I'm Somebody Now

Matthew 1:1-17

You know, the part everyone skips over.  Or at least it's the part people practice their speed reading on, which can be rather entertaining when they're doing it out loud.  Sometimes I wonder if the reason John is the Gospel most people will tell you to read first is that it doesn't have a genealogy.  Other than this whole who begat who thing, it gets right down to the nitty gritty of "in the beginning was the Word."  In John, we don't have to worry about begats.  Mark either, come to think of it.  But then there's Luke who has to do even more begats, at least Matthew picks up with Abraham.

All start the way they start for their own reasons.  We have scholars coming out of the woodwork to tell us why each author decided to start their account the way they did.  Yet I can't help but believe there may have been reasons that we never even thought of.  Not that I'm going to try, that's just a way of me saying that for all of our insights and knowledge and all I think we'd be stunned at how little we really know.

But then that's the amazing thing about the stuff God gave us to read.  On the one hand I think that our wisdom and understanding barely scratches the surface of what's in there.  On the other hand, I think we over-mysticise it, we make it too difficult.  I think it's just the opposite, that it's much easier to understand than we give it credit for.  The stuff we don't understand yet, it's really more about depth than it is meaning.

Okay, so let me get this straight.  One thing you will have to get used to with me if you plan to read much of my writing is, it's too easy for me to chase rabbits.  Good job Ron:  Starting with the very first post that has maybe all of 1 reader (and that's assuming I proof read this before publishing), go ahead and write stuff that really discourages adding to that readership total!  Scare them all away.  Hopefully at most points I'll be able to recognize those rabbit chases early enough and get back on track.

And this gets me back to this whole genealogy thing.

Remember Steve Martin in "The Jerk?"  I'm going to assume that since early on most people reading this will be friends of mine and thus, old enough to remember the movie.  Now whether you admit to having seen the movie, that's another story.  But there's a scene where his character is all excited because "The new phone book's here!  The new phone book's here."  He was excited about seeing his name in the phone book (and if by some odd chance you're reading this and you're not old enough to have seen this movie, you may not be familiar with phone books other than being those thick books no one uses any more.  Maybe the best way to describe them is they were the closest thing our generation had to Google, which probably explains a lot about our generation).  His name in the phone book was affirmation that "I'm somebody."

I can relate.  Once upon a time, I had a story about me in the Lincoln Star.  Every week they put a little story in about a featured carrier, buried somewhere behind the obituaries.  After four years of delivering the paper I'm thinking they finally ran out of other people to feature, so it had to happen some time.  All of a sudden I was famous.  I may still have that article somewhere.  I do know that I've got an article from college days about a bicycle ride slash fund raiser that I participated in.  Way in the back of the article is a one line mention of my name.  That's just enough for me to have cut out the article and kept it for 30 years.

Yes, you're thinking that I've gotten back on that rabbit chase again.  But I might actually be going somewhere with this.  When we speed read through all these names in the beginning of Matthew there are of course the obvious ones.  Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Of course there's David and Solomon.  We've all made note of the significance that Ruth is mentioned in the midst of all of these names of men.  There's been all sorts of commentary on how Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon, is referenced but not named.  The King James refers to "her that had been of Urias," which sounds very much like "she who's name is not to be spoken."  And then there are all the kings who followed David and Solomon, kings that we might actually remember having read of, like Hezekiah and Jehoshophat.  And everyone remembers Zerubbabel, or at least we tell ourselves we do because there's just something about that name that you know that if it was ever mentioned anywhere, you'd have to remember it.  If you've grown up going to Sunday School or gone to Bible College, you know you have to have read that name somewhere, so even if we really don't remember Zerubbabel, well, you at least remember remembering him.

And then there are just those names that you really wonder, who were these guys?  Ram?  Salmon?  Shealtiel?  Now because many of these later guys were descendants of David, they were likely pretty significant people in their times and places.  No, we might not know of them other than a couple mentions in the Old Testament, but to the people who were their contemporaries especially in Israel, these were their kings.  In our lifetimes, we've had presidents who, in a hundred years or two, people might remember only because they read something quickly in a history book, but who never really stood out.  Much like most people think when they hear the names Millard Fillmore or John Tyler (and no he wasn't the lead singer for Aerosmith).  I'm not going to even try to guess which of our presidents will one day be forgotten, but at the time they served, they were still President.  So there were a lot of these guys who were kings.  But there are other guys that, for all we knew, were pretty ordinary people.

I seriously doubt someone will stumble across the archives of the Lincoln Star and discover this story about a paperboy in University Place and try to figure out who he was.  They're certainly not going to see one name at the end of a list of many and feel awe at his accomplishments on a bike.  And yet, 4 to 5 thousand years later here's at least one guy wondering who Ram and Salmon were.  There are actually people who have put serious time into every one of those names.  A thousand years from now, the phone books will be gone, the news articles will be gone.  And yet, those names will still grace the beginning of what will still be the most significant piece of literature around.

You wonder what they would say if you were to tell them that their names would be recorded for billions to see throughout history.  I can't help but think some of them would be pretty overwhelmed, maybe asking "who am I to be recorded forever in history?"  I'd like to think if it were me I'd be humbled, though the reality is if it were me it would get to my head pretty quick and I'd start thinking I was something more than I really was.

So getting to back that whole thing of why the books started as they did:  Of course you can get into all this about how Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience and thus it was important to point out Jesus' pedigree.  That would probably be true, as well as maybe a lot of other reasons as well.  There's a real possibility that the conclusions that I come to here may have had nothing to do with the actual reasons, but I do find it interesting at least.

Here is a list of some pretty significant people.  At the same time there are some historically insignificant people as well, some we know absolutely nothing about.  There were some great people here.  There were also some pretty awful people.  Horrible really.  So this wasn't necessarily a list of merit, not something that really should inspire awe just because they're on the list.  But what strikes me is, important, unimportant, people of character or fiends, God used them.  Not really because of themselves, and often in spite of themselves, they were part of the line that would lead to the birth of the son of God.  I can't help but think that some of these people had no clue whatsoever that they were part of something so incredible.

Do you think that maybe, God is putting this here to say something to us?  That it's not about our status or who we are.  It's not even because of anything about us and sometimes in spite of us, but that God can and will use us.  For some, it's grand and glorious.  It's Billy Graham or Max Lucado.  Or maybe it's the smile and encouraging word you gave someone that helped them find hope, and they went on to do the same for someone else, until it eventually spread like wildfire (or in today's terms, went viral).  You never had a clue you made a difference.

Some will be written about in history.  Most of us will never be known.  We might do something great.  Or maybe it will be something stupid we did that God somehow turns around.  Maybe a little of both.  Maybe a lot of both.  I know for me there's much on the stupid side.  Sometimes we'll know what we did.  Often we'll have no idea.  Maybe the lesson is, let God do his thing and just make ourselves available for it.  It really doesn't matter if we're Abraham or Salmon, whether we're Lincoln or Fillmore.  It's not so much who we are or what we do, but who's working in us.  We may or may not do something great.  One thing I do know.

The end result will be great.