A genealogy doesn’t seem a great way to start off a Gospel, not least the Gospel that, in Protestant Bibles, opens up the entire New Testament corpus.
But for Matthew, and his Jewish readership, there was nothing more compelling than seeing how the birth of Christ was firmly grounded in the muck and madness of Jewish history.
Let’s never forget that our faith is rooted in real, often messy, but utterly factual history. We know it is true, in part, because it is so messy. As we reel off names from Jesus’ genealogy, we can’t help recalling the stories behind Abraham’s wife-swapping adventures, Jacob’s life of deception, and being deceived by his 12 sons, then Judah’s illicit relationship with Tamar. It reads like a particularly gruesome episode of Eastenders!
