A sower went out to sow....

It is quite difficult for me, a Javanese, to trace my genealogy because most of the Javanese do not have family name. Even sometimes I do not recognize that somebody is closely related, although we already met many times or talked for a long time. So, tracing relations whenever we gather is a real challenge for me. In tracing relations like this, no subject carries more interest for the insider, or more boredom for the outsider. That shows that it’s an intimate subject.

Today’s reading is a genealogy. The strangeness of the names and the people in it should put it well beyond our interest. But in the end it is about Jesus, and that makes it an intimate subject.

It cannot be taken as history; it has an almost mathematical abstraction. There are three sections of fourteen names each. Matthew often uses the number 7, symbolizing completion. So it simplifies down to 3x14 = 3x2x7 = 6x7. Jesus then would be the first name in a seventh group of seven. At least that's someone’s interpretation.

The names have a great deal of shock-value. All ordinary human life is there: murder, treachery, incest, adultery, prostitution…. In the first list of fourteen names there are three women, an unusual feature: Tamar, Rahab and Ruth. Tamar gave birth to twins by her father-in-law; Rahab was a prostitute, and Ruth was a Moabite, a foreigner. In the second list of fourteen, there’s another woman, Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. We know how King David observed her bathing from the roof of his house, and invited her in and seduced her; then he had her husband killed, so that he could marry her. At the end of the third section a fifth woman is mentioned: Mary the mother of Jesus. It is an unedifying litany of names that leads us to Mary and Jesus. This is the world, our world, they entered.

We must also remember that this story is still ongoing, and we are in the midst of it. We are still moving toward the full realization of God’s peace. Like Micah, we do not understand fully how this part of the story will play out, or what the details will look like. Like Joseph, we may find ourselves perplexed and struggle to reach the right choices with imperfect information. But we have great comfort in knowing that God is indeed with us (Emmanuel), and He is writing the story.

[Feast day of the Birthday of Blessed Virgin Mary].