The
Supreme “Irregularity” by Melanie Rigney (@melanierigney)
“You, Judah, shall your brothers praise—your hand on the neck
of your enemies; the sons of your father shall bow down to you.” (Genesis
49:8)
Justice shall flourish in his
time and fullness of peace for ever. (Psalm 72:7)
Thus the total number of
generations from Abraham to David is fourteen generations; from David to the
Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to the
Christ, fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:17)
Piety
Brother Jesus, I love You.
Study
The New American Bible notes on
Matthew’s detailing of Jesus’s genealogy point out that many of the names we
hear do not appear in Old Testament genealogy. The notes also point out that
four of Jesus’s female ancestors—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba—“bore their
sons through unions that were in varying degrees strange and unexpected,” then
calls Jesus’s birth to Mary “the supreme ‘irregularity.”
And wasn’t it, though? We can all
imagine what friends, family, and nosy members of the community had to say
about Mary’s situation. And Joseph’s
acceptance of it.
We likely know someone born of a
union “strange and unexpected”; perhaps we’re the product of one ourselves.
Maybe that’s a takeaway for us today. Regardless of how or why we are born,
through Christ, we have the hope of eternal salvation. It doesn’t matter if we
were born into luxury or poverty, whether our family background is one of great
literacy or illiteracy, what language our parents spoke, what color their skin
was, how they dressed, or what they ate. Thanks to that “supreme
‘irregularity,’” Christ invites us all into his family.
Action
Pray for the scoundrels, the
rascals, and rapscallions in your genealogy, living or dead.
Image credit: © José Luiz Bernardes
Ribeiro (used under license found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en.)
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