It must surely be a good thing that there was no such thing as genealogy.com in Jesus' day.  Otherwise, had Jesus gotten online, He might have been just a couple of mouse clicks away from total despair when He went to research His family history.  Can you imagine?   Your assignment is nothing less than to be the savior of the world and you discover that your pedigree has some pretty shady characters in it.  You might be given to wonder whether, with that kind of spiritual DNA, anything ultimately good could come from a family like yours.  This thing called family can be a strange combination of characters, can't it?

Something of which I was reminded at Thanksgiving when Nancy's family gathered, as they do each year, at a state park just west of Nashville, Tennessee, where they rent a family-sized cabin in the woods and hibernate for four very close days.  The cast of characters at the Thanksgiving table is incredibly diverse.  There are political conservatives as well as at least two, by my count, that missed their calling as hippies by about thirty years.  There are those with deep religious convictions and some who just kind of peer in at the church from the outside as they pass by from time to time.  No one at the table is perfect (except, of  course, Nancy's mother).  But, the one thing they all have in common is that they are family.  No matter where they've gone onto in life, geographically or otherwise, there is something about their year that is profoundly incomplete, even disoriented, if they don't make a journey back to that place and revisit their family point of origin.

Nancy's family has got to be one of the strongest I have ever witnessed.  And, it's not because of the accommodations at Thanksgiving (straight-back cane chairs that are a throwback to some instrument of medieval torture) or the food (incredible) or the golf (believe me, not the golf!) or the walk through the woods that felt like The Blair Witch Project revisited.  It is, in large part, because her parents know how important it is for the children and the grandchildren to never forget where they came from.  It's almost as though knowing where you came from is more important than where you came from.

The Jewish people have always known that secret.  The truth is, Jesus didn't need an online genealogy service.  He certainly knew by heart what Matthew recorded as an account of the genealogy of Jesus which, literally interpreted, means "the book of Genesis."  And, just like your family and mine, the story of Jesus' earthly genesis is not altogether glamorous.  Now, Matthew's point in tracing this genealogy is to prove that Jesus was the Messianic King of Israel.  Jesus was the name, the common name, if you will, by which our Lord was known during His earthly life.  When Matthew traces Jesus' roots back by calling Him the son of David, the son of Abraham, he is building His case for calling Jesus the Messiah, the fulfillment of all Old Testament prophecy regarding God's promise to deliver His people.  But, by the time Matthew retraced and recorded Jesus' family tree, Jesus' earthly life had come and gone.  The point being that these words weren't written so that Jesus would know His roots.  They were written so that we would know.  And, it was hardly an altogether stellar cast of characters that made up Jesus' family tree.  For one thing, it was not purely Jewish.

To make a short list, Ruth was from Moab, not Israel.  Yet, she's in Jesus' family tree.  And, somewhere down the trunk is a woman named Rahab who was not only a foreigner to Israel, but also, a prostitute.  Which brings up another twist in the branches.   Jesus' family tree not only had foreign blood in it, there was some bad blood, too.  A prostitute?  What do you do with that kind of history?  And, then there's Solomon.  Now, Solomon's dad was David.  No more revered name in all of Jewish history.  What is really interesting is that Solomon's mom was a woman Matthew simply refers to as the wife of Uriah, a woman we remember by the name of Bathsheba.  In other words, one of Jesus' great-grand-someones was the offspring of the union between David and Bathsheba.  A union made possible only because David had Uriah killed so that he could commit adultery with his wife, Bathsheba.  And, it goes on and on.  But, where Matthew's rehearsing of Jesus' family tree brings us is to this point.  These are the kinds of people who made up Jesus' family tree.

So, here we have it.  When you get to climbing the family tree of Jesus' earthly origin you will find some deep religious tradition.   Good parents, no doubt.  But, you also find prostitution, adultery and murder, just to name a few.  And, it was from this very human family, as Matthew says it, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.

It could make you wonder whether Matthew has another motive in mind than simply doing family research.  Is it possible that we are being told that, even in the very family from which our saviour was born, we have evidence that God is always in the process of recycling families?  That no one human failure or combination of human failures can ultimately deter God from His greater purpose with the human family?  The one that traces its origin back to Adam and Eve?   It makes you wonder, doesn't it?  Romans 8, verse 28, takes on a whole new meaning in this light.  We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

I've been reading Stephen Ambrose's The Victors lately.  One of Ambrose's great gifts to our understanding of World War II has been in his way of bringing to light the contribution of the common men and women who fought and won that war for us.  World War II, without doubt, was a strategic contest of almost inconceivable proportion.  Sixty million people died in that war.  But, what Ambrose so marvelously recounts is the way, for example, at Normandy on D-Day, it wasn't the great generals who won the day but the average men from no-name towns in America that finally put Hitler's army in its place.  There were innumerable reasons why that invasion should have failed.  But, it was some greater common purpose that drove common men to heroic sacrifice and carried the day.

So, there you have it.  If you look at any one character in Jesus' family tree or at any one moment in the history of its growth it makes no sense whatsoever that any ultimate eternal good could have come from it.  But, when you understand the greater purpose of God in it all, the sum of all the parts gets it meaning.  Just like in your family.  Or, for that matter, in your life.

In a sense, any given moment in your life, or your family's life, is like one frame from a larger reel of pictures.  It's absolutely impossible to judge the whole story by what you can see in one frame.   You have to see the movie all the way through to the end before you can understand what purpose any one frame played in the plot.  I'm coming to learn that it's dangerous to judge any person by what you see going on in their life in any one moment.  No matter what you see, it's just one frame.  What is impossible to see, except with the perspective of long reaches of time and faith, is the greater purpose of God in the story.

Nancy and I finally caved in and went to see The Spy Who Shagged Me sometime back, I'm ashamed to say.  One of those people we eat Thanksgiving dinner with every year said it was the funniest movie he'd ever seen.  We had our doubts, but, as I learned in sales, there is nothing more powerful than a good family referral.  Or, a bad one, for that matter.  Needless to say, we'd been there less than ten minutes when we knew we'd made one big mistake and realized that if anyone got shagged it was those who paid to watch such trash.   Not only was it terribly profane, it wasn't even close to funny.   So, less than ten minutes in, we got up and left.  Some movies you don't have to watch all the way to the end.  One frame or two will do and you get the picture.

But, never is it that way with people or families.  That's something worth remembering when a good friend fails morally, for example.  As tragic and devastating as that failure may be, it's only one frame in the reel of their life.  It's not the whole story.   Something good to remember about churches, too.  No one moment in any church's history is all of its history.  Something good to remember about your own life, for that matter.  No matter what the failure, it's only one frame in a reel that can have a meaningful and purposeful ending.  God is in the business of recycling families.  And, He is the final editor of your life's story.

When I was growing up, my dad had this 8mm camera with which he recorded most of my childhood.  He also had this little desktop splicing machine he used to edit his home movies.  It was amazing how he could take some less than perfect shots and splice them together to make the history of our family read just the way he wanted.  When you read the story of Jesus' family tree what you see is a master editor at work, recycling and splicing what, in and of themselves are worthless frames, into a story that reveals His greater purpose with mankind. Which is really what we celebrate during these four Sundays before Christmas called Advent.  The story of the birth of Jesus is not just history.  It is, in the truest sense, prologue.  Jesus family tree didn't stop growing with His birth.  It is still growing.  That is the purpose of God in it all.  In fact, when you read the verse of scripture that follows Romans 8:28, you find the greater purpose of God in all of history defined this way.   His purpose was and is that His Son, Jesus, might be the firstborn among many brothers.  In Christ, God had family in mind.  And, God wants a great big family before it's all done.   A family of which He intends you and me to be a part.

Well, speaking of frames and reels, bad movies and good, I took the boys to see Toy Story 2 this past week.  Hurry, before long we'll be reading in the The Baptist Standard of how someone, after careful research, has found evidence of Satanic or demonic influence in a plot that animates toy characters to life-like reality.   But, for those of us who can still enjoy seasoning our realities with a little fantasy, I found it to be a thoroughly delightful and surprisingly good sequel to this adventure in a little boy's room.

Anyway, here is the dilemma.  Woody, the toy cowboy, has a chance to rejoin some of the other characters from the line of toys of which he was originally a part.  They are on their way to a toy museum where children will admire them in glassed boxes for thousands of years.  Eternal fame and notoriety are just one plane ride away.   The only problem is that, in order to be in the museum he has to run away from Andy, the little boy who has loved him and played with him all these years.  Andy is growing up fast and the toys from his original family beg him to come to the museum with him arguing that, before long, Andy will just sell him in a yard sale anyway.  Woody almost gives in.  But, at the last minute he makes a profound choice.  He decides to stay in Andy's room where, even if lasts for just a while, at least it's a real family.  Then, he does something incredibly brilliant.  Instead of just waving goodbye to his old family, he invites them to join them in his new family where they will not only be the new toys on the block but they can share Andy's love, too.  And, do you know what happened at the end of the movie?  The theater full of children broke into applause.  I wonder why.   Do you think it's because even children know how important family is and how good it feels to have one place in the world where no one is more loved than you?

You know, my family doesn't look anything like I thought it would.   God has his hands full editing and recycling this one.  But, I think that's one reason this season takes on more meaning with each passing year.  In the middle of all my failures and sin, I need to be reminded that God never forsakes His children.  That God recycles failure into divine purpose.  That God will edit the story of my life to make it read the way He intended it when I trust Him with my failures.  That God has a great big family in mind and that His family tree is still growing and I'm a part of it.

May I take this opportunity to invite you to join me in my new family?   I can't tell you how wonderful it feels to know I have one place in the world where I am loved so much.