Sermon preached by The Rev. Lance Wallace
4th Sunday of Advent
This is the season of Advent, in fact, this is the fourth week. We look forward to Christmas Day this coming Saturday and rejoice that God came in the flesh as baby Jesus. But there is another side to Advent and oddly enough, it has to do with heredity.
You probably did not know that my mother’s maiden name is Kennedy. My uncle, her brother, once did a study of their genealogy and found that he and his siblings were fifth cousins to the famous Kennedys, like President John Kennedy, and Bobby Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy. Well, that makes me a sixth cousin of those men who now are all deceased. That particular bit of blood that I have in common with them along with several dollars will get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks up the street. My father, with his good Scottish blood, comes from the Wallace clan. A clan made famous here in the States by the movie Braveheart. William Wallace, an even more distant relative is less, if that is possible, likely to be of some advantage to me today.
So what? How important is it for us to know from whom we came? In the United States, it really doesn’t much matter does it? If I had come to Fr. Fred back in July when he needed help and said, “Hire me, Father Fred, I am related to William Wallace the Scottish warrior hero who lived about 700 years ago”, do you think he would have been very impressed? Yeah, me either.
In the mid-second century the historian Hegesippus writes an account concerning nephews of Jesus. Hegesippus tells us that, in the late first century around 85 AD, two grandsons of Jude, one of the younger brothers of Jesus, came under suspicion of the Roman authorities. The brothers were brought before the emperor Domitian for trial. Domitian ruled the Roman Empire from 81 until 96 AD. The brothers declared they were but poor, hard working farmers and to prove it, they showed the emperor the calluses on their hands and their tough weather beaten bodies. They also explained that the kingdom of Christ was not an earthly one but one that would come at the end of history. It was obvious they were not Jewish princes who were leading any rebellion. Domitian was finally convinced they were harmless, despised them as mere peasants, and after some time released them. But the reason the two men were under suspicion in the first place is because they were of the house and lineage of David and because they were related to Jesus.
Their bloodlines were important. In the past several weeks we have learned that the Jews were expecting a Messiah to come and establish a new kingdom. But the Messiah wasn’t going to be just any man. He had to be a descendant from King David. That is one of the main points of Matthew’s Gospel. He spends the first seventeen verses talking about how Jesus is related to David. In today’s reading, the angel of the Lord talks to Joseph as a son of David. Should Jesus being related to David matter?
Our epistle reading from Romans said, “Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.” Clearly the bloodline was important to God. He had promised to David that his descendent would establish a kingdom. God loved David. Although David was not perfect the Bible tells us that he was a man after God’s heart. David desired to please God. David wanted God to be glorified. Under David Israel was able to finally have peace around his borders.
As Israel looked back on its history, the time under King David were the golden years. God told Israel through the prophets that one day, a son of David would be born, who like David did, would bring back the golden years, and not just that, but would bring even better times. The prophets foretold times of peace and plenty. They told of a time when all the nations of the world would want to come to Jerusalem to worship God.
The Jews of Jesus day were looking particularly at the prophecies that talked of David’s descendent who would lead the Israeli nation back into the golden years of King David. They looked at the prophecies in Isaiah chapter nine and chapter 11 and Jeremiah chapter 33 where the Son of David is a king who will rule in a Messianic kingdom and all sin and evil will be taken away and peace and righteousness will be victorious. The Jews did not look at prophecies in places like Isaiah 53 which talk of the suffering servant and certainly did not think that their Messiah would first have to come to suffer.
Yes, it does matter that Jesus is descended from David because Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to David and to the nation of Israel. Since we have the advantage of retrospect, we realize that Jesus has to fulfill all the Messianic prophecies and the ones about suffering and dying for his people for their sins came first. The Jews of Jesus’ day misunderstood Jesus’ ministry. They didn’t get the business about being a servant and suffering and being the Lamb of God. How could a king act like that? He did not fit their idea of how David’s son should act. They couldn’t understand what he meant when he talked about kingdoms. Jesus frequently taught about a kingdom, which he referred to as the kingdom of God or as the kingdom of heaven. The paradigm that the kingdom Jesus taught was 180 degrees different than the world’s definition of a kingdom. It was 180 degrees different than what the religious Jews or even Jesus’ disciples thought a kingdom should be. Jesus taught that the people at the top had to serve the most, not be served the most. This new kingdom established by Jesus has love, righteousness, justice and mercy as the primary features.
We are part of this new kingdom. We acknowledge Jesus as our Lord and King. The problem is that we, like the Jews of Jesus’ day sometimes have a hard time adjusting to paradigm of the kingdom of Jesus. We tend to want to slip into the world’s perspective about what is important. We like to be served instead of serve. Frankly there are times when instead of simply obeying what Jesus, our king, tells us in his word to do, we want to discuss it and think about it. As Mark Twain once said, “It is not the obscure parts of the Bible that bother me.”
God had Jesus born in David’s line because God was going to raise a king up for mankind who would set up a new kingdom. Jesus is that king and he has established his kingdom which is based on love, righteousness, justice and mercy. As followers of Jesus our king we are citizens of that kingdom.
Next Saturday is Christmas day. Let us not only celebrate the birth of Jesus, David’s heir and Messiah, but let us strive to be worthy citizens of our Savior’s kingdom.