Dunbar United Church of Christ - May 9, 2010

Interestingly, all were foreigners. Tamar was a Canaanite. She married into a Jewish family. Her husband, Er, was evil so God killed him. Her second husband, Er’s younger brother Onan, was also bad, and God killed him. She was supposed to be passed on to the third and youngest brother, Shelah, but the father, Judah, thought Tamar was bad luck so he didn’t -- though he was legally bound to give Tamar to Shelah. In her hopeless situation, Tamar dressed as a prostitute and tricked her father-in-law Judah into sleeping with her, and she became pregnant and had twin sons.

II. Another great, great grandmother of Jesus was Rahab. She was from Jericho and made her living as a prostitute. But she helped the Israelites as a spy and later converted to Judaism. According to later Jewish legend, she married Joshua and was the ancestor of eight of the prophets, including Jeremiah.

III. Ruth was another great, great grandmother of Jesus. She was a Moabite. Like the Canaanites, the Moabites were hated enemies of the Jews, but she married a good Jewish man, Boaz. They had a son, who became the grandfather of King David.

IV. The last great, great grandmother of Jesus mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy is Bathsheba. She was married to a Hittite soldier, Uriah. King David raped Bathsheba, murdered her husband, and then married her. They had children.

V. So Jesus came from quite a family: prostitutes, queens, spies, foreigners. Many of his family were enemies of the chosen people he came to save. What’s God telling us by this twisted family tree that produced Jesus?

VI. God is saying, “Look -- Jesus is one of you. You all come from this twisted tree.” We all have a healer, like aunt Louise, and a pedophile, like uncle Ned. Our genes are from farmers, priests, prostitutes and thieves. We are part scoundrel, part saint. We are the bitter and sweet fruit -- the edible and toxic arrangement -- from the great, twisted family tree of Jesus Christ.

And this is our Mother’s Day gift from God: if we keep his word, he will come, with Jesus, and make his home in us. That is the homecoming we wait and live for.