Re Born

"David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife." 

(Matthew 1.6)

Bathsheba, aka Uriah's wife—the last of the women mentioned in Matthew 1 as part of Jesus' bloodline. (See the last three weeks for the other women.)

Lets just say from the beginning, Bathsheba gets a bad rap. It seems like we can't bring ourselves to say that King David could commit anything so heinous as he does, though we have plenty of evidence both in Scripture and in our own lives to prove that good people can do rotten things in the name of self-interest. 

So often, commentators and scholars dole the blame out to her, as if bathing on your own house was just asking for the king's salacious attention. (Times have not changed, in far too many ways, ladies. Sounds like a familiar argument.)

The simple fact is, we don't know. We don't know if she was a willing participant in adultery or if David exercised his kingly privilege to take any woman he wanted. We don't know if she adored her husband and mourned his death. We don't know if she had a happy content life or if she coveted the higher plane she got. We don't know anything. 

Perhaps it's right that she's mentioned in Matthew only as “Uriah's wife.” She is the beautiful but invisible woman, whose life is played with and altered by those around her rather than under her own control.

Aren't there Bathshebas all around us? Girls working in sweat shops as young as eight? Fourteen-year-olds branded by their pimps as property with which they do what they please? Wives and girlfriends locked in abusive relationships because they fear an unknown alternative? If you don't think so, think again. It's right in front of you, and you're not seeing it. In the hallowed “Christian” upper class suburbs around where I live, it's far more common than we want to believe.

But what about the lesser slaveries? Girls who believe their bodies have to look like Victoria's Secret posters in order to be wanted? People who have made so many mistakes they believe there is no road back? Women who are convinced by various conflicting doctrines of their culture that they have to be submissive, aggressive, young, working, stay-at-home, sexually “free,” obedient—anything and everything but what they feel in their God-gifted souls they were created to be. 

We are all slaves of what we choose to listen to. And so many have lost the ability to hear the message God spoke into their souls when He created them.

I'm sure Bathsheba did. The despair she must have felt at the loss of her life, her husband, and her child must have crushed all belief that her life would ever be her own.

Of course, the message of Christmas is that it isn't. It never was. But when it's given to Christ, it's returned in fuller form that we ever imagined. The baby born under the star gives us birth as well.

Bathsheba is included in the list because she had to muster the ability to begin again. And beginning again is the Christmas specialty. It's what Jesus came to explode into our lives. The chance, the vision, the flat-out non-theoretical capability, to start over. From wherever you are. To have control of your life—just as soon as you turn it over to the only One who wants to set you free.

“How silently, how silently,

The wondrous Gift is giv'n!

So God imparts to human hearts

The blessings of His heaven.

No ear may hear His coming,

But in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive Him still,

The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sins and enter in, Be born in us today.”

Be born in us. No matter what our mistakes. Regardless of what has been done to us. Despite any and all circumstances of our past. Be born in us, and let us be born again. 

Not a cheesy, televangelist born again. Real, sweat and tears, labor and screaming, born again, away from all the hell of the past and toward the promise of the future.

It's the promise. It's yours. You just have to ask. Because it's Christmas.

When Doing Right Isn't Enough

Third in a series of posts on the women in Jesus' genealogy. Read that list of men and women in Matthew 1 here.

"Boaz was the father of Obed (whose mother was Ruth).
Obed was the father of Jesse.
6 Jesse was the father of King David." (Matthew 1.5-6)

Ruth stakes her place on the list of Jesus' ancestors with some fairness, we think. After all, she gets an entire book of the Bible named after her. She must have some more redeeming qualities than, say, the two previous women who either acted like or were actual prostitutes. Finally, we think, Matthew hits upon one woman who actually deserves to make the cut.

Ruth, still a young woman, loses her husband, as do her mother-in-law and sister-in-law. This family is hard on men, apparently. She leaves her country to travel with Naomi, her mother-in-law, back to her home. She knows there is little hope for her to remarry or even survive there. But she goes.

She chooses to come with her mother-in-law rather than leave her alone. Ruth could have returned to her own people and married again. She could have had a future. But she knew Naomi could not. She knew the older woman was likely to live in desperate poverty and loneliness, and she would not allow that if she could help it. She sacrificed her own well being for that of a woman who no longer had any legal claim on her but a heart claim that would be honored.

She works hard, long hours of manual labor to provide the smallest of resources. She obeys Naomi's plans. She conducts herself with humility, modesty, and dignity. She does everything right.

Ruth is the unchallenged good girl of the list. Everyone loves her; everyone speaks well of her; she gets her guy in the end. If anyone deserves a place on the list, she does.

But I doubt she feels that way. I am guessing that, without the benefit of our retrospect, she felt very much forgotten and unsure of her future. As a foreigner, she felt stared at and suspected at every turn, aware that she could be turned away or taken advantage of anywhere because of her nationality. That probably sounds quite familiar to some people still today. Without the beautiful ending of the story we get to read, she must have felt more vulnerable than you or I can ever imagine.

Or maybe you can imagine it. Perhaps you feel like Ruth. You've done the right things. You've tried to follow God. You've chosen the right path, and you don't understand why it's leading not to success and prosperity but to not knowing every day where the things you need are going to come from. To feeling bare and open to powers that control you but may not have your welfare in mind. You're not at all certain of the happy ending we read about.

Maybe you have done all you can to make good and choose well, but your skin color or your nation of origin or past record are strikes called against you before you can prove your integrity. (Why you even have to is another question, of course.)

Ruth is in this list because she needs provision. She needs trust in an uncertain future. She needs to know she'll be taken care of, not because she did all the right things but because there is someone with enough power and enough love to lift her out of her worries and put her above them.

She finds it in Boaz, but we are offered far more than a human redeemer. We are offered One with all the resources of the universe who looks down on us and says, “I'll care for that one. That one's mine.”

That's the promise of Christmas.

It's not a promise of all we need and no worries forever. God is not the author of hakuna matata, Disney is. And much as I love the princesses, I do not look to them for my theology. (Follow your heart , tra la la . . . yeah, like that's usually a good idea.)

What Christmas is is a promise of provision. A testimony that in the middle of whatever uncertainty life holds, there is sustenance for survival in turning to him. It may get worse before it gets better. It may honestly never get better in this life. But there is hope-sustaining love to keep the spirit alive sheltered in that baby in the manger.

“O ye beneath life's crushing load,

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow;

Look now, for glad and golden hours

Come swiftly on the wing; Oh rest beside the weary road

And hear the angels sing.”

Those words would have meant life to Ruth. They do to us, as well. Listen to the angels sing. Because it's Christmas. 

Scarlet Cords in the Manger

Last week began a series of posts on the women in Matthew 1. You can read that introduction here. Today--the second woman mentioned in Jesus' genealogy. And yes, she is quite the addition.

“And Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab.” (Matthew 1.5)

Wow—this bad, bad woman is uncomfortably close to our reverenced King David in genealogy, let alone Jesus himself. Rahab? Whose name is never mentioned in Sunday school classes without its suffix—“The Harlot”? Seriously, how many kids grow up thinking that was just her full name—“Rahab Theharlot”? They have no idea what the word means, right? So it's logical.

Rahab's story is found in Joshua 2, where she takes the Israelite spies onto her roof and hides them from her countrymen who would kill them. Basically, on top of being a whore, she commits treason and treachery against her own country. This just keeps getting better and better.

Much has been written (mostly by male commentators of the Bible) about Rahab's sinfulness. Perhaps students of Scripture should be reminded that more often than not, prostitution is not a voluntary occupation. We don't know her details, so we don't know her choices. One choice, though, we do know. It's the one where she defends the two men of God by risking her own life, and affirms,

“I know the Lord has given you this land. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below.”

And she begs them to rescue her. She is talking about rescuing her and her family when the Israelites come into the city of Jericho and it falls. The scarlet cord she hangs from her window assures her that she and her family will be noticed and saved. But I think she's talking about more.

Rescue from her way of life. Rescue from her empty idolatry that promised happiness but delivered slavery. Rescue from the hatred of and simultaneous use by men. Rahab's story is an old one, and it is a current one, too. Women still live in slavery to men's lust for ownership. But that is not the last word.

“For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.” 

(1 Peter 1.18-19)

Rahab needs rescue. I need rescue. Humans need rescue. And Matthew includes her in Jesus list of ancestors because that's precisely what He came to give. Rescue from an empty life that teases us with gold and gives out dust.

The good news of Christmas is that there is rescue. We are not doomed to remain harlots to whatever we have given our lives to that isn't healthy and whole. We can choose to cling to the scarlet cord that is Jesus' blood and take the rescue he offers.

Rahab is one of Jesus' foremothers for a reason.

Good Christian, fear: for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spear shall pierce him through,

The Cross be borne for me, for you;

Hail, hail the Word Made Flesh,

The babe, the son of Mary!

The baby of the manger pleads your case. He offers a scarlet cord. He chooses to rescue, at his own cost.

Because it's Christmas.

Matthew 1 and the Seismic Jolt of Christmas

Christianity is often accused of being anti-woman. People see it as a religion that treats women as second class and subservient. Nothing could be so wrong. Now, plenty of religious people do, in fact, treat women this way. Many sincere believers are certain the Bible even teaches this. But that is not the Christianity of the Bible. It is definitely not the belief system, or the behavior, of Jesus. And proof of this begins, well, at the very beginning. In Matthew, chapter one.

Most folks skim over chapter one. Seriously, who gets that much entertainment out of a list of “Joe was the father of John who was the father of Jim who was the father of . . .” Except the actual names in Matthew are much, much harder to pronounce.

But four times, we get stopped in the litany. Right in the middle of that perfect rhythm of dads and sons, we get a seismic jolt, four times. They are the names of the women. I spent one blog post talking about them last year; this year, I want to spend four. Why? Because I want to. And it's my blog.

No one ever included the women in lists like this. No one remembered them. No one considered them worth the mention. The fact that Matthew did blares a message across the ages we take for granted in our theoretically egalitarian society: 

Jesus came, right from the start, to cut through our ideas of who measures up and who's important with his message—everyone is immeasurably important.

To grasp how revolutionary this declaration of Matthew's is, we must understand how fundamentally not true this was for people of his time. People had a hierarchy by which to judge other people, and women were at the bottom. So were the disabled, the foreign, and the poor. The mere existence of this list in Matthew is a challenge flung into the teeth of the world. Love and value for everyone is taking over. We're here, we're ready to play, and we're not going home.

So he begins with Tamar. Might as well start with Desperate Housewives. You can read the entire account here, if you wish. Just know, abridged version, she is not exactly without scandal. Desperate for a son and thus someone to care for her as a widow alone, she opts for a less than conventional route to pregnancy. As a result, she ends up almost burned alive as a prostitute. She also ends up mentioned in Jesus' genealogy.

Tamar had been treated unfairly by those in power over her, and she was afraid. Afraid she would be alone, ashamed, and impoverished later in life. I think we can relate to those fears. Do you carry shame you're afraid will be revealed, whether it is actually shameful or imagined shame? It was considered shameful for Tamar to have had two husbands and no sons. Her shame tripled when she was denied a third husband because of her habit of losing husbands. Matthew assures you and me from chapter one that Jesus came to deal with shame.

Fears of being alone? You haven't found that “one” to go through life with? Or you did, but he or she turned out to be not the one? Maybe the kids are all gone and the quiet closeness of the house seems unbearable. Or you are the kid whom no one sees or hears. Matthew promises—Jesus came to deal with alone.

The fact that Matthew includes Tamar in Jesus bloodline fairly screams, if we will hear it: 

Jesus came from a woman who was frightened, alone, ashamed, and set aside because he came for people who felt the same way.

He cries from the cradle and then whispers from the cross—I will be the eraser of shame and the lover of the lonely. Come. Just come.

No more let sin and sorrow reign,

     nor thorns infest the ground.

He comes to make his blessings flow,

     far as the curse is found.

Because it's Christmas. 

Running Wild with Hope

So perhaps laughing uncontrollably through a video on ebola may not be appropriate. But appropriate is not always my strong suit.

Let's be clear—ebola is not a humorous topic. Certainly not one to take lightly, no matter if precious Americans are safe on our soil. Thousands of West Africans are not, and that isn't forgettable or funny.

But the video I happened upon, and shared with my daughter who appreciates British humor, poked fun at the media's response to ebola, not the disease itself, and put me in tears. Sometimes, we laugh at things that seem horrible. But I wonder if maybe the reason isn't so much lack of taste as a desire to laugh at the horrible itself. To pretend we have some control over it and some ability to minimize it if we make fun of it.

Yet, as we move into the Christmas season, I wonder if there isn't even more to it for Christians. Shouldn't we be the ones who are perpetually laughing?

Christians should be the first ones laughing. Not at other people, mind you, but laughing. Because we know. We know the truth of Christmas—that God personally interfered in our messy world and gave us the forgiveness, love, and tools to set it right. We know that no matter the ugly, there was a baby whose star of presence was the most beautiful thing to ever hit planet earth.

In fact, I find that the people who get angry the easiest, who get offended at the least bit of humor, are the ones who may, after all, be capable of atrocities against others. It's the anger that gets offended easily, the dislike of thoughts other than our own, the distrust of laughter we can't understand that causes a lot of the pain of this world. People who can't laugh are often quite willing to abuse those who can.

If you don't know this craziness ends? If you don't know pain is temporary, and the hurt we do to one another defeatable? OK, I can see how nothing would be funny. Nothing at all. But we know. We know, because of Christmas, the world isn't going to hell in a handbasket.

So why do we act like it is? Why do so many Christians freak out over threats large and small? Why do we say we believe God is in control and act as if we believe it's all up to us? Yes, there are horrors beyond our imagination happening right now. Yes, I pray for victims of murderous persecutions and deadly diseases, and I help where I see avenues to help. But I do not duck my head and scream that the sky is falling. Mere men do not hold up the sky.

Some call this naïve. I prefer to call it belief. Belief that, because of Christmas, God wins. Faith that, despite suffering, He has the final say. Trust that yes, things may get rough. Very rough. They may not go the way Christians would like them to go. Nevertheless, His purposes, not mine, finish the story. Victoriously.

We should laugh. We must hope. In one of my favorite Rich Mullins songs, he sings,

“How the Lord takes by its corners this old world

And shakes us forward and shakes us free

To run wild with the hope

To run wild with the hope

The hope that this thirst will not last long

That it will soon drown in the song

Not sung in vain.”

That's the wild laughter we need to have. The abandon that comes from certainty that we will not always thirst. The joy we need to embrace, not in the absence of fear and horror but in its midst. That is the only place it serves its purpose. Joyous, abandoned, holy laughter only makes sense when it's in the face of a force that thinks it has won but most definitely has not.

That Christmas baby was born in the midst of some pretty awful circumstances. Circumstances a lot like ours. Slavery, persecution, discrimination, hunger, hatred, and disease. His star shone brighter because it was in that world, because light always shines brighter in darkness. He cried many times in this world, but he also laughed. A lot. I am sure he did it with his whole heart and soul, with abandoned, head back, hiccuping joy. Because he saw the horrors of this world better than we ever have--and he knew the end.

The song is not sung in vain. Run wild with the hope this Christmas. Stifle the sour faces and dire predictions. Stop the endless blaming for this world's ills. This world has a promise born in a stable. See what kind of peace on earth your wild, laughing hope can bring.