Today's Scripture Reading (December 17, 2020): Matthew 22
He had built a home for himself that was fit
for a king, which was appropriate because he was a king. He deserved it, well,
at least he felt that he did. But as he looked out of his palace windows, the
thought that struck him was that while he lived in a palace, the place where God
lived was a broken-down tent. If he lived in a grand palace, why shouldn't God
live in a great Temple?
The King was named David, and the dream of
building a great Temple became an obsession, but David's argument did not move
God. The building of a Temple was not something that David was supposed to do. His
reign had established the secular nation of Israel as a power of the ancient
world. Israel existed at the crossroads of the continents. There would be a
Temple, but not one built by David, but rather one created by his son.
David assumed that that son was Solomon, but maybe
that was not the son that God had in mind. The prophets continued to predict
that a Messiah was on the way, one who would come from David's lineage. Solomon
might have fulfilled that role in the short-term, but another Messiah was
coming from a long-range perspective.
And so, the world was waiting for the one who
would come. By the way, that is the meaning of Advent, these four weeks that we
celebrate before Christmas. It is a time of waiting. Advent is a reminder that
the world once waited for the Messiah, and Advent continues to help us to
understand that some still live in the expectation of Advent. There are still people
waiting for a descendant of David, who will become the Triumphant Messiah.
Matthew begins his story with a genealogy. Most
of us skip over the list of Fathers that Matthew uses to introduce the
Christmas Story. We miss the words that
come first because we consider them to be a meaningless prologue, and we want to
get to the tale of Joseph and Mary and the baby, born in a stable. Matthew
begins his story with "this
is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son
of Abraham." But the words are essential to everything that comes next.
Jesus was a descendant of Abraham, as was King Herod and his family who ruled over
Israel, but Jesus was also a descendant of David, a heritage that Herod could
not claim. In fact, just after this opening genealogy, Matthew asserts that
Jesus was even born in Bethlehem, the town of David, and the place where David
was born.
As we reach the end of the story,
Matthew returns once again to the genealogy with which he had started. Who son
is he? The message directed toward Jesus's opponents is that Jesus was a son of
David. But more than that, while his opponents conceded that Jesus was a rabbi
from Nazareth, Matthew stresses that his birthplace was Bethlehem, the town of
David. And with everything else that had happened during his ministry, Jesus
had proven that he was not just a son of Bethlehem; he was the son of Bethlehem.
There was no need to look any further for the coming Messiah.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Matthew 23
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