A Tree Was Father Of The Forest

Matthew 18:1-6; Matthew 1:1-17

This is the second of a series of sermons I'm preaching at Wallingford Presbyterian Church.  The title of this series is Parts of the Bible I Really Really Like.  For this series I'm planning 12 sermons, so at my current rate of preaching one sermon per Labor Day weekend, I should be finished, according to an Internet perpetual calendar, on Sunday September 4, 2016.  I hope you can be here for every sermon I preach in this series,

and I hope I can make it as well.

Today we'll focus on the part of Bible known as the begots, that is first chapter of Matthew.  Why do I call the passage  the begots?  The translation I just read from, the New Revised Standard Version, uses  the verbal construction “is the father of”.  “Begot” means the same thing except it's punchier, like catching a solid right cross to the jaw.

Some people denigrate the begots.  They mock them, jeer, hoot, and jibe them. “They don't make sense,” the people shriek.  “They're repetitive.  They're repetitive  They're repetitive”, “They bore me so much I'd rather run under a freight train than read them again!” 

The people holding these opinions are egregiously misinformed.  The begots is anything but boring: it is packed with war, love, sin, hate, death, sacrifice, murder, intense dislike, mayhem, manslaughter, real estate fraud, and scores of nearly unpronounceable names.  But it also suggests a very old tree, a tree that flourished 1200 years and the beginnings of a mysterious forest that has lasted until today.

The begots, as the biblical text states, builds up a genealogy, a family tree.  It begins with Abraham, the founder of the Nation of Israel, and it ends with Jesus the Messiah.  A familiar metaphor is the word “seed”.  In this context it is both physical and spiritual.  The  seed is passed from one generation to the next, from Abraham to Issac through several more generations to David where it then becomes David's seed, David's tree through to Joseph and his son Jesus.

Let's investigate the origin of the word “seed”.  We'll call this inquiry our Etymological Interlude.  “Seed” is from the Middle English word “seed”.  Or “SEED”.  This, in turn, is from the Old English “Hey, seedy nonny nonny”, which originates from the Old High German “seed-ensnitzel”

Evidentially, “seed” has been kicked around the linguistic block for a long time.  Compare this to the sojourn taken by the seed that traversed the Nation of Israel from Abraham to Jesus.  This journey lasted forty-two generations, not including the 50 year interruption brought about by the Babylonian Captivity.  The men  swinging from this huge family tree were important, for the most part: patriarchs, priests, landowners, soldiers.  Some were famous – Abraham, Isaac, David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat, Joseph and Jesus.  The women mentioned in the Bible passage were Gentiles, unwed mothers or prostitutes, and were cited probably to demonstrate the wide societal range of Christ's ancestry.  The names of the good faithful Jewish wives on this family tree were unrecorded for posterity.

Of all these men, were there any bums?  Probably.  It stands to reason that if you gather 40 or so men together, at least one will be a bad apple.  It didn't matter.  God wanted men with strong constitutions who could procreate before they died – to pass the seed along.

Maintaining the line for 1200 years was a miracle in itself.  To comprehend 1200 years of human history; try looking back 1200 years to 800 AD and compare how the world is today with how we think it was back then.  So what was the biggest story of 800 AD?  On Christmas Day, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne  the first ruler of the Holy Roman Empire [it wasn't holy, it wasn't Roman, and it certainly wasn't an empire]

Charlemagne was the barbaric tribal king of the Franks.  He enjoyed quaffing flagons of mead and playing patty-cake with his many wenches.  He especially loved burning down enemy villages before looting them.  One day, Isador, his most trusted adviser, suggested Charlemagne loot the villages before burning them.  Tribal income shot up dramatically.

Barbarians no longer exist, some postulate.  I beg to differ.  We still have barbaric behavior running rampant particularly in one large group  – teen-agers.  NOT our teenagers, not OUR WPC youth!  They are the epitome of Christian manhood and womanhood.  I mean their friends, the kids they go to school with.  They know who I'm talking about.  When you enter the bedroom of a modern barbarian, you first notice the bats. (flap arms, make bat noises)  Why do they all keep bats?  Then you see the ancient pizza crust climbing the walls turning green and singing Lullaby of Broadway.  In 800 AD the whole world was singing Lullaby of Broadway.  Conditions were primitive, and civilization was close to extinction. 

Today, in 2006 AD, we desire the power to change this world.  In 800 AD, they desired the same power.  But Israel had been promised that power and that it would come in the form of a man, the Messiah, and he would descend from the House of David.

So the people of Israel examined closely each candidate for Messiahship,  Some were extremely intelligent but they couldn't lead their own shadow across a sunny road.  Others were effective motivators but dumber than a fistful of dirty whiskers.  Then there were members of the average lot, with their good days and bad days – never terrible, but never great.

Once a stranger wandered into Jerusalem looking for a rabbi.  “Teacher,” he cried out, “I have a young man living in my village.  Come see him.  I believe he is the Messiah!”

 The village chief and three rabbis hastened to the village where they encountered this tall youth, with broad shoulders to serve as a bridge across the Jordan, a massive  juicy head, a thick rope-y neck, some eyes and ears, a  kinda nose, a voice of many waters.  And smart – SMART!  He knew the Talmud from the Torah, he knew what 7 times 7 times 7 times 7 was.

The eldest of the three rabbis spoke up as he examined several genealogy charts.  This young man cannot be the Messiah,  He is not of the House of David.  Look.”  The old man tried crossing two charts but could only bump the edges together.  “See?  They don't cross.  Sorry, my son!”

But I've worked so hard!” the young man blubbered.

“Take the tax collector's exam.  I hear they're hiring.”

So the seed of Abraham and David wended its way through the generations and many Jews lived and died never to greet the Messiah.  Of course, many lost faith.  “It was just a fairy tale,” they said.  “Just to keep our spirits up.”  Then finally the Lord said, “The time is now.”  Joseph, of the House of David, became engaged to Mary, and she received the seed in God's glory.  Their baby was born in the city of David and named Jesus.

Israel had its Messiah; it was obvious.  Jesus  grew up in the ways of God.  Then, in the words of the Apostle's Creed, “(He) suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.  He descended into hell; the third day he arose again from the dead.  He ascended into heaven.”  (Pause) What was that again?  “He ascended into heaven”.  Did he take anything with him?  He took the seed!  The seed of Abraham and David!  Jesus was the last of the line!

The great English playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote in Saint Joan, “Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?”  If that is how you want to ask the question, the answer is – yes.  To allow Christ to save us, we must have faith in the teachings of the Bible and imagination is a part of faith.  This does not mean fantasy, but the imaginative act of seeing the drama of salvation in our mind's eye.

Some people are not capable of inner vision.  They must actually view a gowned, crowned and bleeding prophet hanging from a cross, or broken on a wheel, or guillotined, or swinging from a gallows, or shot, gassed, electrocuted, or injected with poison before they can believe the prophet spoke the truth.  Even then, will these people hold the truth in their hearts for very long, despite the immense human sacrifice?

God didn't think so.  As Jesus was ascending into heaven, the Holy Spirit was descending to the earth.  Jesus took the Seed of Abraham and David back to heaven while the Holy Spirit brought the Seeds of God's Word to us in a whirlwind.  “Go you and teach all nations,” Jesus commanded.  Here were the means to accomplish it.

The whirlwind carried all the seeds of the spirit.  These were not seeds to make people, but to save them.  First was the Bible of course, passed from generation to generation for thousands of years.  Songs and hymns also served as spiritual seeds moving down the generations like their physical counterparts.  For instance, the variety of Christian music from Bach to the spiritual jazz of John Coltrane, from Handel to Michael W. Smith encompasses the tastes of every single human being on this planet, and the planet Zoltan, for that matter.  [This is an unprovable assertion but I stand by it]  We love this music as our ancestors did and as our descendants will in the future.

Other ways we pass the Word of God as seeds from generation to generation: bedtime prayers [my mom taught me “Now I lay me down to sleep” and Barb and I taught this prayer to our girls].  We also have liturgies, special garments, rituals, essays, massive tomes of theology.  Students have cracked their skulls over  Summa Theologica for 700 years!  These are all seeds of the Spirit.  So a physical seed passed down 1200 years forming a single tree to create the body of the Messiah.  The Holy Spirit came down to spread spiritual seeds that cover the  earth with the teachings of the Messiah.  A single tree begot a forest.

Maybe a live demonstration is in order.  Maybe it's not.  We'll do it anyway; it'll be fun. I am thinking of a song that everyone in this room has probably known their entire lives. It has been translated into every language, even languages that haven't been invented yet.  It is screamed full throttle by every Sunday School kid in the world, however not on the planet Zoltan because Zoltanites have no mouths.

Please refrain from any impulse to shout out the name of the song.  Clamp down your tongue with a rubber band if necessary.  Thank you.

This song was written in 1862 by two sisters from upstate New York and a young man from Massachusetts.  They probably never met.  After it was published it quickly became one of the most popular hymns of all times.  Missionaries have reported hearing this song in the strangest places.  A reporter once asked noted theologian Karl Barth if he could summarize what he had said in his lengthy book Church Dogmatics. Barth thought for a moment and then quoted the first line of the song

 "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Like many people I learned Jesus Loves Me when I was about three years old.  This was at Concordia Lutheran Church in Akron, Ohio; the year was 1952.  I had just polished off a jar of paste when the Sunday School teacher called us all to the middle of the room.  By the time I got there, I had stepped on the feet of three little girls, making two of them cry.  That amounted to a .667 tormenting-little-girls average which kept me at the top of the class.  Yes, I was a rotten kid.

Not like you kids, our wonderful WPC children.  You boys and girls are perfect little angels.  You know from our first Bible passage that Barb read how much Jesus loves you.  Let's stand now and sing just the first verse of Jesus Loves Me: we need everybody please, young and old.  While we are singing, I want you remember who taught you this song.  Maybe your mom and dad, or your teacher in Sunday School or Church Camp.  They passed a spiritual seed to you.  Try to remember your teacher, because he or she sits on your spiritual tree.  Also try to recall the people you taught this song to – perhaps your children or a Sunday school class because you are on their spiritual trees.  You gave them this seed. 

We are all part of this forest, but we're never lost.  It is not a dark, scary place -- the light is bright and it never goes out.  So let's all stand as you're able to sing this great old hymn, and, please, sing it at the top of your lungs!  Barb and Ray will get us started.

[JESUS LOVES ME]

Amen