A Sermon Based Upon Luke 3: 23-38
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Epiphany 2, January 20th, 2012
“He was the son (as was thought) of
Joseph …son of Adam, son of God. (Luke 3:38 NRS)
Back in 1999 Time Magazine stated that
one of the top four activities on the internet was genealogy. I doubt that any of us have done as much work
on our family tree or ancestry as has the Mormon Church, but most of us have
had some interest in finding out where our ancestors came from.
But in the ancient world genealogy was
not simply a hobby or pastime. Your
ancestry established who you were, and who you weren't. People who could establish some type of
royal or priestly lineage were people of status, privilege who had special “rights” and “responsibilities”.
People who could not establish any kind of important lineage or
bloodline were considered “nobodies”.
In short, they had no real rights, no special privileges, or no status, whatsoever.
DID JESUS HAVE CONNECTIONS?
One of the reasons two of the gospel
stories give us genealogical lists about Jesus’ ancestry is to establish Jesus
as a special sort of somebody. In the ancient
worldview, to both Jew and Gentile, if Jesus had no sort of pedigree, then
people would immediately have written him off, giving his story no attention at
all. Two of the gospels, Mark and John,
see no reason for Jesus’ genealogy. But
Matthew and Luke beg to differ. They
wanted to show who Jesus was, first of all, through his family tree, so that
people, particularly Jewish people, would see that Jesus was born as part of
the royal bloodline of Israel’s greatest King named David.
But here is exactly the problem. Jesus didn’t really have a royal
bloodline. Both Matthew and Luke also tell
us that Jesus was ‘born of a virgin’ (Matthew
1.23, Luke 1.27) named Mary and did not ‘physically’ have an earthly Father. Even in the genealogy Luke gives us, he
begins by telling us that Jesus was “thought”
or “supposed” to be the “son of Joseph”. Luke is giving us a legal listing of Jesus’
royal bloodline, but this is in no way a literal or legalistic listing of the
lineage of Jesus.
One other interesting question is how Luke
and Matthew are structured in completely different ways. Luke is formed with a descending manner,
starting with Jesus and looking back. Matthew’s
list is written in an ascending manner, starting with Abraham and then coming
back to Jesus. But there is much more
here than merely a question of form.
Matthew and Luke’s listings also start at different places and go
through different people. For example,
if you take a look at Matthew’s genealogical list, you will start with Abraham
and move up to David and then follow David’s traditional royal line all the way
down to Joseph. Luke also goes through
David, but Luke’s line of backtracking “descent” goes all the back to Adam,
beyond Abraham. Perhaps even more
important is that Luke does not even follow the normal, royal lineage of
David. My point is that Luke does not trace the line
of Jesus through the somebodies of Israel’s history, but Luke has traced the
line of Jesus through the “nobodies”, the people that are unknown and
untraceable.
You can especially see this when you
compare how Matthew traced the lineage of Jesus through David’s son, Solomon,
and other prominent Kings of Israel, like Rehoboam, Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, Hezekiah,
and Josiah (See Matthew 1: 6-11). But Luke’s genealogy skips all these “important”
people and brings the line of Jesus through David’s unremembered son, Nathan (not
in the Bible unless it means the prophet Nathan who was not a physical son of
David, but perhaps a spiritual ‘son’) and then through a bunch of names that
are not only unknown, but are also even questionable because they don’t fit, either
the history or the pedigree Luke should be showing if he wants to prove Jesus’
royal identity. This makes scholars still wonder what in the
world Luke was up to. Whatever he was
doing, he was not giving us a literal, royal background check on Jesus’ identity.
Luke must have had much bigger plans
than that.
So, what is Luke trying to tell us about
Jesus, through these names, this lineage, and this list of practically nobodies? Some have answered that Luke is trying to
trace the royal line through Mary, inserting the word “son-in-law” after Joseph. But no, the text traces Jesus “legally”
through Joseph, yet he has done it a very different way. Most scholars will tell you that the main
answer to these ‘differences’ is not historical, but theological. In other words, Luke is not trying to tell is
legalistically who Jesus was, but Luke is trying to say something to us
theologically, about who Jesus still is.
Perhaps the best way to begin to see
Luke’s goal in this genealogy is to see, not where he started (both genealogies
start with Jesus) but to see where Luke’s lists ends up. Whereas Matthew’s list goes back to Abraham, naming Jesus the ‘son of Abraham’ who was the Father of
the Jewish faith, Luke’s list goes all the back to Adam, and even further than
that, declaring Jesus to not only be the son
of Adam, but perhaps most importantly of all, to be the ‘son
of God’. Now, perhaps we can see what Luke may have been
up to. He wants us to know that Jesus is
not just connected to David, but Jesus is even better ‘connected’ than
that.
So, who was Jesus? Who is Jesus?
What was Luke saying to us, not just in his genealogy, but also in the
message of this gospel and all the gospels?
CAN
WE KNOW THE REAL JESUS?
The one thing I think is most important
about Luke’s genealogy is not only ‘how’ Luke puts his list together, but “where”
he puts it. Notice in our text that Luke
does not include the genealogy at the beginning or at the story of Jesus’
birth, but Luke puts the list at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. It is at the time Jesus ministry begins and
right after Jesus’ baptism that Luke inserts his list. The list begins: “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work” (Luk 3:23
NRS). This should be a “dead giveaway”
as to what Luke was trying to tell us about Jesus. This genealogy is dramatically connected to
Jesus’ work, and Jesus’ work is directly connected to Jesus’ background. Even though Jesus is to be understood to be a
King, he is a very different kind of King.
He is a King who does not come from a list of great Kings, but he is a
descendant of a great King who comes through a bunch of nobodies. Luke seems to intentionally associate Jesus with
a list of ‘nobodies’ because this is exactly who Jesus came to work with and
save. Luke wants us to know, right up
front, that the ‘real’ Jesus, whoever we might think him to be, is not who most
want him to be, but Jesus came with his own agenda. Jesus’ ministry will be about making the ‘nobodies’
of this world, somebody in the eyes of God.
Who are these ‘nobodies’ that Jesus has
come to work with? The listing will be
given in the very next chapter, in Luke 4.
When Jesus reads this list in his hometown synagogue he got into a lot
of trouble. You do recall that list, don’t
you? Jesus read from the scroll of
Isaiah about how his ‘work’ was to bring good
news to the poor…”to proclaim
release to the prisoners”…”to bring
the recovery of sight to the blind”
and to “let the oppressed go free”
(Luke 4: 18-20). Are these kinds of
nobodies on your list? Luke tells us
that the “Spirit of the Lord” is upon Jesus so that Jesus can work with a very
different group of people than people are used to working for or used to working
with. Jesus is to work in behalf of the ‘nobodies’
of this world and this is good news in and, of itself. This good news of God is not specifically for
the somebodies---the people who already have it made---the successful, or the
promising or the privileged, but God’s message is for the forgotten, the
downtrodden, and the nobodies of this world.
We should have known this. Luke has been telling us this all along. Whereas in Matthew, it is Three Wise men who
visit Jesus, in Luke it is poor Shepherds who find Jesus first. In Matthew, whereas Jesus has come to “save his people from their sin”, in
Luke, the message shall be to “all
people”. In Matthew, Jesus is revealed as a child,
who is hurried away to Egypt, identifying only with Israel’s slavery in their
past. But in Luke it is an Israelite ‘nobody’,
an old man named Simon, who announces that this child is God’s ‘salvation given to us in the presence of all the peoples’ and
is to be especially given “as a light
for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” Now, the people who have been understood to
be ‘nobody’, even in the eyes of Israel, have now become ‘somebody’ in the mind
and heart of God.
What does all this mean for us? How does this identity of Jesus who also
comes from a long list of ‘nobodies’ mean for us today? How does it help us think again about who Jesus
was, and who Jesus should be for us today?
Isn’t this a question on the minds of many as the mystery of Jesus is bigger
now than ever before, and and more people struggle with the truth of the
gospels and the historical uncertainty concerning Jesus.
THE
JESUS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW
“Of all the descriptions of Jesus, the
one I love the most, said Charles Mercer, is "The Man for Others." Jesus always was there for others; he
never put himself first. He listened to
people. He touched the sick, the blind,
even lepers. He ate with sinners. He fed
the hungry. He comforted the sorrowful. He taught the multitudes, but they were never
a crowd to him. He saw each person as special,
unique and worth saving. Jesus always taught
that the way to the Kingdom of God was to go out there with the ‘others’, the ‘nobodies’
of this world feeding the hungry, sharing a cup of water with the thirsty, welcoming
the stranger, clothing the naked, and visiting those who are sick or in prison.
(See Matthew 25:34-40). Jesus was, more
than anything else, the one who was born ‘among the nobodies” and who became a ‘nobody’
for all ‘us’ nobodies of the world.
In a challenging book:" Half the
Sky" authors Sheryl WuDunn and
Nicholas Kristof describe the lives of poor, forgotten women in India, China
and Africa. They are women who, though poor themselves, have made a difference
in the lives of others around them, showing us all that even those who are considered
‘nobodies’ in this world, have the power to make a difference. In this same book, Sir John Templeton is
quoted as saying: "Self -
improvement comes mainly from trying to help others" (pg. 249). The way to real happiness is become somebody
is not to win the lottery, which may provide an initial spike, but quickly
passes. We find our greatest human
riches by connecting to others in the midst of their needs.
It is very humbling to read about people,
who have little themselves, the nobodies, who give themselves and their meager
resources to help others. What we all know, very well, is that it is not
the great talents of the ‘somebodies’ who save the world each and every day,
but it is the great sacrifices by the ‘nobodies’ that holds this world together. All those ‘nobodies’ need to help them, and
to help us, is an initial boost in terms of schools, medical facilities or
other resources to escape from their lives of slavery, abuse, ignorance and
poverty. When we reach out to help
them, we see quickly see them reaching out to help others and we see all this that
can be done, done first in the name of Jesus, who reached out to ‘nobodies’
just like us.
While there is still a lot of debate,
and may forever be debate, about exactly ‘who Jesus was’, we know that the real
truth about Jesus is not about only who Jesus was, but it’s also about who
Jesus wasn’t. As John Ortberg has said,
Jesus wasn’t great, at least not in the worldly sense of the word. The greatness of Jesus was on a whole
different level.
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