Christmas Eve
December 24, 2010
Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass
of the
St. Thomas More Society
celebrated at
St. Clare Roman Catholic Church, 2310 N. Washington Ave.
Scranton, PA
Matthew 1:18-25
The genealogy you just heard is an optional part of the Gospel for Christmas Eve, and most years I have omitted it; but tonight I read it because I want to relate what we know about the ancestors of Joseph to what I spoke about on Sunday. Specifically, I want to contrast those parts of the genealogy that St. Matthew emphasizes with the holiness in the Catholic Church that has so drawn people into communion with her for the past 2,000 years.
From the outset I must point out that at the time of Jesus’ birth Jews inherited their Jewishness as well as the rights of sonship from their father’s line. Since Joseph was the presumed father of Jesus and had adopted Mary’s Son as his own, even though he had nothing to do with Jesus’ conception, the Law accorded Jesus all the rights of inheritance of the tribe of Judah. Thus, we see in Jesus, the adopted son of a direct descendant of Abraham and David, the fulfillment of the messianic promises. The Virgin Birth may have been a scandal in the estimation of some people, but we will see tonight that St. Matthew subtly reminds us that it is a scandal not of sin but of holiness. He observes that there are plenty of the wrong kind of scandals in Joseph’s line.
First we see that Judah, after whom the tribe of Judah took its name, and from which we have derived the word “Jew,” was less than honorable in his dealings with his own family. St. Matthew writes, “Judah the father of Perez . . .by Tamar.” Herein is the first inclusion in the genealogy of a woman, Tamar, who was Judah’s daughter-in-law. How did that happen? Well, when Judah did not give the widowed Tamar his youngest son for her to marry, she disguised herself as a harlot and waited at a place she knew Judah would pass by. Judah propositioned her, not recognizing her at all, and she became pregnant with Perez, a direct antecedent of David.
The next woman mentioned is Rahab. Rahab was not a pretend prostitute, but a real one, and she sheltered the Israelite spies that Joshua sent into Jericho before the conquest of the Promised Land had begun. The spies promised her that she and all her household would be spared in return for her act of kindness. And, indeed, when the Israelites conquered Jericho and slaughtered all the inhabitants of the city, only Rahab and her household were spared. Rahab, a Gentile prostitute, became the mother of Boaz, a descendent of Perez and another direct antecedent of David.
David, of course, is involved in the most famous scandal of all in the Old Testament, and St. Matthew makes sure we remember by making reference to one his wives, but without actually recording her name. St. Matthew identifies Bathsheba as “the wife of Uriah.” Even if you aren’t familiar with the stories of Tamar and Rahab, you know about the sin of David, how he first impregnated the wife of one of his soldiers, and when he could not cover it up, had Uriah killed and then took the poor man’s bride for himself. Uriah’s wife became by David the mother of Solomon, the second in the Davidic line of kings.
St. Matthew draws attention to these three women, not to demean them. All three are, after all, in a sense victims of the lust of men. Rather, these three women are signs to us that remind us how God brings good out of evil. Joseph is a direct descendent of David and Abraham because a number of his forefathers chose not to exercise the virtues of self-control, temperance, and justice. From this line of unholy men – and I didn’t even talk tonight about the kings who sacrificed their own children to false gods – came the man tasked with serving as the foster-father of the Son of God. Joseph didn’t have anything to do with the choices of his ancestors, but he did come from them. With St. Matthew we see, then, that holy children can come from unholy parents.
Perhaps we see in our own family tree, recently or long ago, that our forefathers led less than exemplary lives. And yet here we are. Despite their sinfulness, God nonetheless used our ancestors as vessels of grace who played a part in bringing us into the world. And even if they chose not to serve God with all their heart, soul, and mind, their sins do not prevent us from giving our lives to Jesus, just as Joseph did. By listening to God, and following His commands, as St. Joseph did in protecting and providing for the Christ child, we can be part of the generation that starts anew, that experiences the rebirth that the Son of God intended for us when He chose to become man and dwell among us.
But maybe the issue is not our blood lines. Maybe we come from good people; but for all our goodness and our fathers’ goodness, we’re still outsiders, or at least we feel like outsiders. St. Matthew has a woman for us who feel like outsiders, who feel alone. She is the fourth woman named in the genealogy we heard tonight, and she is not the victim of man’s lust or caprice. She is instead the beneficiary of a man’s kindness, generosity and ultimately, his love. Her husband was Boaz, and her name is Ruth.
Ruth was a Gentile married to a Jew; yet when her husband died, she chose to cleave to her mother-in-law, Naomi, insistent that Naomi’s people would be her people and Naomi’s God her God. Her fidelity to the God of Israel was rewarded, and she became the great-grandmother of King David. We see in the visit of the Magi that Jesus at his birth is not only the king of all the nations. In the genealogy we see that His inheritance from Joseph includes the peoples of the nations, as well. St. Matthew, in including this information, is telling us that the Gospel is not exclusive, but inclusive. If we weren’t born a Jew, it’s okay—neither were all the forefathers of “…Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”
This second point is particularly salient for those of us who have come home to Holy Mother Church, from which we and our fathers had been away for hundreds of years, for generation after generation. We are converts, but the Church doesn’t care. In fact, the Church expects that we can make significant contributions to the life of the Church, as significant as was Ruth’s contribution to the line of David; and to drive home the point, our Holy Father traveled to England this year to beatify the most important theologian of the 19th century, an Anglican convert to the true Faith named John Henry Newman. Our contributions may not end up being of the same caliber, but the Church fully expects that they can be; for as St. Gabriel tells us in St. Luke, “. . .with God nothing will be impossible.” However some uncharitable people might view converts to the faith, we are not outsiders at all; to God and His Church we are insiders, and that is all that truly matters. We, too, can listen to God, obey His commands, be faithful to Jesus, and become as worthy of our role as was St. Joseph of his.
The birth of Jesus that we celebrate tonight represents this new beginning that God desires for all his sons and daughters. And that new beginning is available to those whose family trees are a scandal, as well as to those families who have only recently boarded the barque of Peter. What we recall as Christians is that our past is not nearly so significant as the present choice we have to make to accept the holiness from God that can transform our lives. Rather than dwell on the past, the Christmas narrative of St. Matthew beckons us to look to the future, to celebrate in hope, anticipating the amazing things God will accomplish through us, if we say yes to the scandal of holiness.