A Advent 3 OL BFC 2019
Isaiah 35:1-10; Matthew 1:1-17
December 15, 2019
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 Mulberries 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. He 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 Caesar 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.
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 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. 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 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. 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
No comments:
Post a Comment