Of David's Lineage
November 30, 2014 | Patrick Preheim
I like to wait until 1st Advent before bringing out the Christmas albums. We didn’t make it this year, again. The cold and cloud these past weeks forced a medicinal response to lift our spirits. Christmas music is balm for a slightly chilled soul. And it did the trick. There are few things better in this season than sitting in front of a window on a snow day with a cup of tea in hand watching the flakes drop to the ground while listening to Kim Thiessen, Handle’s Messiah, or Bruce Cockburn. International conflicts, political disputes, troubled institutions, distressing weather, burdened friends all seem in the hands of one greater than I as the earth is being tucked into its white blanket. Even as the landscape is wrapped into a snowy comforter, so too, God offers people of the world a comforter which can warm us and protect us through the bleak and frosty seasons we experience. Jesus, son of David, is a part of this Divine care plan. This is the sentiment of the music playing in the background as I watch the snow slowly fall.
“Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming” (#211 HWB) names Jesus as the one from Jesse’s lineage who dispels darkness everywhere. “Bless’d be the God of Israel” (#174 HWB) attests to a child of grace from the house of David who raises us up to heaven. “Hail to the Lord’s anointed” (#185 HWB) proclaims Jesus as David’s greater son who comes to break oppression, set captives free, and take away transgressions. “O come, o come, Immanuel” (#172 HWB) chants Jesus as the Key of David who opens a way to heaven. These hymns build upon an emphasis, particularly in Matthew’s gospel, that Jesus is the fulfillment of the covenant God made with King David. It is in the book of Samuel where we begin to understand the implications of Jesus being the son of David. And I say the book of Samuel because the two books of Samuel we find in our English translations are actually one in its original Hebrew form (Intro to 1st Samuel in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha). The book of Samuel is largely the story of David. For us to most fully appreciate our Christmas music, and Jesus in fact, we do well to know the story of God & David.
God was in a bind. The people wanted a king (1st Sam 8.10-22). Oh sure, God had been a king for his chosen people but for his chosen people that wasn’t good enough. They wanted a flesh and blood king. God had delivered them time and time again from all sorts of trouble. It was the thunder and hail of God, not horses and chariots of Israel, which often sent invading armies into confusion. And yet the people clamoured for a human king so that they would appear well adjusted. We all want to fit in don’t we? Well, the Israelites wanted a man on the throne so that they might look normal when compared to the other nations. How insulting! God felt rejected. And yet God loved his people. Through Samuel God anointed a king to lead Israel. “Anoint”, in Hebrew, is “מָשַׁח” from which we get the word messiah. A messiah was something anointed for God’s special purposes. Priests were anointed. The tabernacle was anointed. Saul was anointed. In fact, Saul became the first messiah king of Israel, but he failed miserably. This tragic experiment in messiah kingship with Saul led God to carefully discern the next king. The Lord found one who reflected the heart of God.
It was the youngest of Jesse’s sons, David, not the eldest as we might expect.
It was the shepherd boy David, not the brethren with military training.
It was David who confronted giants with rock and sling, not sword and shield.
It was David who defended the poor, not the greedy aristocrat.
It was David who chose to forgive Saul and sons, not the politician who held a grudge.
It was David who sought refuge in the wilderness, not in treaties with foreign gods.
It was David who offered God the praise and honour after victory; who cried out to God
for help in his trials; who recognized that the Lord God was the true king of Israel.
Of all the anointed ones David became the quintessential Messiah King. God was so pleased with this Messiah King that he made an eternal covenant with the house of David.
Matthew intentionally began his Gospel account by invoking three terms which ought to focus our thoughts as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus again, and two of these have strong connections to the saga found in the book of Samuel. Matthew begins: An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. The first descriptor Matthew used of Jesus is that he is the Messiah. Jesus is the anointed one of the 1st century Jewish community. Understood in a Hebrew sense, this simply means that Jesus has been commissioned by God. He has been chosen for a specific role. His task, the angel clarified to Joseph in a dream, will be to save his people from their sins (Matt 1.21). His people? We are his people! We are the people of Jesus in the 21st century, so the implications of this mission extend to us.
We like the 1st century Jewish community have sins from which we need saving. Some sins are those of commission where we intentionally seek the harm of others or self. Some are sins of omission when we ignore the needy or neglect a spouse or avoid something important. Some sins are systemic sins, racism or sexism for example, which are a by-product of power structures gone awry. The upshot is that we are in as great a need to be saved from our sins as the generations of “Jesus people” before us. Advent, then, becomes a time for intentional reflection on the deliverance we need in our time and place.
If he is our Messiah as he has been the Messiah for previous generations, we do well to listen to what he teaches and what action he recommends. When I go to the dentist and she tells me to floss more regularly or my teeth will fall out of my head, I take her seriously and floss more often. When I go to my massage therapist and she tells me to stretch more to reduce my pain, I stretch more often. For us to be saved from our sins will entail consulting Jesus and striving to live the prescription he recommends. Conversations with other Christians, reading the gospels, acting on the gospels, attending worship—these are but some of the ways we consult Jesus.
The second and third terms Matthew used in his opening line is that Jesus is the son of David and the son of Abraham. Whereas Luke takes his genealogy all the way back to Adam (Luke 3.23ff), Matthew organized the ancestry of Jesus around Abraham and David. “Both phrases are significant. As an heir of Israel’s great king, David, Jesus is a candidate to fulfill all the royal promises associated with David. As an heir of Israel’s great patriarch, Abraham, Jesus is a candidate to fulfill the even wider promises...of blessings which will extend beyond Israel and bring life to Gentile nations as well (Richard Gardner, Matthew in “Believers Church Bible Commentary” series, p. 29). The royal promises fulfilled in Jesus emerge directly from the book of Samuel. And these promises impact us as well.
The line of David is promised to fill the kingly role forever. The men cited in Matthew’s genealogy between David and the Exile were all kings, and again this is different than what we find in Luke’s ancestry of Jesus (Ibid, 31). In Jesus we have a leader, a chief, a boss, a king. Because we have Jesus as our leader we have latitude to opt out from earthly directives that harm ourselves or others or creation itself. This week I read a story about the status of doctor assisted death in the Netherlands, a conversation playing out in Canada these days. Nearly 3% of deaths in Holland are now being recorded as doctor assisted. There may be a time and place for doctors to alleviate the suffering of people when death is imminent, but the Dutch model seems to have gone too far. People there are ending life simply because they are tired, or bored, or inconvenienced (Amy Frykholm, “Can Doctors Help us Die Well?: An interview with physician ethicist Daniel Sulmasy” in The Christian Century (Nov 12, 2014)) . I would hope Christian medical staff and the communities of which they are apart could resist social pressure to end life on account of boredom or inconvenience. Because Jesus is our leader we have latitude opt out of destructive parties on campus, to resist the boss’ call to cook the books, to challenge bullies. Jesus is a David style king whose leadership continues this very day and gives us space to choose a path of righteousness.
The other unique dimension of God’s covenant with David in 2nd Samuel which Jesus fulfills is the eternal nature of the kingship. In terms of godly leadership in ancient Israel, Kings and Chronicles document that things go downhill after King David. Sure, Solomon was all right but he had serious flaws and there are some real clunkers who follow him. In the resurrection Jesus becomes King for all time. It was a rather brilliant move on God’s part to lock in the messianic Kingship of Jesus. It would be on par with locking in a zero percent interest loan for a billion years. This eternal nature of the reign of Jesus also impacts us.
Because Jesus lived and died and lives again we need not fear death. Whenever our time comes we can rest assured that Jesus the Messiah will be there to receive us. Our King awaits us. Because Jesus lived and died and lives again we need not fear the death of our loved ones. They, too, are in good hands. Because the reign of Jesus on earth will continue long after we are gone we need not unduly trouble ourselves with some of these concerns which seem larger than life. Yes, we should do our part to eliminate poverty, to develop environmentally sustainable economies, to wipe out malaria, to share the story of Jesus with every person, etc..,. but in the end this is God’s world with Christ as its king, and some of this stuff will be sorted out by God and Jesus in their time frame. And to be honest this knowledge unburdens me.
This reflection takes me back to my opening scene of watching the snow fall while listening to holiday music. Christmas carols and reflection on the theology undergirding them is not a bad way to remember the story behind the story. It is not a bad way to prepare ourselves to rededicate our lives to the babe who, born king of the Jews, has now become our King. Advent is that very season in which we reflect, remember and rededicate. May this important spiritual work go well for us in this last month of 2014. Amen.
