St. Michael Russian Orthodox Church

January 10, 2010

Genealogy of Christ - What took so long?

Every year on the Sunday before we celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we hear from the gospel of St. Matthew a recounting of what is called the Genealogy of Christ, a complete history of the human forefathers of the Son of God. St. Matthew expressly lets us know that he has counted these forefathers up, and that forty two is an important number in this history, it’s 3 x 14—there being fourteen generations from the first third of the history--- Patriarch Abraham to King David, and then another fourteen generations in the second third from David to the time of the deportation of the Jews to Babylon, that is, the time of Jeconiah, and then yet another fourteen generations in the final third, from Jeconiah to Joseph, who took Mary as his wife before Jesus was born. [Today, on the Sunday after Christmas, we remember both King David and his descendant Joseph.] Now fourteen is a mystical number in Judaism, but more important than that is the sheer expanse of time that three lots of fourteen generations spans, which highlights the more important question: What took so long? If you read St. Luke’s genealogy of Christ (which is found in Luke 3: 23-38, interestingly written in the opposite chronological order from St. Matthew, that is, counting backwards from Joseph to Jeconiah, so that the “begots” change to “was the son of”, then downward to David ant to Abraham, but then not stopping there, but going all the way back—from Abraham to Noah to Methuselah to Adam, at which point Luke makes it clear that Jesus is the Son of God, as well as the son of Adam---Christ is also the son of man)--- if you read St. Luke the important question burns even brighter—What took so long? St. Luke’s history goes back more than sixty generations, showing that from the day that Adam ate the apple and was expelled from the garden, God waited over sixty generations of man to send his only begotten Son to earth to bring the hope of eternal life to men who had lost all hope, had succumbed to death, at Adam’s fall.

St. Dimitri of Rostov in the 1600’s knew the answer to “What took so long?” when he wrote these words: “[b]efore the middle of the 6th millennium since the fall of Adam, it was not possible to find a virgin pure in body as well as spirit. There was only one such, unique by her spiritual and bodily purity who was worthy to become the Church and the temple of the Holy Spirit.” We know that St. Dimitri was writing about the Virgin Mary—who on the feast day of her Nativity is referred to this way: “Today from the stem of Jesse --- the handmaid of God Mary is born for us.” That Mary’s genealogy would include Jesse, the father of King David, was foretold by the Prophet Isaiah who wrote: “And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it the Gentiles seek; and his rest shall be glorious.” An ensign is a flag, a symbol, a rallying point---Our Lord and Savior, the Messiah, born of a woman from the lineage of King David who was betrothed to a man of that very same lineage, Joseph, who, being a good Jew, would have not taken a wife outside of his own tribe. The genealogies come together, and satisfy fully the prophesy of Isaiah. And that satisfaction took so long because it took that long for men to prepare themselves to be worthy to receive Christ after the ignominious fall from grace of Adam. As the theological writer Vladimir Lossky puts it: “The whole development of the Old Testament, with its successive elections—the election of Noah, the election of the stock of Abraham, the election of the people of Israel, the election of the tribe of Judah, the election of the House of David, the law which preserved the purity of the people of God, the blessing of the chosen descendants, the whole of this sacred history appears as a providential and Messianic process, as a preparation of the Body of Christ, of the Church—the very focal point of union with God, and ABOVE ALL as a preparation of Her, who was to lend her human nature so that the mystery of the incarnation could be realized.”

Brothers and Sisters: During the festal season of Christmas, it’s all about Mary. Mary is the most important human being ever born. That is why the Orthodox Church holds the Ever Virgin Mary in such high regard, and moreover why it is impossible to be Christian and not do so. That’s why we celebrated the Synaxis of the Birthgiver of God on the day after Christmas. The reason it took so long for the day of the Nativity of Christ was that a real live human woman had to become herself pure enough to bear the Christ Child. And that took over sixty generations from the downfall of Eve to the birth of Mary to Saints Joachim and Anna. Mary, the girl who at the age of 3 walked right up those towering steps herself and entered into the Temple, devoting her whole life to God. Voluntarily. That Mary did this of her own free will as a real regular human being is what makes the Roman church’s concept of the immaculate conception so foreign to the beliefs of our Orthodox Church. Had God wanted to create a woman free from original sin to bear His Son, He could have easily done that right after the Fall. But He didn’t. He let the messianic process work itself out, for the centuries to pass, for a woman to be born in the flesh after “successive purifications,” as St. Gregory Palamas so aptly writes, and those purifications were worked through the fourteen generations from Abraham to David and the fourteen generations to the Babylonian Captivity and then in the fourteen more generations until Joseph took Mary as his wife, both being descendants in the unbroken chain from Adam and Eve. Generation upon generation of people exercising free will to eventually produce a worthy woman who herself exercised her own free will to take on the task as the Mother of God. She demonstrated that free will in what she said to the Archangel Gabriel at the Annunciation: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” Now, once again here we are celebrating the afterfeast of the Nativity—this year let’s all remember how long it took in history until that day in the manger with the angels, and shepherds, and magi looking on. A real day on earth, with real descendants of Adam, who had undergone the preparation of successive purifications over sixty generations so that all of us here today could be blessed with an opportunity to prepare ourselves through our own free will for our own salvation and life eternal through Jesus Chris Our Lord. Amen.