Ghosts Around the Manger

Maybe the New Testament should have started with the Gospel of Mark. Mark writes the way most people live these days — in a hurry. “Immediately,” is one of his favorite words. His pacing is machine-gun quick. His stories vibrate with action and movement. Mark is a breathless dash to the cross. One hour’s worth of reading and we are standing in the shadow of that wicked tree with our hands on our knees, gasping for air, dazed, confronted and changed.

Luke takes us on a more gentle journey. His gospel is carefully researched and historically anchored. Yet his writing evokes a calming bedside tenderness. He lingers at the manger longer than the other gospels as if he is reluctant to leave. He slowly writes his way to Jerusalem where the cross awaits Jesus as if he is loath to arrive. Along the way, Luke draws us into an ever-widening circle of lives touched by the healer from Galilee. By the end, we too feel touched.

John is mystery and transcendence. In John, water becomes wine, Word becomes flesh, doubt becomes faith. Just below the surface of his stories, John has layered generous stores of truth. We do not read so much as explore. John is more gold mine than book. There are treasures to be unearthed here and the deeper we dig the richer our discoveries.

Mark is a race. Luke is a pilgrimage. John is an excavation. And Matthew, the first book in the New Testament? Matthew begins with seventeen seriously boring Bible verses. He welcomes us to the story of Jesus with a list of 48 hard-to-pronounce names. Some of them fail to ignite a spark of recognition in even hardcore Bible students.

Why does Matthew introduce the story of history’s most exciting individual with a roll call of some of history’s most forgettable? Perhaps so they will not be forgotten. These were the ancestors of Jesus. Behind every name there is a story. Some of the stories we know. Some we can only imagine. All of them are important. They weren’t there when star-struck Magi brought their gifts or when awestruck shepherds bowed low to worship the child. But they hover like ghosts around the manger.

Maybe Matthew’s list is more mysterious and inviting than it first appears. Could there be surprises hidden behind the veil of these unfamiliar names? Might there be scandals lurking in the shadows? What might we discover about God — or ourselves — if we trace this line back through the ages to unravel the mysteries of Jesus’ genealogy?

From now till the end of December, I’ll be retelling some of these stories in a way that I hope is both true to the Biblical account and inviting to the imagination. We’ll start tomorrow morning with the first in a three-part post titled, Sacrifices. Parts two and three of Sacrifices will follow Wednesday and Thursday. See you then.