A MOSAIC OF THE MESSIAH

Scripture Reading: Matthew 1:1-17 (NT p. 1)

This morning I want to tell you a Christmas story that you’ve probably never heard before. You may have read it, but I suspect you glanced over it quickly and didn’t really take the time to go through it. The Christmas story I want to tell you comes from the book of Matthew and contains the first seventeen verses of the book. What I want us to think about this morning is why Matthew would begin the story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this way, with a recitation of Jesus’ family tree. So I’d like to read the passage, and, as I read it, make a little commentary on the passage. You follow along with the passage as it’s printed in your bulletin.

Chapter one, verse of the Gospel According to Matthew:

1 An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 2 Abraham was the father of Isaac…

Luke, writing to perhaps a Gentile audience, begins his genealogy of Jesus with Adam, the common father of the whole human race. Matthew, on the other hand, presumably writing to Jewish Christians, begins with Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people. And a family tree that culminates with the surprising birth of Jesus begins with a surprising birth. You’ll remember that Sarah, the wife of Abraham, laughed when God said she’d have a son because she thought she was too old, and so God named the child Isaac which, in Hebrew, means “Laughter.”

and Isaac the father of Jacob,

Jacob was the younger son of Isaac. Why is it that he’s listed here in the list of ancestors rather than Isaac’s older son and therefore rightful heir, Esau? Do you remember why? Taking advantage of his father’s blindness, Jacob put on a hairy cloak and covered himself with an animal smell so that this father Isaac would think he was Esau. Jacob stole Esau’s birthright.

and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

You’ll remember Judah and his brothers – they were the ones that tried to kill their brother Joseph because they were jealous of his coat of many colors.

2 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar,

Why would Matthew depart here from the usual practice of tracing ancestry exclusively through males? Why does he mention a woman, Tamar? Well, perhaps to remind us of her story. Tamar was Judah’s daughter-in-law. After she became a widow, Judah promised he would take care of her. When he didn’t and Tamar was facing poverty, Tamar posed as a prostitute and her father-in-law Judah made her pregnant. In this way Tamar ensured that she and her twins would be taken care of.

and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram,

Now we come across names that have no stories connected with them. All that is remembered about them are their names.

3 and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon,

Nahshon, we’ve heard of. Nahshon was one of the twelve tribal chiefs under Moses in the wilderness.

4 and Nahshon the father of Salmon, ⁵ and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth,

You remember the story of Boaz and Ruth – Ruth was the one who told her mother-in-law “Whither thou goest, I will go” and ended up marrying her elder cousin Boaz. Ruth was a Gentile, by the way.

and Obed the father of Jesse, ⁶ and Jesse the father of King David.

Jesse was a nobody from nowheresville, a shepherd from Bethlehem who had eight sons. The prophet Samuel was told by God that one of the sons would be the next king of Israel. After looking all eight of them over, God chose the littlest one, David. With David, Matthew ends the first third of Jesus’ family tree.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,

^{Here is the second mention of a woman. Why would Matthew remind us about Uriah and his wife? Remember him, the husband of Bathsheba who David arranged to have killed in the front lines of battle so that David could marry his widow?}

⁷ and Solomon the father of Rehoboam,

Rehoboam had seventeen wives and was a bad king – Israel split into two separate countries because he was so bad.

and Rehoboam the father of Abijah,

Another bad king.

and Abijah the father of Asaph, ⁸ and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat,

Jehoshaphat – a great name and a great king.

and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah,

Uzziah was a good king who got leprosy during his reign.

⁹ and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz,

Ahaz was a really bad king and a really bad man who burned his own sons as a sacrifice to idols.

and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,

Hezekiah was as good as his father was bad.

¹⁰ and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah,

Two bad kings and one good king.

¹¹ and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.

Jechoniah was only eight years old and had reigned for only three months when the kingdom was taken over by the Babylonians and Jechoniah was taken away to Babylon. With the exile to Babylon, Matthew ends the second third of Jesus’ family tree.

¹² And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel,

Zerubbabel returned to Jerusalem but not as king - as a Governor, a puppet, really, for the Persian Empire.

¹³ and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor,

¹⁴ and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud,

Nothing is known about these folks except that they are links in a chain. They were not famous, they were not kings or governors or rulers. We don’t know if they were good or bad people. All we remember are their names.

¹⁵ and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob,

¹⁶ and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.

Here, at the very end, is the third mention of a woman and another of those strange twists and turns. Matthew writes like this – “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born…” Jesus’ ancestry is traced through Joseph but his biological connection to Joseph is that he was married to Mary.

¹⁷ So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.

Remember – the number seven was the perfect number in the Hebrew culture. So three times fourteen generations means three times double perfection which led to the birth of the Messiah.

But what’s so perfect about the family history Matthew has just related? The chain of human beings that led up to Jesus is chock full of weak links. I’ve always loved the expression, “If you shake anybody’s family tree, a few nuts are bound to fall out.” Well, Jesus’ family tree has more than its share of nuts. So what does that tell us about the Messiah? What does that tell us about what God was doing through this long family history leading up to the birth of Jesus?

I want to answer that question sideways by doing a little show and tell. I’m sure you’ve been wondering why in heaven’s name this curious insert was placed in your bulletin this morning, the one with the strange pictures. I’d like you to first look at this side of paper – it’s a painting entitled “Big Self-Portrait” and features a close-up view of a man with scraggly hair, in his late twenties, and smoking a cigarette.

(See picture at http://www.artsconnected.org/artsnetmn/identity/close.html)

This may look familiar to some of you, especially those with Minneapolis connections. It hangs in the Walker Art Center there. An art teacher might tell you that this painting is an example of “photo-realism.” It looks like a photograph, doesn’t it? But it ‘s actually a huge painting – nine feet by seven feet – created by painting thousands of small white, black, and various shades of grey dots to create a photographic effect. From a distance it looks exactly like a photograph. Because of its huge size, you see all the vivid details down to the nose hairs. In fact, you get the feeling you could crawl right up the nose and yank a few out. As you get closer, however, you can see more clearly that it has been painted as a bunch of dots.

Now, here’s the big question - What’s with the hair? The wild hair on his head, the uneven mustache, the wild chest hair and even the hair in the nose? Let the artist explain: “There is a tradition of emphasizing those key areas of the face which control likeness (the eyes, nose, and lips), while the skin, neck, hair and background are not considered of primary importance in the reading of a portrait. I wanted to make those areas almost as interesting and important as the more symbolic areas of the face.” It seems Chuck Close in this painting is asking us to more closely notice, even honor those human features that have usually been considered mundane, even vulgar.

Now I want you to turn the piece of paper over. Again, this is a self portrait by Chuck Close, but this time created nearly thirty years later. (See picture at http://www.gunnarnordstrom.com/dynamic/artwork_display.asp?ArtworkID=166.) This second work is, I believe, currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. Something has obviously changed from his earlier work. No more photo-realism. This is more obviously a painting assembled from hundreds of smaller parts. Take a close look at each of the small squares which make up this painting. One square by itself is meaningless, a few dabs of contrasting color. Why the change?

On Dec. 7, 1988, at the age of 49, Chuck Close was at the height of his career as a portrait painter when he was stricken with a spinal blood clot that left him a quadriplegic. Most thought his career was over. As he came to grips with life in a motorized wheelchair, unable to move from the neck down, with little hope for improvement, his biggest fear was that "I was not going to make art. Since I'll never be able to move again, I would not be able to make art. I watched my muscles waste. My hands didn't work."

In early 1989, he began a grueling rehabilitation program but was feeling hopeless. Then his wife insisted that Close get back to painting. At first, he held a brush between his teeth, and he could control it enough to paint. "I suddenly became encouraged," he says. "I tried to imagine what kind of teeny paintings I could make with only that much movement. I tried to imagine what those paintings might look like. Even that little bit of neck movement was enough to let me know that perhaps I was not powerless. Perhaps I could do something myself."

Later, he regained some movement in his upper arm, and his therapists fashioned a hand split onto which they could tape a paint brush. With great effort, Close drew a primitive grid on cardboard. He could barely move the upper portion of his arms. He moved the brush around in the paint for as long as he could bear it – usually one or two seconds – and he then attempted to daub it into the space of the grid he made.

He was making lozenge shapes with the paintbrush strapped to his hand. "I saw that each grid was in fact a tiny painting," he says. "I thought about making little teeny paintings. I'll paint in my lap little two-inch paintings backed with Velcro and then they'll all go together on the wall like a big jigsaw puzzle. It will eventually build a big picture. I didn't want to lose the scale of my work. This would address the problem of how I'd build a big painting. I'd paint little pictures and then have assistants mount them on the wall."

Now you understand why this second self-portrait is so different. I believe the creation of art is, first and foremost, an assertion on the part of the artist that she or he has a soul, for that is the place from which the artist observes and creates. Chuck Close’s body was crippled. His hands were useless. Take a close look at this self-portrait. This is a man who found a way to tell us once again that he has a soul.

Now, what does this have to do with Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus? Chuck Close took his broken body and the broken pieces of his life and literally created art out of them, out of little pieces, little broken pieces that make no sense by themselves, but, when put together create something beautiful, something soulful. Matthew gives us a list of people that lead up to the birth of a messiah. Some of these people are broken. Some are insignificant. Some are downright evil. And yet God patched them together, small broken pieces, to create a mosaic that, when viewed from a distance, takes on the appearance of a face: Jesus Christ. God’s masterpiece.

Christmas is a season of beautiful music, glowing lights, quiet evenings, and broken pieces. That’s how it’s always felt to me. At this time of year more than any other, we are conscious of the broken pieces of our families, our world, our lives. Sometimes our hearts feel like broken glass shaking inside of us. Yet our faith declares that God is an artist whose best work consists of broken pieces, carefully picked up, brushed off, re-polished, and rearranged into something beautiful.

My challenge to you this morning is to see God’s art, God’s handiwork, emerging from the broken places of your own life.

Perhaps this Christmas not only offers you a special joy but finds you with a special grief. But even through the prism of your tears the Messiah can shine through.

Maybe this is a Christmas when the heartfelt wish of your child for a certain toy couldn’t be met because you simply didn’t have the money. But is the image of God found more in the things or in the love we offer one another?

Or is this Christmas gathering going to feel incomplete because a son is serving in Iraq, a daughter stationed in Afghanistan, a wife has to leave Christmas dinner to tend to an emergency, a brother and his family won’t be coming by because of a dispute whose precise cause you can’t even recall? But God can take the jagged edges of our disappointment and pain and fit them into a new place, creating a larger picture of hope.

All the broken pieces, all the incomplete pictures, the fragments of left-over dreams, God can bring them together, creating a mosaic of the Messiah, the astounding presence of Immanuel, the miraculous appearance of Jesus in our lives, in our stories, in our families, in our world.

Praise be to God. Amen.

Sermon preached by Reverend Steve Savides at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on December 23, 2007.