Matthew 1:1-25 2023/12/31 Osaka Church
Christ is born!
Genealogies are usually created to boast about one’s lineage, but the genealogy read out today, leading to Jesus, highlights the tragic history of the Israelite people and the stain of sin that cannot be erased. This genealogy is the very history of family discord, tragic murder, cheating, conflicts of love and hate between men and women, rebellion against God, and the history of sin that continued to deepen. What did you think when you heard Jesus’ name being called at the end?
Each of us has a history in our lives. There are undoubtedly a number of sinful mistakes that we would like to erase from our lives if possible. By insulting others, by toying with people’s hearts, by betraying our friends through cowardly behavior, by hurling cruel words at people, those in a weaker position than yourself, inflicting deep emotional pain that cannot be wiped away. Among them are superficial wounds, deep wounds, and wounds so severe they shatter the very bones. We’ve suffered and continued to gasp in pain. It’s almost as if we want to scream out.
When we meet Jesus in a true sense for the first time, Jesus himself, whose name was placed at the end of the genealogy of the history of sin since Adam and Eve, and see Him being whipped, nailed with thick nails, and bloodied hanging on the cross, what we see is not Jesus suffering in our place. He shares the wounds we inflict on ourselves as His own, even though He is not at all guilty, and He shares our sufferings with us. He is “God who became human” for that reason. The opposite can also be said. I myself, covered in scars, have been received by Jesus, who is God but has taken on human form, and am furthermore nailed there with Jesus himself. To die “with Jesus”.
This person was resurrected on the third day. Wounded and bloody, we died with Jesus, wounded and bloody. And along with Christ who rose from the dead, we also rose from the dead. The wound has healed. However, the scar remains and sometimes it aches violently. But that healed scar is now a sign of resurrection. This is a sign that I, who had hurt myself deeply and irreparably, was healed by the Lord. A new life has started in which we are fighting sin with Christ, dedicating ourselves to God with Christ, eating and drinking with Christ, working with Christ, praying with Christ, singing with joy with Christ, grieving with Christ, and sometime laughing with Christ.
And we are no longer alone. I am with the people who believe in the Lord and have been gathered together by the Lord. With Christ Jesus, the One whose name is “God saves,” and Christ Emmanuel, who is also called “God with us”; “I” is reconnected to “we”, and together we have started walking towards the Kingdom of God.
A new era in which God will walk with us begins “now” with Jesus, who is born quietly in a cave made for livestock.