was the Bible Belt, his family was a part of a different religion; some might call it a cult. He didn’t like doing religious stuff with the family. But he was the oldest son, and it was expected.
His dad, my great-grandfather, was a business owner in their small town and was friends with the sheriff. He got the sheriff to throw my grandfather in jail one night to teach him a lesson: You worship with the family. I don’t think he learned his lesson. When he got out the next day, he left home, joined the army, and for decades was essentially an atheist.
That’s how my dad was raised. In high school, my dad was a self-described bully to Christians. There were two guys who he especially loved to humiliate. For whatever reason, these two guys prayed for my dad and kept inviting my dad to come to Bible study. One day they approached him in the locker room and invited him again. The way my dad told it was that he was wearing a towel and wanted to get rid of them, so he agreed to go if they would leave him alone.
I don’t know if that’s an evangelism strategy I’d endorse. If you’re in the locker room at the RAC and you want to invite someone to church, let him put some pants on first. But it worked. When my dad went to the Bible study, he heard about Jesus, and it changed his life.
That contributed to my grandfather eventually becoming a follower of Jesus and even a leader in his church. My dad eventually became a pastor. The story of my dad is complicated. There was some tragedy in his later years. And yet, I stand on his shoulders. My dad led me to faith in Jesus and today I get spend my life inviting others to follow Jesus.
Years ago, I was able to track down one of those high school guys who led my dad to faith in Jesus. At the time, I was a youth pastor, and I taught my students that if you know Jesus, it’s because someone thought he was worth talking about and you were worth talking to. I challenged them to find a way to thank the person who influenced them to follow Jesus.
I put that into practice by tracking down the guy who led my dad to faith. His name was Randy. I wanted him to know that I’m a pastor and he’s a key part of that story because of his influence on my dad. What I didn’t know when I called him was that he was on his deathbed. He was having his own crisis of faith. We shared a powerful phone call and more than a few tears. God used that call to revitalize his faith and do more for him than I could have expected.
So, if I were to say to you, I am James Patrick Henderson, son of James Michael Henderson, son of James Horace Henderson—you now know that there is a massive, intricate story of God’s grace packed into those 3 names. That’s why we don’t skip genealogies.
As we read this, let your mind go to the stories of those whose names you recognize. Take note of what you find interesting or what you think might be important.
MATTHEW 1:1-17 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Do you know what Jesus’ names means? God’s salvation. We are supposed to read this as, this is the story of how God’s salvation arrived. This is who we’ve all been waiting for.
Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife, Solomon the father of Rehoboam, Rehoboam the father of Abijah, Abijah the father of Asa, Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat the father of Jehoram, Jehoram the father of Uzziah, Uzziah the father of Jotham, Jotham the father of Ahaz, Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amon, Amon the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the exile to Babylon: Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel the father of Abihud, Abihud the father of Eliakim, Eliakim the father of Azor, Azor the father of Zadok, Zadok the father of Akim, Akim the father of Elihud, Elihud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus who is called the Messiah. Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah.
What stood out to you, if anything? Matthew thought it was a big deal that there were 3 sets of 14 generations from Abraham to Jesus. Don’t freak out, but there weren’t 3 sets of 14. Matthew had to edit and condense Jesus’ genealogy to make it work that way. That’s not a reason to freak out consider the Bible untrustworthy. This is where Bible scholar Tim Mackie is helpful to us.
This is not a scandal. Leaving out generations to create symbolic numbers in genealogies is a common Hebrew literary practice, going all the way back to the genealogies in Genesis (the 10 generations of Genesis 5, or the 70 descendants of Genesis 46). Ancient genealogies were ways of making theological claims, and Matthew’s readers would have understood exactly what he was doing and why. –Tim Mackie
We’ll come back to the 3 sets of 14 later. Right now, I want you to see is that Matthew was making a profound theological claim. Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies or promises that God would send a Savior. Awesome. But Matthew goes about making this claim in a provocative way. He presents Jesus simultaneously as the one we’ve been expecting yet who we could never expect.
Let’s start here.
Who he came FROM was unexpected.
To understand what Matthew is doing requires putting ourselves in a first-century Jewish mindset. That means our identity doesn’t start with us as individuals. The story of our identities would begin with our family, ancestors, and broader community. Those of you who grew up in a more traditional culture naturally get this. There’s one more thing we have to do. And this is tough for us who are products of modern Western culture. We think in terms of guilt/innocence. But to adopt a first-century Jewish mindset means that we shift to an honor/shame paradigm.
The norm would have been to highlight your family members who were honorable and hide anyone connected with shame. Because their shame was your shame too, even if you didn’t have anything to do with it. Few things would be worse than you and your family losing face. When presenting a genealogy, standard practice would have been to include honorable men, and only the men. Gloss over and exclude everybody else.
Around this time in history King Herod famously burned the public register of his family’s genealogy and rewrote a new one. He wanted to come across as more prestigious. His new genealogy might have been a work of fiction, but it was impressive. If we can understand their cultural context, it starts to become clear that it would have been nonsensical to include some of these folks and their stories in Jesus’ genealogy.
Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38)
Tamar was Judah’s daughter-in-law. Her husband died before she had a son. In that culture and point in history, the practice was for the widow to marry her husband’s brother. He would provide her with a son. And the family inheritance would be passed on through that son, ensuring mom and everyone else was provided for. That may seem strange to us, but that was their practice.
For those of you with kids, I’m going to do my best to tell this story without making the ride home too awkward. Judah’s second son did the deed with Tamar, but he employed a technique to ensure she didn’t get pregnant. His sin was so gross that God killed him. Here’s why. He was willing share a bed, but not family wealth. It was a perverse level of greed and exploitation of her body. God’s response to her abuse was swift and severe.
Judah had a third son, but he was afraid for him, so he didn’t let Tamar marry him. That put her in a kind of limbo. She was unable to get married which made her vulnerable. So, she hatched a plan. She dressed up as a prostitute and set up shop where she knew her father-in-law, Judah, would be. Probably because she was wearing a veil, he didn’t recognize her. They did some business and Tamar got pregnant.
A couple of months down the road when Tamar got that baby bump, it was scandalous. That was the kind of thing would be considered shameful to Judah and his family. So he was going to kill her. Then Tamar revealed that he was the dad. There’s never any resolution to this story. All we know is that Judah backed down and declared her more righteous than him. It’s just messy. How does being included in Jesus’ genealogy make Jesus seem more impressive?
Rahab (Joshua 2)
Rahab was an innkeeper and prostitute in the city of Jericho. She wasn’t Jewish. She was a woman of faith. She courageously protected Hebrew spies before a major battle and ultimately became part of the community. And yet, her ethnic background and work history wouldn’t have added to Jesus’ cultural prestige. Remembering that Matthew is using discretion to pick and choose who to include—what’s he trying to communicate by including her?
Ruth and Boaz (Ruth)
Hers is an incredible story of resilience and faith. Together, Ruth and Boaz have a timeless, classic love story. And yet, some details are a bit messy. Like Rahab and Tamar, Ruth was a Gentile. What is the deal with Matthew emphasizing non-Jewish women in Jesus’ genealogy?
David and Uriah’s wife (2 Samuel 11)
This one is tough. Matthew could have named her. We know her name, Bathsheba. Not naming her was not a way to slight her. Rather, it was Matthew’s way of putting a giant spotlight on the worst decision of David’s life. Uriah was a close friend of David. And yet, David used his position as King to force Bathsheba into his bed when Uriah, her husband, was away. This wasn’t consensual. It was more of a Harvey Weinstein kind of situation. And it gets worse. In an attempt to cover up his crime, he had Uriah murdered.
Why write this in such a way as to highlight this deeply grievous, shameful story? What’s the point?
Jeconiah and Zerubbabel (Jeremiah 22 and Haggai 2)
Do you know these guys? A couple of weeks ago we talked about Israel being taken into exile, in Babylon. Jeconiah is one of the major reasons why. He was so wicked as a king that God cursed him and said that his family line was cut off from the throne. A couple of generations later, God reversed that decision and restored his grandson, Zerubabbel. God’s mercy and eagerness to forgive and restore is clear. As someone with a long track record of sin, I like that about God!
But the question remains: if the purpose of this genealogy was to demonstrate that Jesus is the salvation of God that humanity has been waiting for, and the cultural expectation would have been to present the family history in the best possible light, why did Matthew go out of his way to highlight what most would have kept hidden?
I like Herbert McCabe’s answer. He was a priest, theologian, and philosopher.
One aim of Matthew is to show that Jesus really was tied into the squalid realities of human life and sex and politics.... The moral is too obvious to labour. Jesus did not belong to the nice clean world...He belonged to a family of murderers, cheats, cowards, adulterers and liars. He belonged to us and came to help us. –Herbert McCabe
Let’s do some quick Bible trivia. What was the name of the group of religious leaders who always seemed to be in conflict with Jesus? Pharisees. Do you know what motivated them? They wanted God’s blessing on their country. They wanted spiritual renewal in their country. And they sincerely believed that if they could get enough people to be devoted to keeping the religious law that God would bring about blessing and renewal. They wanted something good, and yet they created a culture of control, judgment, and imposing their own moral expectations on people. The good news is that no religious people do that anymore.
They were continually agitated with Jesus because they thought he was scandalous. They resented that he was so comfortable in messiness. They resented his generosity and grace. They wanted to believe they didn’t need grace. But Jesus came for anyone and everyone who realizes they have no hope without grace.
Who he came FOR was unexpected.
By unashamedly linking himself to the people he came from, he shows just who it is he came for.
Jesus came for the people who are ready to stop pretending and stop playing religious games. Jesus is for anyone and everyone who has given up on the mythology that we can somehow earn approval through moral and religious performance.
Jesus turns everything upside down for the religious person and he turns it all upside down for the irreligious person who has achieved an identity for himself. Jesus came for anyone and everyone who realizes there are no good and bad people. There are just people. People with moral messes, moral regrets, and moral failures. There are no hierarchies. There isn’t an in group and out group. There are just people who need a God who can make right what we’ve made wrong.
I love what pastor Tim Keller said when talking about what the genealogy of Jesus shows us.
In Jesus Christ, prostitutes and kings sit down as equals together. Male and female, Jew and Gentile, one race and another race, moral and immoral, we are all the same. –Tim Keller
Here’s my final observation.
What he came TO DO was unexpected.
The grace of Jesus is scandalous, but not because it is casual about sin. That’s absurd. Sin will kill you. Whatever sin you might be toying with right now, whatever sin you might think is neatly tucked away, I promise it will unleash hell in your life. Jesus is dead serious about sin. He went to the cross to pay the cost of it.
What makes his grace so scandalous is that he gives away so generously. There’s no one he’ll turn down or turn away.
Before we can see it, we need to understand why Matthew presented Jesus’ genealogy in three sets of 14. Numbers represented something. The number 7 represents perfection and rest. If you wanted to really emphasize what a number represent to make a point, you might multiply that number.
Here’s an example. One time Peter went to Jesus and asked how many times does he have to forgive the same person. Peter suggested 7 times. Jesus responded, No. 70x7 times.
Remember, we’re trying to think with a first-century Jewish mindset. Jesus’ genealogy was 3 sets of 14. 14 is 2 sets of 7. How many sets of 7 is that? Six. Scholars believe that Matthew is mirroring the 6 days of creation. What did God do on the seventh day? He rested. And that what Jesus brings is the 7th 7. That might sound odd, or maybe even silly. Do you know what the year of Jubilee was?
Every 49th year (7 sevens), God instituted the year of Jubilee. That meant that all property was returned to the original owners. All slaves were set free. All debts cancelled. It was a fresh start for everyone and every family. I want you to think about that while I read for you the text Jesus chose for the first sermon he preached in his hometown.
LUKE 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus made the rest of history a year of Jubilee for anyone and everyone who would trust in him. How do you want to respond to that? How do you want to respond to him?