Second Saturday in Advent -- Gail Godwin
A Reflection on Gail Godwin’s Grace and Genealogy (pp. 156-64)
Have you ever picked up Matthew’s Gospel and read it from beginning to end? If you have, you no doubt noticed that it starts off in a rather odd way, at least from the perspective of modern readers: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers . . . .” And so on, and so on, drones on the list of family names for over forty generations worth of Jesus’ family tree.
Every good writer, speaker, and preacher knows that beginnings matter, and that engaging the reader’s attention from the outset is usually an important goal. Judged by that standard, this seems an incredibly boring and misguided start to an otherwise compelling story. What is Matthew up to?
Well, there is method in Matthew’s madness. From the first sentence, Matthew wants to persuade his Jewish listeners that the person about whom he is writing this incredible story is the ultimate goal of the history of Israel and God’s promises to this people (therefore “Son of Abraham”), that he is also the culmination of the Davidic line of king, (therefore “Son of David”), and that as a result he is the anointed One, that is, the long-awaited “Messiah.” And while the ensuing list of seemingly endless names seems odd to our ears, most of these biblical characters would have been well-known to Matthew’s audience, and the names by themselves would have triggered memories of many foundational stories. In short, Matthew has a deep theological purpose in beginning this way: he is disclosing Jesus’ true identity and continuity with God’s salvific plan for the people of Israel.
But as Godwin’s charming story notes, there is even more up Matthew’s sleeve. The list of names is quite selective in another sense. The named characters include not only upstanding and heroic figures of the tradition, but also prostitutes, cheats, adulterers, and despised foreigners. “And this is of course, where the message settles directly upon us. If so much powerful stuff can have been accomplished down through the millennia by wastrels, betrayers, and outcasts, and through people who were such complex mixtures of sinner and saint, and through so many obscure and undistinguished others, isn’t that a pretty hopeful testament to the likelihood that God is using us, with our individual flaws and gifts, in all manner of peculiar and unexpected ways?” (163)
And so, Godwin concludes, “who of us can say we’re not in the process of being used right now, this Advent, to fulfill some purpose whose grace and goodness would boggle our imagination if we could even begin to get our minds around it?” (163-4)
Gail Godwin (b. 1937) is an American novelist and short story writer. Godwin has written 14 novels, two short story collections, three non-fiction books, and ten libretti.
Have you ever picked up Matthew’s Gospel and read it from beginning to end? If you have, you no doubt noticed that it starts off in a rather odd way, at least from the perspective of modern readers: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers . . . .” And so on, and so on, drones on the list of family names for over forty generations worth of Jesus’ family tree.
Every good writer, speaker, and preacher knows that beginnings matter, and that engaging the reader’s attention from the outset is usually an important goal. Judged by that standard, this seems an incredibly boring and misguided start to an otherwise compelling story. What is Matthew up to?
Well, there is method in Matthew’s madness. From the first sentence, Matthew wants to persuade his Jewish listeners that the person about whom he is writing this incredible story is the ultimate goal of the history of Israel and God’s promises to this people (therefore “Son of Abraham”), that he is also the culmination of the Davidic line of king, (therefore “Son of David”), and that as a result he is the anointed One, that is, the long-awaited “Messiah.” And while the ensuing list of seemingly endless names seems odd to our ears, most of these biblical characters would have been well-known to Matthew’s audience, and the names by themselves would have triggered memories of many foundational stories. In short, Matthew has a deep theological purpose in beginning this way: he is disclosing Jesus’ true identity and continuity with God’s salvific plan for the people of Israel.
But as Godwin’s charming story notes, there is even more up Matthew’s sleeve. The list of names is quite selective in another sense. The named characters include not only upstanding and heroic figures of the tradition, but also prostitutes, cheats, adulterers, and despised foreigners. “And this is of course, where the message settles directly upon us. If so much powerful stuff can have been accomplished down through the millennia by wastrels, betrayers, and outcasts, and through people who were such complex mixtures of sinner and saint, and through so many obscure and undistinguished others, isn’t that a pretty hopeful testament to the likelihood that God is using us, with our individual flaws and gifts, in all manner of peculiar and unexpected ways?” (163)
And so, Godwin concludes, “who of us can say we’re not in the process of being used right now, this Advent, to fulfill some purpose whose grace and goodness would boggle our imagination if we could even begin to get our minds around it?” (163-4)
Gail Godwin (b. 1937) is an American novelist and short story writer. Godwin has written 14 novels, two short story collections, three non-fiction books, and ten libretti.
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