10th Sunday of Pentecost Year A 6 August in the Year of our Lord 2023
Genesis 32:22-31
Psalm 17:1-7, 15
Romans 9:1-5
Matt:14:13-21
MORNING PRAYER
With the departure of Fr. Matt what do we do now?
That is what many are wondering? My view is we should do what we have always done in the past: get out of the way and Let Jesus be King! We have a small Christian community. Our people are a mix of single women and men, young families, and not so young married couples. We worship in the most attractive and traditional church building in Plumas County and own the property free and clear. We have men and women who volunteer their time maintaining the interior and exterior of the Chapel, making it possible for us avoid prohibitively expensive work by contractors. And most of all, the Lord has been teaching us how to love one another. I will now transition to what the Scripture readings today teach us about following the Lord.
The Gospel of Matthew begins with “the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew was a Jewish tax collector who became one of Jesus’ disciples. His narrative of the life and teachings of Jesus is perhaps the first gospel listed because it forms a connecting link between the Old and the New Testaments by its emphasis on Jesus as the fulfillment of the Messiah of prophesy. Most of the early Church were ethnically Jewish. A Jewish audience would look to a person’s family line to prove their place in God’s plan as one of his chosen people. Today, of the world population of 8 billion, 2.6 billion are Christians (Wikipedia) and the genealogy of Jesus is a subject of interest worldwide because lives have been changed by Him, all over the world.
Take a moment to consider what your life would be like if you had not come to know Jesus? I can say without any hesitation that if I had not come to know Him, my life story would have been very different. I may have met Margaret, but I doubt that she would have married the young fool that I was. I would not have had the discipline to finish graduate school, and thus the life that I loved teaching college students would have been out of my reach. Without my prayer life, raising children as a father would have been so much more difficult. And the world that we live in now would cause me constant anxiety regarding the safety and happiness of my children and grandchildren. But a relationship to Christ the Lord inspires people about the future that they want and the future that is possible. Jesus was the only one who knew what I would become.
As a believer I know, as the Psalmist declares that the Lord is near to all who call upon him (145:18). In our gospel reading today we find Jesus returning to a crowd of people after getting away by himself. His first emotion on seeing them was to “have compassion for them and cure their sick.” (Matt 14:14) He is still reaching out to those who put their trust in him. That is our job … to put our trust in Him and follow where he leads; informed by Scripture, worship, and prayer. As Isaiah declared in figurative language: Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have not money, come buy and eat! (55:1)
Who was this young builder born in Bethlehem and raised in the town of Nazareth in Galilee? He a native of Judea, a politically insignificant country 125 miles long and 50 wide, the national home of the Jewish people for many centuries. It was governed by Herod the Great, a client king under the rule of Augustus Caesar. Judea was part of the Roman province of Palestine, which included Samaria, Galilee, Decapolis and the Tetrarchies of Antipas and Philip. Herod heard about the birth of ”a new king of the Jews” from the Magi of the East and unsuccessfully tried to put an end to his life by ordering the death of all the boys of Bethlehem under the age of two years. But the plans of the LORD will not be frustrated in any age of this world.
Matthew’s genealogy shows that Jesus was a descendant of Abraham the father of all Jews and a direct descendant of King David fulfilling Old Testament prophesies about the royal lineage of the coming Messiah. The lineage of David was carefully preserved by Jewish authorities, even though Israel was governed by the Romans. Jesus had direct descent to David through both patrilineal and matrilineal lines. Joseph, the legal father of Jesus, was a direct descendant of David (Matt 1:16), as was Mary according to church tradition through her father Heli, father-in-law of her husband Joseph (Luke 3:23).
Once a man, Jesus was more than a building contractor, even though he practiced this vocation as a teenager until he was 30. He received a comprehensive biblical education in his local synagogue and spoke Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek the common tongue of the Roman empire. Jesus was a proper Jew and followed the ancient traditions regarding maturity and leadership. David became king at 30, John the Baptist began preaching repentance at 30. Levites could not function as Temple priests nor Rabbi’s teach until they were 30. Jesus was baptized by his cousin John at 30 and then secluded himself in the mountains for 40 days before formally preaching about the Kingdom of God.
It is also notable that he was called Rabbi (teacher) 44 times in the Gospels, and that Jesus regularly cited the Old Testament with its Patriarchs, Prophets, Heroes. All having strengths and weaknesses, just as we do.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs of ancient Israel were travelers. In each case their traveling was a necessary aspect of the formation of their character. Terah, father of Abraham, took his extended family from Ur, near modern Bagdad Iraq, to Haran in modern eastern Turkey. Years later, Abraham with his wife Sarah, his nephew, and all their servants traveled, walking, nearly 400 miles from Haran to Shechem in Canaan. The lands that he lived in are what would become ancient and modern Israel. During his life he traveled hundreds of miles on numerous occasions, he did so first to escape the rigors of famine in northern Canaan. This took him to the lands of the Philistines and Egypt. In both these lands a crisis of faith caused him to lie, saying that his wife Sarah was only his sister. This led to first Pharoah and years later Abimelech (a Philistine king) taking her temporarily, into their harems. Abraham was courageous, except when temporarily paralyzed with fear. The kings involved in these events could have chosen to have him killed. But they believed him to be a man under divine protection. Abraham was first and foremost a believer. He believed in the One God and the promises of God about him and his descendants to come.
His son Isaac will be a traveler as well, but on a much lesser scale. He lived in the desert lands of the Negev, which ends in the south of modern Israel, west of Egypt and east of Jordan and borders the gulf of Aqaba, today a lovely resort city. His servants were forced to dig wells wherever they moved their flocks, to avoid competing for water with Philistine shepherds. He then moved to the Philistine city of Gerar. The men of that place were attracted by the beauty of his wife Rebecca. They were told by Isaac that she was his sister just as his father had done in Egypt and for the same reason: irrational fear that lust for her among the local men could lead to his death. It strikes me that he should have had loved his wife enough to take that risk. Sometime later, in an almost Shakespearian scene,
“Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife, Rebecca. Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, she really is your wife! Why did you say, “She is my sister’? Isaac answered him, “Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.” Then Abimelech said, “what is this that you have done to us? One of the men might have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.” So, Abimelech gave orders to all the people: “anyone who harms this man, or his wife shall surely be put to death.” (Genesis:10,11)
As was his father Abraham, Isaac was encircled by the grace and protection of the LORD as would be his son Jacob. This was not due to his character but the character of God. He had given Abraham the promise that He would bless all generations of his descendants. This promise will give a special status to his son and grandson and their descendants. Saint Paul speaks of this unique status in the 9th chapter of his Epistle to the Romans:
They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 9:4,5)
Isaac acquired greater wealth in the lands of the Philistines and eventually moved back to Hebron where Abraham and Sarah were buried (in the cave of Machpelah). He owned a piece of land that had been purchased by Abraham. All this wealth will be later distributed by his son Jacob to his 12 sons, making it possible for this emerging clan to become a wealthy tribe. Isaac was not a visionary or fighting man like his father, but as a young man he did not resist his father’s determination to sacrifice him and as a mature man he gladly accepted the wife that others chose for him. Isaac is a model patriarch in this sense, he let God guide his life and placed God’s will ahead of his own. He did not lose the wealth of flocks and servants that he inherited from his father, he added to them.
Jacob like his father and grandfather was far from perfect. His name means “supplanter,” which means someone who will deceive or defraud, to get ahead. He was not ethically concerned when his mother Rebekah devised a plot to rob her eldest son Esau of his birthright and see that it was by a trick given to her younger son whom she loved more. Jacob was only afraid of what Esau might do to him when he found out. But he had skill, determination, and patience. I wonder if Rebekah’s plan to defraud her older son was a way of punishing Isaac for treating her like a commodity in Abimelech’s Philistia.
After his brother threatened to kill him, he escaped walking 400 miles to his relatives in Haran. the place his grandfather Abraham had left, to heed the call of God years before. He married Leah and Rachel there and was blessed with 11 sons. He acquired much wealth after being cheated by his Mothers brother and father-in-law Laban, for whom he worked for 20 years. The LORD appeared to him in a dream and told him to return to Hebron, the land of his parents. He tried to escape from Laban with his family and servants by stealth but was pursued and found by his uncle Laban, who was warned by God in a dream to treat Jacob with respect.
A unique event occurred as he was returning home to Hebron. After seeing to the safety of his family, he spent a night “wrestling with a man until daybreak.” When the man saw that Jacob would not release him, he touched the socket of his hip, so that it was dislocated but Jacob still would not let him go. At daybreak the man asked to be released from the fight, and Jacob said to him I will not let you go until you bless me.” (Gen. 32:26) Not only will the “Man” bless him, but as happened to Abram when he was willing to sacrifice his son, Jacob received the new name of Israel, “because you have struggled with God and Man and have overcome.” (32:28) Israel means one who struggles with God. This was without doubt a spiritual struggle, with a spiritual being and you would not thank me if I extrapolated on the details of what may have taken place, after so long a sermon.
So, I end where I began. Fr. Matt is leaving, and we, like the Patriarchs, are not perfect. But with faith in our Savior and Lord we can respond with continuing trust in His love and presence and a goal of continuing to pursue His plans for us. This is what we have done in the past 50 years. What else can we do? And we can start by a house cleaning and reorganizing the offices and storage areas of the interior of the Chapel and repaint the exterior. It’s practical way to start, and its good fellowship. Let Jesus be King!
Joseph J. Muñoz
Professor Emeritus
Feather River College