Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 17, 2013

Sev­er­al years ago the direc­tor of an RCIA pro­gram in the Oma­ha Arch­dio­cese was tak­en aback by a can­di­date who said “You’ve been telling us about Jesus. I came here to learn about the Church …” I won­der how many cra­dle-Chris­tians might voice the same com­plaint about what they may hear from the pul­pit on Sun­days. The Chris­t­ian church indeed has orga­ni­za­tion­al fea­tures – rites and rules – just like any human social group­ing, and one ought to know some­thing about them. But the Church is not about itself (what Pope Fran­cis refers to as “self-ref­er­en­tial”). It is about Jesus. It is an assem­bly of peo­ple who have com­mit­ted their lives to Jesus, to being Jesus’ pres­ence in their world. As Vat­i­can II said, the Church is the sacra­ment of Christ for the world. The more we learn about Jesus, the better.

In his gospel St. Matthew is telling his ear­ly Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty about Jesus. Inter­est­ing­ly the word our lec­tionary trans­lates as “geneal­o­gy” is, in the orig­i­nal Greek, “gen­e­sis” – the same as the name of the first book of the Bible. This is the begin­ning of the sto­ry of Jesus. Matthew says that, in Jesus, God has made a new cre­ation, a new Adam. He starts his sto­ry with Abra­ham. How many of us would have thought to start there?

The fact is, God had been inter­act­ing in human affairs for rough­ly 2,000 years pri­or to the birth of Jesus. To under­stand Jesus – to under­stand the God whom Jesus reveals – we have to under­stand that chain of inter­ac­tions. It is right­ly said that Jesus is the ful­fill­ment of all those sav­ing works record­ed in the Old Tes­ta­ment. Not “ful­fill­ment” as with prophe­cies com­ing true, but ful­fill­ment in the same way that the flower is the ful­fill­ment of the plant and the plant of the seed.

It’s a curi­ous fam­i­ly tree – con­sist­ing of saints, sin­ners, pet­ty ori­en­tal poten­tates, wastrels, incom­pe­tents, wom­an­iz­ers. It even men­tions five women (dis­tinct­ly unusu­al in ancient genealo­gies) – some of them preg­nant under irreg­u­lar cir­cum­stances. Is this how God enters into human affairs?  The list of 42 names in Matthew’s geneal­o­gy traces Israel’s jour­ney into Egypt and back, God’s res­cue of an enslaved peo­ple, the tri­umphs and fail­ings of the monar­chy, the exile into Baby­lon and sub­se­quent res­cue, the rebuild­ing of Jerusalem, only to be con­quered by Greek and then Roman invaders. It’s all there. If only we knew our Bible his­to­ry! What sto­ries those names would evoke!  As has been said, “God writes straight with crooked lines”.

Matthew knew that his com­mu­ni­ty could not real­ly under­stand Jesus if they did not under­stand that chain of God’s inter­ac­tions with Israel. Israel was a cho­sen peo­ple, not in the sense of hav­ing been grant­ed spe­cial priv­i­lege (though they cer­tain­ly expe­ri­enced that), but cho­sen pre­cise­ly to man­i­fest to the world in con­crete actions and events who God is and what God’s will for God’s cre­ation real­ly is. That’s exact­ly what Jesus is and does. And that’s how he is the ful­fill­ment of that first 2000 year history.

In eight days we will cel­e­brate once again the birth of baby Jesus. Babies are promise, they are poten­tial, they are hope. This baby shows us God, a God who takes on our human nature in all its fail­ings and taw­dri­ness and, by mak­ing it pos­si­ble for us humans to share in the divine, what the poten­tial in every human being real­ly is.