The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (1:1-25)
Today is the annual Sunday when deacons all around the world have to struggle to repeat many long, strange and complicated names. It is the Sunday before the feast of Nativity, the Sunday of the genealogy. The Church makes sure to give us this Sunday before the feast as a necessary reminder. Jesus Christ is part of a larger story. He did not appear as an alien from the sky. No! He is part of a story that was being told for many centuries before His birth. He is related to His people. He has the bloodline of His mother Mary. He also has the lineage by law, from the man whom everyone considered to be His earthly father, Joseph. Of course we know that in fact, Christ had no human father, nevertheless, according to the Jewish understanding, Joseph was His father, and treated as such.
As we dig through this great list of names we recognize a list of who’s who of the Old Testament. The history of Israel is unveiled in the names of these people. We recognize that many of them are great figures, yet some of them were not so great. Many were virtuous, and some were less than virtuous. Some of them had moments of great treachery as well as highlights in their life where they showed tremendous faith in the Lord. We are reminded that the history of Israel is imperfect in the earthly sense. Yet we are comforted that God does not need man made perfection in order to do His work and fulfill His will and His plans.
Each of us is part of a family as well. You will agree that our families are not perfect. No family is perfect because it contains human beings who are created in the image and likeness of God but are nevertheless subject to the passions and sinful inclinations. So no matter how wonderful your family might be, they are not perfect. We shouldn’t idolize them or disparage them. God made each of us a part of our family according to His will for our lives and according to His plan for our salvation. Not a single detail has escaped the Lord’s watchful eye. If this is true for each of us, how much more is it true for the details that surround the people of Israel and the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ?
Every detail mattered and God used them all because He always planned to have His Son Jesus Christ save the whole universe. The people listed above were often far from perfect. Yet, God found a way to weave their lives and the details of those lives into a redemptive story and by doing so, He redeems them as well. And in the course of hearing their names and learning the Old Testament stories about them, we come to understand that without the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, we and they would be without hope because of the multitude of our sins and failings. We are truly a collective mess apart from the great grace of the living God.
St. John of Kronstadt said “Why, and for what reason, was there such condescension [shown] on the part of the Creator toward His transgressing creatures – toward humanity which, through an act of its own will had fallen away from God, its Creator? It was by reason of a supreme, inexpressible mercy toward His creation on the part of the Master, Who could not bear to see the entire race of mankind – which, He, in creating, had endowed with wondrous gifts – enslaved by the devil and thus destined for eternal suffering and torment.”
The great grace of God is shown in a most powerful way in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This incarnation did not begin on December 25th, on Christmas day. No. The incarnation began on March 25th when the Virgin Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit. Until now we still have those who do not accept the teachings of the Church on conception, pregnancy and the great sin of abortion. This is not a women’s right issue as the world would have you believe. It is an issue of human rights for those who have no voice whatsoever, for the fetus in the womb, including the 50% that are female. But it’s not just an issue of human rights.
This is an issue of right versus wrong. You are free to hold whatever position you like, but you are not free to do so while claiming to also be a practicing, believing, faithful Orthodox Christian. The two are incompatible. Be bold in standing against the world and those who want to have fellowship with darkness. Young people, teens, young adults, be bold in standing up for Christian teaching. You are meant to be a light to the world. If you won’t be bold in your faith, who will be? And when at times you meet those who are difficult or stubborn, walk away from such discussions because wolves do not honor what is sacred, and they have no problem tearing it apart.
Even if we had not known the incarnation of Christ, this teaching would be true but how much more sanctified and powerful is this truth once we have understood that our Lord Jesus Christ also partook of this aspect of our lives? He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in his humanity and He developed as a fetus within the womb. The hymns tells us that the womb of Mary became more spacious than the heavens, because this womb held God. All of this to save us from our sins…Emmanuel, God with us!
We have put on Christ who first put on our humanity. This humanity that he put on was from a lineage full of various kinds of people. Some good, and some not so good. But now that we have received Christ we have to choose which side of the story we would like to be on. On whose side will we stand? Who will we serve? As we draw near to the feast of Nativity, let us be like Joshua the son of Nun and say “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”
Source: Sermons