I
wanted to offer a trigger warning this morning knowing that we are going to
talk about rape. It is spoken about to neither glamorize or
trivialize but to recognize it as the violence done to
others. Please be good to your own emotional and mental well-being
as I share. (Prayer)
In 1962, the son of a
tribal chieftan, an attorney, member of the African National Congress and
founder of the powerful Youth League within the African National Congress was
arrested. South African security police arrested Nelson Mandela for
his opposition to the white government and its apartheid ("separateness")
policies of racial, political, and economic discrimination against the nonwhite
majority. In 1964, the government brought further charges including sabotage,
high treason, and conspiracy to overthrow the government. At the opening of his
defense in the 1964 trial, Mandela made a statement that would result in him
receiving a sentence for 27 years.
He began that speech by speaking about
the basis for his authority before the South African court.
In my youth in the Transkei I listened to the elders of my tribe telling stories of the old days. Amongst the tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in defence [sic] of the fatherland. The names of Dingane and Bambata, Hintsa and Makana, Squngthi and Dalasile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised as the glory of the entire African nation. I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle. This is what has motivated me in all that I have done in relation to the charges made against me in this case.
Later in that same
speech, as he defined who he was and his political position, Mandela said,
I have always regarded
myself, in the first place, as an African patriot. After all, I was born in
Umtata, forty-six years ago. My guardian was my cousin, who was the acting
paramount chief of Tembuland, and I am related both to the present paramount
chief of Tembuland, Sabata Dalindyebo, and to Kaizer Matanzima, the Chief
Minister of the Transkei.
We may think
genealogies in the Bible the most boring and unimportant information found,
other than the number of cubits God gave Noah to construct the ark. But in the
ancient world, genealogies communicated important information. Much like
Mandela defines himself through his family history, ancient genealogies were
about a “claim to authority, to place, to political or civil rights, various
social roles, or even the right to speak. Genealogies justified privilege,
provided a written pedigree, and a long genealogy was a mark of honor.
Genealogies were guides to social interaction” and where one ranked in the
world. In keeping with a male-dominated society, genealogies like the one in
Matthew were traced through Joseph and established a man’s social status in the
world.
But there is
something odd going on in the Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy.
Much like you might
know me as from the ancient clan of Mulberrys who were hallowed kings and
prolific speakers, known for stirring speeches and calls to virtuous lives. Revered and praised for his silver-tongued
soliloquies and referenced as the first-ever Renaissance man, the Grand Duke of
Dansbury, Pip Mulberry, was known as a teller of stories, baron of commerce,
and a maker of a great souffle. Isn't that what we're all looking for when we
put together those family genealogies?
Yeah, well, the real
story is that James Mulberry was caught stealing a silken handkerchief, was
brought before the English court, and told that he could either go to Turtle
Island as an indentured servant or be hung for his crime. Luckily, my good man,
ancestor James, may have been a criminal, but he was not stupid. The Mulberry
clan settled in the lands of the Shawnee and Cherokee as indentured servants
and moved north through lands of the Osage, Miami, and Peoria. I'm sure
Mulberry royalty is somewhere back in the history. If our
family genealogist had only dug a little deeper . . . Maybe.
One of the things
Scripture teaches is that God does not see the world as we might see
it. Too often, we see things as they are and do not recognize what
might happen if viewed through the eyes of God, when God
arrives. Isaiah 35 relates that transformation where wilderness and
dry land bloom and blossom, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap, and
violent predators are nowhere to be found. Salvation has
come. The land is now a safe place for community life and
conduct. It is almost as if joy cannot be known unless we know the
flip side of suffering and struggle. One has to know how vast and
empty the wilderness is to know how bountiful it is when pools appear, springs
of water show, and color and blossom break out. God arrives in the
messiness of the wasteland.
By the same measure,
today we have the genealogy of Jesus found in the Gospel of
Matthew. Matthew’s genealogy is different than Luke’s in some
significant ways. For example, Matthew includes four women in his
genealogy. And they are all women who are sexually
suspect. Tamar’s name appears two other times in
Scripture. She disguises herself as a prostitute to have sex with
her father-in-law in Genesis. In another incarnation, in I Samuel, Tamar
is the daughter of David who is raped and abducted. The second female
name is Rahab who is a prostitute and a foreigner who helped Israelite
spies. The third female name is Ruth who was a foreigner from Moab
and offered herself sexually to Boaz to protect herself and her Israelite
mother-in-law, Naomi. The fourth female name mentioned
is the foreigner Bathsheba who was raped by King David only to have the child
born as a result of that rape, die. Finally, Mary of Nazareth is
mentioned among all these women who are sexually suspect in a patriarchal
world. Almost all the women are not ethnically
Jewish. What is the author of Matthew trying to say about the unwed,
pregnant Mary? And why wasn’t she stoned for presumably breaking
Jewish Law by having sex before marriage? Maybe some historical
background would help.
Shortly before the
birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Herod the Great, a much-disliked, paranoid
territorial ruler, died. Herod the Great, known as the King of the Jews, was so
paranoid he even had one of his sons executed for high treason. He was so
ruthless that the Romans would say of him, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than
Herod’s son.” Herod’s the Great’s economic, political, and religious
policies put a huge strain on Jewish peasant life. For he was known
as a city builder, and building opulent cities mined the resources of Jewish
communities to export out and demanded higher taxes of the rural
populace. Herod the Great built these cities for the lifestyles of
the rich and famous and named one of those cities after Caesar
himself. In today’s world, caring nothing for the remainder of
the populace, we might say that Herod was “politically smart” and knew how to
keep his head on his shoulders by serving these wealthy and elite
interests. When Herod the Great died, Jewish rebels and
revolutionaries saw a power void and an opportunity. Jewish
rebellion, which had been simmering just below the surface, exploded upon
Herod's death.
One of the leaders of
that rebellion was Judas the Galileean, his father killed by Herod the
Great. One of the centers of that rebellion was the city of
Sepphoris, four miles north of the rural, backwater town of Nazareth.
Following Herod the
Great’s death, Augustus Caesar divided the territory of Herod’s kingdom up
among three other sons. But the military forces of Herod's sons
could not quell the Jewish rebellion. As a result, Rome took notice. The
military commander Quinctillius Varus had been set up in Syria to provide a
boundary to Rome's greatest military threat to the east—the Parthian Empire.
You may know the Parthian Empire by the names of their independent, royal
spiritual advisors—the Magi.
Just around the year
of Christ’s birth, Commander Varus had up to 36,000 soldiers at his disposal
and he moved in with all of his Roman legions and burned the cities of
Sepphoris and Emmaus to the ground. Two thousand men were crucified. All other
able-bodied men were enslaved and/or sent to the galleys where they were kept
just barely alive, chained in the dark, living in their own filth, probably
surviving less than a year. All of the girls and women in the Roman military
path, particularly in defenseless rural communities like Nazareth, would have
been raped.
Caesar Augustus
appointed Herod the Great's son, Herod Antipas, to govern Galilee. In a display
of patronage, and in keeping with the city building tradition of his father,
Antipas rebuilt Sepphoris as a thoroughly Roman city with marble palaces,
colonnaded streets, a theater, and Roman baths, such that Sepphoris became
known in the Roman Empire as the “jewel of Galilee.” While the rural area
around Sepphoris remained Jewish, Sepphoris was the city set upon a hill, four
miles north of Nazareth, that reminded Galileean Jews of the opulence,
oppression, and cruelty of the Roman Empire every day.
That is the context
for Matthew’s genealogy. Every day, the people of Nazareth could
look four miles to the north, where they could see the city of Sepphoris and
remember the Roman legions as they marched toward them. Every day,
they could look four miles north to see Sepphoris, the city set upon a hill,
and know that the city was being re-done in Rome’s image. The
Nazareth farmers who were left, probably only older men, would never pose a
threat to a Roman centurion. Many of those farmers had lost their land
due to leveraged debt. The former farmers would make their way to
Sepphoris and make a little money by re-building the city, a city where they
had probably lost countless friends and relatives. Tradespeople,
like carpenters, were peasants who had lost their land. And every day they would walk to Sepphoris to
rebuild Sepphoris in Rome’s image.
Every day, Roman
imperial presence was in the face of those Jews remaining in Sepphoris or
coming to town to ply their trade from rural backwater towns like Nazareth, all
who had survived the military massacre wrought by Quinctillius Varus.
In this wilderness
and wasteland, stands Mary of Nazareth. The Virgin Birth may be
important to many of you and your faith understanding. If that is
important, I don’t want to take that away from you. But in the
messiness of our own lives—the imperfection, sometimes the wilderness and
wasteland, the places where trauma and pain and the impossible are held, God
arrives. God arrives. And because we have known
suffering, wilderness and wasteland, we might also know joy. (long
pause)
One of the projects I
had the most fun doing in my almost 30 years of ordained ministry was using a
Senior High Youth Group in central Illinois to retell the Christmas story
through video camera. Mary and Joseph are dating at Olivet Nazarene College
in Kankakee, Illinois, when just around the holidays Mary confirms that she
does indeed see a plus sign on the home pregnancy test. Joseph is in
disbelief. Must have been some other guy but it wasn’t
me. Our Mary was great at giving Joseph “side-eye” when he delivered
these lines. Our angel was Mary’s sister, Beth, who convinces Joseph
that he does need to go home with Mary for the holidays and face the music.
Mary and Joseph
return home to Morton, Illinois, on school break, where they chatter with Mom
and Dad about how school is going in stilted sentences, until . . . Mary blurts
out, “Mom, Dad, I’m pregnant.” A TV news director helped us splice
together the minivan passing by, screeching to a halt, and then dad throwing
luggage and Joseph and Mary out into a nearby cornfield. Joseph and
Mary try to get into one of the nearby hotels but an impending Barry Manilow
concert makes it impossible. Mary and Joseph ask the pastor of our
church if they can use his garage. We just happened to do it on the
night of Church Council meeting so the last shot is Joseph and Mary and the
babe and the Church Council behind them singing “Silent Night,” all done in the
Senior Pastor’s garage. The kids loved it, and they remarked that
they had never thought through how scandalous and messy the Christmas story
truly was.
Some adults hated
it. And they let me know. How
dare I promote pre-marital sex! I had rubbed the romance off the
Christmas story. But that’s the difference, right? Many
of us want a story that makes the holiday more bright and
cheery. And some of us need a story that saves our lives, that
identifies with the pain and suffering, trauma and wasteland that is our
lives. Some of us need a story that reminds us that God arrives into
the mess, however painful and scarred, wilderness and wasteland, fragile and
vulnerable to create a space for us. Where in the world does the
story have to remain romantic so that transformation never
happens? And where does the story become real so that transformation
is possible, because people have been waiting to hear that good news in
painful, waste, and suspect places?
Tamar, Rahab, Ruth,
Bathsheba, and Mary of Nazareth magnify the Living and Holy God with an
understanding that their stories do not end when all seems lost. As
the author of Matthew observes, this is not one-time thing. God
keeps arriving. In the midst of the suffering, pain, and trauma of
your life, my prayer is that those wildernesses have opened your eyes for
joy. Because God keeps arriving. God keeps
arriving. During this season, we desperately need a story that does not
make things cheery and bright. We need a story that saves
us. God keeps arriving. Amen.
Sources: Richard L.
Rohrbaugh and Bruce J. Malina, Social Science Commentary on the
Gospels Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2002; Article by
Jona Lendering, http://www.livius.org/q/quinctilius/varus.html; Rev
Dawn Hutchings, December 17, 2012 http://pastordawn.com/tag/advent-sermon-mary-of-nazareth-raped/; www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14647-varus-quintilius
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