Ancestors

The gospel reading for the vigil Mass of Christmas is the opening of the Gospel according to Matthew, the genealogy of Jesus. Most parishes that I am familiar with do not use this reading. Instead they use the gospel reading for the midnight Mass, the account of Jesus’ birth from Luke.


The genealogy of Jesus from Matthew has four interesting women in it: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba who is identified only as Soloman’s mother who had been the wife of Uriah.

The footnote in the New American Bible says that these women “bore their sons through unions that were in varying degrees strange and unexpected.”

Perhaps the strangest to our way of thinking is the first, Tamar. She was the wife of Judah’s firstborn son. However, we read he “greatly offended the LORD; so the LORD took his life.” As was the custom the times, another of Judah’s sons, Onan, was married to Tamar to raise up children for his deceased brother. This was not to Onan’s liking and he, too, offended the LORD and died. Tamar had a right to marriage with another of Judah’s sons. However he put this off, for understandable reasons. As time passed and there was no forth coming marriage, Tamar took matters into her own hands. She disguised herself and plopped herself down by the roadside when she know Judah would be passing by. He, mistaking her for a prostitute, had intercourse with her, promising a goat in payment. She obtained his seal as a pledge and promptly returned home after Judah left. When she was reported to be pregnant, Judah’s response was: “Bring her out; let her be burned.” However, when Tamar produced Judah’s seal, identifying him as the father of her child, he recognized that he had wronged her.

The next woman is Rahab, a prostitute of Jericho, who protected the spies that Joshua had sent to recognoiter Jericho. In return she and her family were spared when Jericho fell to the Israelites.

The third is Ruth, who is well known for her loyalty to her mother-in-law, Noemi. Ruth was a Moabite, a foreigner, who became the great-grandmother of David.

The fourth woman is Bathsheba who gave birth to Solomon after her adulterous affair with David.

These are not four of the women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus; these are the four women mentioned, the only ones, other than Mary.

Scripture is quite willing to provide examples of God working in unexpected ways. However in the accounts of the lives of the saints I find a tendency to sanitize the work of God.

I had to chuckle when I read that an account of Pope John XXIII’s visit with prisoners in Rome; he told them that he had a relative who had been imprisoned for poaching. L’Osservatore Romano edited that comment out when they reprinted his talk.

God can work wonders, with fallible even sinful people. That’s good news.