I try to emphasize in my sermons and other talks the importance of reading Holy Scripture. Simply put, not enough of us read the Good Book as often as we should. One of the excuses that people often cite for not reading the Bible is it is difficult to read. Especially in regards to the Old Testament, with the names of people or the names of places, it is understandable because many of the names are in fact difficult to read. The other reason I have heard people cite in not reading the Bible . . . . although people do not often like to admit it out loud . . . . is that to them reading the Bible is boring. Again, it is understandable that people might feel this way especially in regards to the Old Testament because so much of the Old Testament is filled with lists of people whose names are hard to pronounce. And yet this is pretty much how St. Matthew chose to begin the Gospel attributed to him. He began his Gospel by relating the lineage of Our Blessed Saviour. Why would St. Matthew do this to begin with?, we ask ourselves. In all fairness, St. Luke also includes the genealogy of Our Lord. But at least in the example of St. Luke's Gospel, at least St. Luke put his lineage in the third chapter. In other words, he doesn't start out with it like St. Matthew does at the very beginning. And so the question remains: why was including this lineage so important to St. Matthew?
When we think about other examples, oftentimes we also place great importance on lineage. Have you ever watched a dog show, for example. The owners of these championship caliber dogs take great pride in listing the "pedigree" of the dogs they show. And with us human beings as well, there are many people interested in genealogy. Just look at websites such as "Ancestry.com," where people go there to look up where they came from in regards to their relatives. Even in regards to cars, you can look up their history to see who owned a car before you or property . . . . who owned a house or a piece of property before you. So, you see, we are interested in lineage as well. In part, this tells us where we came from. To the Jews, though, they were very interested in genealogies. Getting back to the subject at hand, the very first verse of the Gospel of St. Matthew begins: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham." (St. Matthew 1:1)
As mentioned earlier, knowing where people came from was very important to the Jewish people. If we look at the Old Testament, especially the Book of Genesis, we will see multiple lists of generations for famous people in the Bible. In part, the Jews wanted to keep accurate records to know who was "pure" and who was "not pure."
Why is any of this important for our consideration? Well, it shows the importance of why something was written . . . or why something was highlighted for its' importance. But beyond that, this still has great meaning for us. All of us have our roots . . . . where we come from. It may be that we only know our parents and/or our grandparents but so often family history or stories of our family members get passed down from generation to generation. So often we hear amusing stories about great-uncles or great-grandparents, for example, as we gather together at Christmas dinners or other family gatherings. It's not just "amusing stories" that get passed on from generation to generation. We learn from our parents and those who came before us. We learn both good things and bad things, quite frankly. Human beings learn much better by example or by experience, I am afraid. A mother can tell a young child over and over and over not to touch a hot stove but until the child actually touches the hot stove and gets burned, the child will listen to "experience of getting burned" better than listening to the mother. I know as I have grown older, I have discovered that I do the things that my parents did. In other words, I find myself saying the things that my mother would say. Or I find myself doing the things that my father does.
In a spiritual sense, we have a "spiritual heritage" as well. Going all the way back to the very first chapter of the Book of Genesis: "Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness." (Genesis 1:26) "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him." (Genesis 1:27). Our heritage is of God. We were created by Our Heavenly Father. But as is often the case, it did not take very long for everything to fall apart real fast. Adam and Eve proved they would rather serve themselves than to serve God. They were not content to be in the Garden under the guidance of God. They preferred to guide themselves. This unfortunately has not changed since then. Man still desires to guide himself. Or should I say more accurately that Man is guided by his desires. We want things our own way. We want to do things how we want them and when we want them. We do not like anyone telling us what to do . . . . even God Himself.
But this is why the lineage of Our Blessed Saviour is so wonderful. It not only tells the roots of Our Blessed Saviour but it also points to the reason for Our Blessed Lord's birth.
If you read through Scripture, very often Our Blessed Saviour is referred to by people as the Son of David. Multiple examples throughout all the Gospels list people calling Our Saviour by this title. The reason this point is so \important is because it points out that Our Lord is royal. The fact that Our Lord's lineage was traceable back to David reminded the Jews of the great promise of David through His kingship. It reminds us today that Christ is Our King and that we owe Him our obedience as faithful servants. So often we place our trust in everything but God. But the faithful, devout Christian will continue to serve the King of the Universe, Our Blessed Saviour.
St. Matthew, in short, began his Gospel with the genealogy of Christ to show not only where He came from but to also point to what His purpose was in this world. For our part also, we must never forget where we came from. "God created man . . . " Our roots are found in God. We need to daily remind ourselves that we belong to God. We need to remind ourselves that our roots lie in the Almighty. Despite the fact that we were created by God, so often our desires lead us far from Him. But our God loves us so much that He not only created us but He also went looking for us . . . . to save us from ourselves . . . to save us from our own wicked desires. He sent His only Son into the world to save us from our sins . . . to save us from something that we could not save ourselves from.
