What No One Would Have Thought

“Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, …, son of Adam, son of God.”

Here in the midst of Christ’s baptism and wilderness temptation is something a little too ordinary, maybe even boring: a genealogy.

But this genealogy is far from expected; it’s the who’s who of scandalous sinners. There’s David, the man who slept with Uriah’s wife when he should have been at war and set Uriah up to be killed (2 Sam 11:1-27). There’s Judah, who broke his promise to his daughter-in-law, slept with a prostitute in the wake of his wife’s death, and ended up in the bait-and-switch of a lifetime (Gen 38:6-26). There’s Noah, who got drunk and indecent, for all three of his sons to see (Gen 9:21-23). Not exactly the shiniest branches on the family tree.

This genealogy starts by calling Jesus “the son (as was thought) of Joseph” and, by the end, it is clearly what no one would have thought: a messy list of sinners (v. 23). Jesus is not only the son of Joseph, David, Judah, and Noah, but also the “son of Adam, the son of God” (v. 23, 31, 33, 36). The passage affirms that He is fully God, yet deeply, fully human.

This Lent, may we see Christ in our messiness and remember how he stepped into a problematic family tree to free us from our own.

LORD, help us to remember that you chose to die for us in spite of our past and that you often work through the mess and brokenness of our past to bring your Kingdom glory. Amen.

KAT COLE
Master of Divinity Student
Houston, Texas