Matthew's Genealogy, Billy Joel's Song, and a Quiet Divorce [Matt. 1-2]

I'm going to be blogging regularly this fall as I read through the New Testament. (I'm going to commit to blogging each day as we read through the Gospel of Matthew, and see what that's like. Each day's Bible post will go live at 4:30 AM.) Below are some quick thoughts on our first day's reading, Matthew 1-2.Two important things to keep in mind as you read The New Testament:

1. The story of Jesus only makes sense in the context of the Old Testament. Lots of what Jesus does is a conscious fulfillment of the Lord's covenant with Abraham's family (which started way back in Genesis 12). This means when something Jesus does doesn't make immediate sense to you, it's probably because you're missing the Old Testament connection.
2. Even more than the other Gospel writers, Matthew is particularly concerned with connecting Jesus to Israel's story.

This is why Matthew begins with a genealogy of Jesus--the family tree he provides shows that Jesus is related to the family of Abraham. More than that, each name is shorthand for all the times and places in which that person lived. The genealogy seems boring to us because the names might not mean anything us--like reading random entries in a phone book--but to the 1st century Jews who were Matthew's original readers, each name was a touchstone to family stories that were cherished by the descendants of Abraham.

"Jesus and Genealogies"

On The Bible Project site I'd recommend you read "Jesus & Geneologies," an article I found really helpful. For example, did you know?

Just think about the separated sections of the genealogy of Matthew. It is broken up into three parts that cover 14 generations each, but why 14?Within the written language of Hebrew, the letters are also used as their numbers, and so each number is assigned a numerical value. The name of David in Hebrew is ???,? and from here you just do the math. The numerical value of the first and third letter ?? (called dalet) is 4. The middle letter ?? (called waw) has a numerical value of 6. Put it into your mental calculator: 4+6+4=14, the numerical value of the name of David.Matthew has designed the genealogy, so it links Jesus to David explicitly, and also in the very literary design of the list. In fact, Matthew wants to highlight this 14=David? idea so much that he‘s intentionally left out multiple generations of the line of David (three, to be exact) to make the numbers work.Wait, Matthew has taken people out of the genealogy?Yes, and this is not a scandal. Leaving out generations to create symbolic numbers in genealogies is a common Hebrew literary practice, going all the way back to the genealogies in Genesis (the 10 generations of Genesis 5, or the 70 descendants of?Genesis 11). Ancient genealogies were ways of making theological claims, and?Matthew‘s readers would have understood exactly what he was doing and why.

Read the whole thing.

"We Didn't Start the Fire"

This opening genealogy has got me thinking about Billy Joel. Each name meant something to Matthew's audience, in the way that the names in Billy Joel's song mean something to a certain type of Baby Boomer:[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g[/embed](By the way, I love this related scene from "The Office:"[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrjBpW6OSbg[/embed]That's from when The Office was still funny....) 

The Quiet Divorce

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, but before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly"

I've always found that to be a quietly moving line: "And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly." That decision of Joseph's was a small, selfless act of kindness on which the fate of the world turned.Don't underestimate the importance of a small, unnoticed act of selfless kindness today. Who knows what hangs in the balance?   

P.S. Changes to this Blog

This is the last post that my subscribers will receive as a standalone email. Starting Friday, August 24 through Monday, December 24, at Munger we are going to be reading through the New Testament. I'm planning on posting more frequently in this space, including regular (daily?) commentaries on what we're reading. Right now, subscribers get an email every time I post, but I don‘t want to fill up your Inbox, so tomorrow I'm going to be switching to a weekly newsletter that will contain links to the previous week‘s posts, as well as some other original content from me not available anywhere else.If you are already a subscriber, you don‘t need to do anything else. (If you want to be sure and read each post as it comes out, subscribe to my blog‘s RSS feed. There are lots of tutorials online to explain how to do that.)If you are not a current subscriber, here‘s how to subscribe:

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Broward County Tightrope

How should we treat that school cop from Florida? I'm going to tell you at the outset that I don't know how to answer the question that I'm going to raise in this post, but I think it's important to raise it anyway. No doubt you've heard that the school resource officer assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida remained outside during the massacre on February 14. No one knows what might have happened if the school cop had entered the building and confronted the killer in the midst of his rampage, but we do know what did?happen: the killer walked out of the school unharmed, leaving 17 corpses behind him.I don't know what I would have done if I were the school cop that day, and neither do you: it was literally a life-and-death moment, and we should judge not lest we be judged. On the other hand, it was that officer's job to protect the school, and he clearly failed in his duty. As a result, this man is internationally notorious as a failure, and that judgment will stalk him the rest of his life. All of this raises a question I've thought a lot about:How do we maintain clear moral standards while at the same time offering grace to the people who violate those standards? Put another way, How do we hate the sin and love the sinner?Almost always, when we think about the above question, we're talking about sexual ethics. But this case shows that the question is much broader than that.

Option A--Be Lax With the Standards

Let's say we decide that it's too high a standard to expect our cops to risk their own lives on behalf of the public. The inevitable result of that decision would be fewer cops who risk their lives on behalf of the public. The expectations we set matter. If we relax our standards, behavior would follow.Take marriage and divorce: when a culture frowns upon divorce, there are fewer divorces. (I'm not saying that the marriages that persist are good marriages, or even if social condemnation of divorce is a good thing--I'm just making the obvious point that our standards matter.) Today, divorce has much less social stigma than it did in previous generations, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that we have more divorces than in previous generations.A culture's standards and expectations affect the behavior of the people in that culture.

Option B--Be Rigid With the Standards

Instead of relaxing our standards, we could choose to vigilantly maintain them. We could decide, for example, that we?do expect our cops to risk their own lives on behalf of the public, no matter what. Anyone who refused to do so, we would socially shame and professionally reprimand. When it comes to marriage, we could decide that our culture values fidelity highly, and we could have the cultural guardrails and legal safeguards in place to make divorce undesirable and difficult.

The Problem

Each option poses a problem, however:Option A will mean that we'll get more of the behaviors that we don't want;but, human nature being what it is...Option B will mean that those who violate the standards will be marked forever as violators.But again, if we say to the sinners in Option B--"It's really okay. Don't feel bad about it."--we are in danger of making Option A a reality.I confront this problem all the time. If I don't preach strongly in favor of marriage and against divorce, for example, it might seem as if marital fidelity doesn't matter that much. But, if I do hit that topic hard, it might be the case that I am heaping shame on people who are already covered in it.Imagine if the school cop from Parkland were in your church: if you immediately said to him, "It's fine" you'd be saying something that isn't true: it's NOT fine. But, on the other hand, if you didn't extend grace to him, you'd be lying, too, since Jesus forgives sinners.It's a tightrope.I think sometimes that this tightrope--balancing between hating the sin and loving the sinner--is actually impossible for us. Fortunately, it is possible for God, who both hates sin and loves sinners at the same time. What's difficult to know is how we practically live out the mysterious grace of God in the world.So,?how do we maintain clear moral standards while at the same time offering grace to the people who violate those standards?I don't think there is a quick and easy formula. I think this requires wisdom and prayer.(And, I think we should add the school resource officer from Parkland to the prayers we are already praying for the grieving families.) 

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