Welcome to Day 2309 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom -

The Characters of Christmas-9 The Misfits of Christmas – Daily Wisdom

Putnam Church Message – 12/24/2023 The Characters of Christmas – The Misfits of Christmas Last week, we looked at the dark side of Christmas Characters as we analyzed Herod, the Monster of Christmas. This week will be a short message as we look at The Misfits of Christmas. I will read part of three verses from the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew Matthew 1, on page 1496, in your Pew Bibles. ³ Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah (whose mother was Tamar). ⁵ Salmon was the father of Boaz (whose mother was Rahab). Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth). ⁶ David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah). I want to highlight four characters from Jesus' family tree that illustrate the upside-down nature of the kingdom of God. All of them are women, which is remarkable in and of itself. Jesus’s life and ministry were focused on lifting the oppressed. All are equal before God. As Galatians 3:28 tells us: There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.   Typically, Jewish genealogies didn't mention women. They only ever listed men as the heads of their households. Women in the ancient world had little agency and virtually no voice. So, in telling the Christmas story through women like Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna (which we will study next week), Jesus tells us that His kingdom is different. And even in this small and seemingly insignificant detail of listing four women in Jesus' family tree, Matthew is communicating something powerful.   It reminds me of the Christmas cartoon Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, where they come across the Island of Misfit Toys. You remember Charlie in the Box. What is the meaning of the Island of Misfit Toys? It is not unlike the story of Christmas.   As the story goes on, this menagerie of misfit toys bands together and saves Christmas for the children of the world. The Biblical principle of the story is that no matter how atypical you are, you are valuable in God’s eyes and within the church. Together, we can accomplish what seems impossible.   To fully grasp these misfits in our passage today, we must understand how poorly women were regarded in the first century. A woman had no legal rights and was utterly subject to her husband's power. According to New Testament scholar Michael Green, a Jewish man “thanked God each day that he had not been created a slave, a Gentile, or a woman.”   To put it bluntly, Matthew would be scandalous to put these women's names here. And these weren't just any women. Each one of them carried with them a stigma, an asterisk next to their name every time a faithful Jewish person heard their name read out loud in the temple or the synagogue.   The Forgotten Tamar is a name most Jewish people likely wanted to forget. It is an interesting story, but we will leave out most details for tonight's message. And yet here she is,/ in Genesis 38, /first as the wife of a man named Er,/ one of two sons of Judah. Er was not a good husband and was killed by God. When he died, /according to the custom of that day, /it was for his next oldest brother, Onan, to marry Tamar and continue the family line. But in a greedy attempt to set himself up for a richer inheritance, he refused to conceive a baby with Tamar. As a result, God struck Onan dead as well.   The next brother was much younger, so Tamar took things into her own hands. Judah and Tamar's place in Jesus's family shows us an interesting juxtaposition between the powerful and the powerless. Judah was a hypocritical leader who covered his sin, and exploited his daughter-in-law. Then there is Tamar, helpless and forgotten. Fortunately, in Jesus' new family, both the religious hypocrite and the exploited mistress find their need for grace.     The Sinful Rahab's story is similarly sordid (Josh. 2:1-7). When the Jewish spies came in to scout out the land of Jericho, she was the one who hid them in her home and protected them from the prying eyes of the government police. She had heard of the miracles God had wrought with Israel in Egypt and the wilderness and, unlike the rest of her country, turned to faith in Yahweh, even though her profession, Joshua tells us, was less than admirable. Because she provided critical intelligence that helped Israel defeat Jericho, she was given safe harbor in Israel and grafted into the Jewish nation (Heb. 11:31). James, the half-brother of Jesus, says that her actions were evidence of her newfound faith (James 2:25). Rahab's life is evidence that Jesus is always bringing in outsiders, those seen by religious institutions as too damaged by exploitation and sin. As we gather this Christmas to worship, we are tempted to think of ourselves as more righteous than the Rahabs in our world, /but in a sense,/ every human being is as unclean in God's eyes as her profession was. Yet, through Jesus Christ's sacrifice for us, we are made clean, even whiter than snow. The Exploited You probably don't need an introduction to Bathsheba's story (2 Sam. 11-12). Even if you don't know the Bible, you might know what happened when King David looked down from his rooftop. It was the biggest scandal during the reign of Israel's greatest king. Most of us think of this story in terms of what it means for David. Often, it is used as a sloppy apologetic for our own sin. David sinned and still was a man after God's own heart. Because David was repentant, we will find grace when we are repentant. God still used David as a leader after his sin. But let's think about Bathsheba. The Bible never seems to judge her for her place in David's life. It’s likely that when David summoned her from her home, she had little choice but to comply. If you are a woman in the ancient world and the king calls you, you obey. The story gets even more complicated when you realize that Bathsheba is the young granddaughter of one of David’s closest advisors, Ahithophel (2 Sam. 11:3).   The magnitude of David's gross sin cannot be overstated. He exploited Bathsheba. He used his power to get what he wanted from her. Not only did this result in the death of Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, but it was also one of the pivotal events that divided David's family, causing the death of one of David's children with Bathsheba and a catalyst for an ugly, father-against-son civil war.   Bathsheba’s life was one of difficulty and sorrow. She was likely an unpopular, even despised, woman in Israel and David's family. She suffered the loss of a son and became the wife of an unfaithful husband. And yet here she appears in Matthew's retelling of the story of Israel and the promise of the Redeemer. She is named by God. A victim of exploitation. And so it is that God sees and knows all> those who are often exploited and abused. In Jesus, the forgotten can find a new family and identity.       The Outsider Perhaps the most scandalous name in Jesus' genealogy is Ruth. Unlike the other three women, she doesn't have a sordid backstory, and she isn't the victim of abuse. And yet, to the Jewish person hearing Matthew's account, her appearance would be offensive. Why? Like Rahab, Ruth wasn't Jewish. Not only was Ruth not Jewish, but she was a Moabite. Moabites were not simply Gentiles; they were one of Israel's sworn enemies. They weren't even allowed to enter the worship gathering of Israel. They were idolaters who had refused to help Israel as they made their way from Egypt.   She eventually became the wife of Boaz /and the great-grandmother of King David. The book of Ruth beautifully tells the story of Boaz as Ruth's kinsman-redeemer,/ the one with power and resources to rescue and protect the vulnerable. /Her appearance here in the opening pages of the Christmas story reminds us that Jesus is the redeemer of those on the outside, who, like the Moabitess Ruth, were once alien to the courts of the Almighty and are now brought in as full participants of the grace of God.           Your Name in the Family of God So, hopefully, by now, you will never read the first chapter of Matthew the same way again. But more importantly, I hope you understand that Jesus is more than just a name in the Bible. He is the son of Abraham. He is the son of David. He is the Christ.   It is comforting that God names these four misfits, otherwise forgotten, otherwise outsider women. He names the exploited, the forgotten, the powerless, and the outsider.   The world may forget your name, /but you can be known and named by the One who is the/ “name that is above every name" (Phil. 2:8-11). What's more, Jesus can give you a new name. This is the real meaning of Christmas, that God is in the business of taking sinners like you and me and making us new creations, with new identities and a new purpose, as we are told in (2 Cor. 5:17-19): ¹⁷ This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! ¹⁸ And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. ¹⁹ For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.   As you reflect on this Christmas, I pray that you understand if there is room in the family of God for Rahab and Tamar, /Abraham and Jacob,/ Ruth and Bathsheba, /David and Judah,/ there is room for you. Don’t let anything keep you from embracing, by faith, this good news.   (Advent devotional for this week on the other side of the bulletin insert) Next week is our final message of Christmas Characters. As we reflect on 2023 and look upon 2024 with hope and anticipation, we will focus on two elderly persons noted for their hope and expectation in a message titled, The Oldest Bucket List: Simeon and Anna. Please read Matthew 2:21-38

The Characters of Christmas-9  The Misfits of Christmas – Daily Wisdom