Sermons

Rod Frohman                                   Third Presbyterian Church
January 5, 2003                        Deut 7:6-11; Matthew 1 :1-17

It is not one of the regularly read Christmas stories but it is there, right at the beginning of the Christmas story in the gospel of Matthew: Matthew 1:1-17, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah…”

My addiction to genealogy began about 18 years ago when our family moved to Minnesota and I there discovered my Swedish ancestors in the “horizontal position” in a country cemetery and set out to inquire about my roots. My search took me to the Mormon family history center where I was able to find microfilm records of my ancestors in Sweden. Just 5 years ago, with evidence in my suitcase, I traveled to Sweden to meet my living relatives and share my information.

The information I had discovered was the proverbial “skeleton in the closet” of my past. You see, when my father emigrated to America in 1912, the ship manifest listed him as Erik Anderson, Not Erik Frohman. My dad never told this little secret to his children. I found out about it a decade after his death by doing research on the Ellis Island web site. Further my research revealed that my grandfather was also called Anderson, but his mother was Inga Maja Froman. The plot thickens. We are now clearly out of the closet. What I discovered in the microfilm was, that my grandfather was listed in Swedish as “oecta” or “bastard” in the church records. This is not even the polite Swedish word for “illegitimate.” My grandfather is so-listed in church records even as a 17 year old. Further, I found out that his mother, Inga Maja Froman, had 2 other children out of wedlock. Each of her three children had been born in a separate place with no father listed. Each child was labeled, “bastard.”

So, 5 years ago, I sat in my 90-year-old cousin Ingrid’s kitchen in Lidkoping, Sweden and shared this information and showed Ingrid my microfilm photocopies. She studied them very carefully. Then she got up and left the room and came back shortly with a package in a brown paper bag. Putting the package on the table she began to explain, through another cousin as translator, that our common great grandmother Inga Froman was an indentured servant who traveled from farm to farm, year after year, working as a common chore girl, a “cinderella.” Pointing out Inga’s age as between 32 to 35 years when her three children were born, with sad eyes Ingrid looked at me and said, “Roderic, our great grandmother was probably raped, at least three times.”

What had started out as a scandalous, but amusing, story about a hot-blooded, irresponsible teenager had turned sadly, ugly.  Then it dawned on me. There are two sides in genealogy, ancestors and descendants. I am a descendent of the son of Inga Maja Froman. I am the progeny of a rape.

I must have had a dejected look on my face because cousin Ingrid reached for the brown bag, opened it up and presented me, this book (shown to the congregation at this time),  my great grandmother’s “psalmboken,” or prayer book. I wept openly.

The symbol of the prayer book was quite clear. Even though my great grandmother was the lowest of low in 19th century society, even though she was abused and raped, even though the church considered her children bastards, she passed on the Christian faith to them, who passed it on to my father who passed in on to me.

Incidentally, I just learned last year that Swedish court records show that a certain Anders Nilsson, admitted being the father of my grandfather. Hence, according to 19th century Swedish custom, the name Anders-son appears in the family record. In America my father changed his name to Froman, his grandmother’s maiden name.

What is a rape victim, and a bastard doing in my family story?  They are my biological ancestors, and I cannot change that. But not only are they my biological ancestors, they are my spiritual ancestors as well. Without the rape and without the psalmbook I would not be here today. There are two sides to genealogy, ancestors and descendants. It is as simple and as difficult as that.

It is not one of the regularly read Christmas stories but it is there, right at the beginning of the Christmas story in the gospel of Matthew.

Matthew 1:1-17 “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, …” I'll spare you all the intervening ancestors. Finally after 42 generations we come to: “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.” After the genealogy is concluded we have the familiar words: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph,...” Then the story becomes familiar.

Actually, don't you think we should read the genealogy of Jesus each year as part of the Christmas story? Who were those folks?  We recognize a few, David, Solomon, Abraham, the marquee names. But what about Rahab? What about Tamar? You remember Rahab don't you? Right there in the middle of the genealogy of Jesus, The Christ, is Rahab the Jericho prostitute.

Rahab the prostitute is the great, great, great, great grandmother of our Lord. That tends to grate on one's sensibilities, doesn't it? What is she doing in the story?

Do you remember the details story of Rahab? Rahab lived in Jericho just before Joshua “fit the battle” there. I few years earlier Joshua had led a group of spies to reconnoiter the situation for conquest. I guess they got distracted as soldiers do when they are spying. Their undercover work got them in trouble at Rahab's house. It seems that the local block club's crime watch committee was watching Rahab's house that night and called in the police when some foreigners stopped by for some R and R. When the police arrived Rahab hid the spies on her roof, lied to the police and later dispatched the spies out a window via a rope, landing them outside the city walls. The trade off for this protection and escape was that she asked for mercy from the conquering Israelites when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down. So she hung her trademark scarlet thread out of her window and Rahab and her family were the only ones spared when Joshua finally did “fit the battle” of Jericho.

A prostitute, a liar. What a seedy sort of person is listed in the Bible as the great, great, great, great, great grandmother of our Lord! And yet to be fair, Rahab is not the only seedy person listed in this genealogy of Jesus. There is the desert sheik Abraham, a polytheist when it was convenient, a worshipper of Yahweh when it counted. Then there is lustful David whose ancestry is traced to Jesus through the child he fathered with the wife of one of his generals. He sent the general to battle and then seduced (forced his will upon) his wife in the husband’s absence. Also listed in the genealogy is Ahaz, who with another person of ill repute, Jezebel, gave birth to yet another ancestor of Jesus. There are victims in this genealogy too. Tamar is listed. She was raped by her father in law Judah, one of the 12 sons of Jacob. The product of that rape is one of the ancestors of Jesus.

Did you know that Jesus had so many skeletons in his closet??

Who can be an ancestor of Jesus? Well, just about anybody I guess. Why? Well the biblical answer is because God chose them. Remember Ogden Nash's little phrase, "How odd of God to choose the Jews?" The bible is very clear about this point. As it says in the book of Deuteronomy,

“It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love upon you and chose you. For your were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you.” (Deut. 7:6-7)  The biblical writers bend over backward to make the point that it was out of love that God chose Israel.

All of this goes to show is that what counts is what God does with us rather than what we do for God. Yes, despite our good or bad pedigree, or our greatest mistakes, our lives are redeemable for the greatest good.

This is what happened to Rahab. On a typical day she was going about her typical business and then got commandeered by God. Hers was an experience similar to others like Abraham, Sarah, David and Jezebel and Tamar. Their role as ancestors of Jesus lay not in their victim-hood or saintliness but in their chosenness.

The New Testament shares this understanding too. "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation," declares I Peter 2:9 to second generation Christians, "that you may declare the wonderful deeds of [Christ] who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light." They are chosen not because they have it made, but because of God's loving decision to make something out of them.

Of course there are two sides to a genealogy; ancestors and descendants. Now if Rahab, the prostitute, Tamar the rape victim and David the adulturer could be ancestors of Jesus, can the illegitimate offspring of my great grandmother Froman be spiritual descendents of Jesus? And if so, then surely we ALL can be Jesus' spiritual descendants. Why? Not because we are so saintly, but because God has chosen us, warts and all, to do Christ's work. This is how descendants of Jesus are made, not in long bouts of prayer and meditation, not in earnestly cultivating our better qualities. We are made descendants of Christ by listening to his call and saying. “Yes.”

There are two sides to a genealogy; ancestors and descendants. When we say, “Yes.” to the call of Christ in our world, then we are listed as Christ’s descendants, even if we are the progeny of a rape.