Surprising People

I didn't get around to blogging over the weekend: too much going on. On Saturday, we entertained about 25 people from our village. Some of them were church members; others were people we have got to know over the past 18 months as neigbours, including those next door and opposite to us. We called it a 'drop in', expecting that (at this time of year) people wouldn't be able to stay too long. In the event, most came and stayed all evening! It was a great time of conversation and laughter, with some light refreshments which Les and I had spent part of the day making.

Yesterday, I had 3 services, all in different churches. Two of them were carol services, one after the other in the evening. I don't think I'll be doing that again!  Though very enjoyable and appreciated, they were actually quite stressful and time-consuming to prepare. The turnout was great - up on last year - and there was a real sense of worship at both of them.  At All Saints, we formed a 'scratch' choir who rehearsed for an hour before the service, sang a couple of choral items, and produced some soaring descants. The choir was conducted by one of our neighbours, a professional musician, who was at our party the night before. You see how it all links up!

So to today's theme, which I preached about in the morning. There should be equal stress on each word in 'surprising people': otherwise, if you stress the first word, it sounds like you're trying to shock them!  This week, it is about the genealogies of Jesus Christ in Matthew's and Luke's Gospels. They are similar but not the same. Matthew starts with Abraham and works forward to Jesus, concerned to demonstrate that Jesus is 'the real deal' for his Jewish readers; whereas Luke starts with Jesus and works all the way back to Adam. As an historian, he wants to show his Gentile readers that Jesus has ancestry dating back to the very beginning of time, and that God himself began the family line.

Among the two lists, though, are some 'surprising people' like Rahab the prostitute, and Bathsheba, who had an adulterous relationship with King David - himself no paragon of virtue either. Then there is a multitude of people of whom we know absolutely nothing, and who would have been amazed had they known that Jesus Christ, Messiah, would be a descendant of theirs. And of course, there are Joseph and Mary, about whom we know virtually nothing except that they were parents to Jesus. These people are all both surprised and surprising.

Which is precisely the point. Jesus Christ was truly 'one of us', sharing our humanity with all its imperfections, but raising it to the heights of his divinity.