Stainglass window
Christmas 2011
3rd Dec Advent Party
12th Dec @ 2pm
Carol Service at Oak tree Court
16th Dec @ 2.30pm
Carol Service at Stratford Court
17th Dec @11am
Carol Singing outside Co-Op
18th Dec Nativity and Christingle Service and Carol Service
24th Dec @ 11pm (Service starts at 11.30pm
United Service at URC Etwall Rd
25th Dec @10am
Christmas Day Service
Who Do You Think You Are
Dear Friends,
Have you watched any of those programmes on BBC2 this Autumn, in which a famous celebrity attempt to trace something of their ancestors? It's been a runaway success with viewers. Genealogy (as the subject of tracing your family tree is called) is big business nowadays. Our identity is tied up with the answer to the question, 'Where have I come from?' We all need 'roots', as Alex Haley's best-selling book of that title so successfully highlighted. You cannot be a real human being without a genealogy which is why Jesus had to have one!
Matthew begins his Gospel not with the Christmas story (which is where we so often begin), but with Jesus' family tree. The opening two words of the gospel are translated in the New International Version as 'A record of the genealogy', but could equally be translated as 'The book of Genesis'! It takes us back to the way the Bible begins, as if Matthew wants to tell us that the coming of Jesus marks a turning point in the history of the world so dramatic, that it is no exaggeration to call it a new creation, a new beginning.
The family tree is arranged in three groups of fourteen names each. They emphasize particular markers of the previous 2000 years: ABRAHAM was the founding father, to whom God made great promises. DAVID was the great king, to whom again God made promises of future lordship over all the world. The BABYLONIAN EXILE was the time when it seemed these promises were lost for ever. But the prophets (like Isiah) promised that God would again restore Abraham's people and David's royal line. Now is the moment for all this to happen, Matthew is saying. The child whose genealogy this is, is God's anointed, the long-awaited Messiah.
But perhaps more interesting is the inclusion of four women in Jesus' family tree (something very unusual in Jewish patriarchal society), And what women they were! Tamar was an adulteress; Rahab was a prostitute from pagan Jericho; Uriah's wife Bathsheba, was the woman David seduced; Ruth was not even a jew at all, but a Maobitess-the people from Maob were forbidden to go near the Temple of the Lord for all eternity!
Why des Matthew choose these women? Perhaps in his mind they illustrate what the Gospel of Jesus is all about;
1) In Jesus, the barriers between men and women are broken down, as women share in his genealogy;
2)In Jesus, the barriers between Gentiles and Jews are broken down, as Ruth plays her part in the coming of the Saviour of the World
3)In Jesus, even the barriers between good people and bad people have come crashing down, as Bathsheba and Tamar find a place.
For as the apostle Paul will later put it, 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God' (Romans 3:23)
Who is this Jesus? He is he one who has come with the all-embracing love of God. Nothing can stand in its path. There is nobody who does not need it.
As we celebrate another Chritmas, we shall be thinking at our services just who the baby born in the manger really is. and then, in the new year we're going to look on Sunday mornings at the way he has influenced so many people through the last 2000 years, and the way he continues to influence us today.
As you sing the familiar carols, take time to think about Jesus and who he is. In doing so, then you really will have a happy Christmas!
Your friend and pastor,
Jonathan Calvert
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