REDEEMING OUR FAMILY NAME

REDEEMING OUR FAMILY NAME

Fr Luke A Veronis

Remember who you are. Remember what family you come from. Don’t disgrace the family name. Have any of us ever heard such words from our parents or family? Of course, honoring the family name is important. Learning about our roots and appreciating from where we came helps us better understand who we are.

Well, on the Sunday before Christmas, the Church invites us to listen carefully to something we usually want to rush through - the genealogy of Jesus Christ. A long list of names that sound unfamiliar and strange. Yet the Church places this Gospel reading before us today because within these names lies the very heart of the Good News of Christmas.

St. Matthew begins “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” Immediately, he’s connecting Jesus firmly in human history as the heir of the Great Patriarch Abraham and the greatest King of Israel, David. The Son of God does not appear suddenly, detached from the messiness of life. He comes through a family, through generations, through real people. Yet look at how many of these people come with real sins, real failures, and a questionable history. If we look closely at this genealogy, we discover something striking. It is not a list of moral heroes and holy saints. Among the ancestors of Christ we find

• Tamar, a woman caught in scandal and deception
• Rahab, a prostitute and a foreigner
• Ruth, another foreigner and Moabite outsider
• Bathsheba, a woman seduced by King David and forced into adultery 
• David himself, often considered the greatest King of Israel and yet, a man who committed adultery and murder
• And other kings and forebearers who were downright corrupt, violent, and idolatrous

One would think that if someone were creating the genealogy of God’s Son on earth, you might try to tidy it up. One would hide the embarrassing forebearers. One might highlight only the righteous and impressive people of the past.

The evangelist does the opposite. He allows the brokenness and ugliness of the past to remain visible. He doesn’t deny the scandalous and fallenness. Why? Maybe because the genealogy of Jesus is a reflection of humanity as it truly is – a wounded, sinful, divided humanity in need of healing. This is not accidental. This is to what the Good News of our faith responds!

God does not avoid our dark world or fallen humanity. He chooses to enter into such a lineage and offer a clear message. “I will not stand above the fallen world but I enter into it and heal it, transform it, renew it.” Christ doesn’t choose to be born into a spotless and pure human story. Instead, He accepts to become one of us, to come from a very human, wounded past. Jesus identifies fully with our human condition, not just with all that is beautiful but with all that is tragic and ugly as well.

As numerous Church Fathers remind us, “What is not assumed is not healed.” Christ takes on our human nature and our broken history so that He may heal us from within. We see this in the message the angel proclaims to Joseph, “You shall call His name Jesus and He will save His people from their sins.”

He enters into our suffering. He enters into human brokenness. He tastes the fruit of our sinfulness and then offers something in return. He saves us from our human sinfulness and darkness and even death itself.

From the genealogy of Jesus, the Evangelist Matthew then turns our attention to the righteous Joseph, a good man deeply confused and troubled as he faces scandal and fear. He surely does not understand what God is doing, but he trusts Him. Joseph represents all of us who struggle to make sense of God’s work in our lives. He does not demand answers. He humbly obeys and opens space for God’s wonders to act. And through His obedience, the Savior enters the world.

Today’s Gospel reaches its climax with the words, “They shall call His name Emmanuel, which means, ‘God with us.’” Our God is not a distant God. He is not a God disappointed in us. He is not an angry God ready to punish us. No! Instead, He is “God with us.” He is with the sinners, the broken-hearted, the lost and confused. He is the One helping those struggling to become whole.

Christmas reveals that God has not abandoned His creation. He does not discard humanity because of brokenness and sinfulness. Instead, He comes precisely to lift us up out of our sin and restore us and awaken us to the divine potential placed in each of us from the beginning.

Remember, the genealogy of Jesus does not end in failure. It ends in Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of every broken promise. Through Him, our family story can be rewritten. Our personal story can be redeemed.

The same humanity that Christ received from his sinful ancestors is the humanity He now offers back to us, but now healed, renewed, and filled with divine life. This mystery of Christmas and our Lord’s Incarnation loudly proclaims “God becomes man so that man may become by grace what God is by nature.”

So, as we celebrate Christmas this year, reflect on your own family history. Maybe you come from a family with many struggles and dysfunction. Maybe there are plenty of regrets, wounds, trauma and sins we wish were not part of our story. Today God tells us He is not ashamed of our story. If Christ can be born into a family tree like His own and redeem it, He can be born into our own life with all its brokenness and dysfunction and redeem us.

Jesus Christ offers a message of hope. He enters our fallen world. He enters our broken family systems. He enters our sinful human history. And He does not condemn us but invites us into a new divine life He has prepared for us.

Let us open our hearts to Emmanuel, God with us, and allow Him to heal, restore, and glorify our humanity. 

Come, Lord Jesus!