With another Mother’s Day upon us, Jared Wilson recently quipped on twitter, “We love moms, so we’re gonna focus on Jesus this Sunday.” This witty line contains a much needed sentiment we in the church should all happily affirm. So go retweet it ASAP.
Another good article in an ongoing series by Joe Carter, 9 Things You Should Know About Mother’s And Mother’s Day, also surfaced today. It’s short and worth the time. His last point is especially potent, “Five mothers are mentioned by name in the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1:1-17): Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary.”
Perhaps you are familiar with all or some of these mothers and their stories, perhaps not. It seems that while church people are usually familiar with at least all of these women’s names (except maybe Tamar), we often forget their stories or at least become blasé toward them as we gloss over their names while reading Matthew’s genealogy in a misguided attempt to get to something we view as a more “relevant” part of the story.
I am not going to go into all of the details of their stories (however, I encourage you to do just that; read their stories in your Bible), what I am going to do is give you just a quick run down of these five moms that Matthew put right at the beginning of His gospel and by inspiration of the Holy Spirit are named right at the beginning of our New Testaments.
Tamar, the first mentioned, was a woman whose husband died before she had any children so according to the custom of the day, her brother-in-law was to sleep with her and give her a child, but God killed him before she became pregnant. Judah, her father-in-law knowing his responsibility to her, promised her his last son once he grew older, but Judah lied and didn’t give him to her. So Tamar dressed up like a Canaanite temple prostitute and seduced Judah into sleeping with her. She became pregnant with Perez. Her story is found in Genesis 38
Rahab the wife of Boaz is the second mother mentioned. Her story is found in Joshua 2 and 6. Unlike Tamar who dressed up like a Canaanite prostitute, Rahab actually was a Canaanite prostitute. When God destroyed her hometown, Jericho, Rahab and her family were the only survivors. Joshua spared them because she had helped two Israeli spies by hiding them and lying to the King of Jericho about it. Rahab was the mother of Obed who would marry the next girl Matthew mentions.
Ruth. One of my favorite stories in all of the Bible (found in the book that bears her name). Usually when we think of the great women of faith in the Old Testament, our minds go to Sarah or Rebekah or Rachel or Leah and yet none of them are so much as mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus while yet we have Tamar and Rahab and now Ruth. What makes Ruth so unique so as to merit being named by Matthew? One interesting fact about Ruth is that she was not an Israelite, she was a Moabitess. Here is what the Mosaic Law said about Moabites in Deuteronomy 23:3: “No…Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever…” Are you scratching your head yet? Well it gets crazier. This dear Ruth was the beloved King David’s grandmother. And of course all of these imperfect women whose shady dealings and sin-stained lives are part of the line that eventually brought us Christ.
But Matthew doesn’t leave it there with Ruth the Moabitess. Now enter Bathsheba, who has probably one of the better known stories of all of these five women. Don’t let familiarity with the events that happened oh so long ago numb you to the scandal of the inclusion of this adulteress in the line of the Messiah. Bathsheba was not good King David’s wife. She belonged to Uraiah who was probably David’s friend. Think of the stories of scandal and infidelity we hear today involving mega-church pastors or evangelical leaders. That was David. That was his story. Except it didn’t stop with mere adultery. David had Bathsheba’s husband murdered and covered up his crime under the guise of messy warfare. I don’t know exactly if Bathsheba was a complicit participant or if she was essentially kidnapped and raped only to eventually grow to love her husband-King. If I had to guess, I’d guess she leaned more toward complicit, but either way, the fact of the matter is that God uses some insanely crooked sticks to draw perfectly straight lines, to borrow a line from Mark Driscoll.
This brings us to the fifth and final mother mentioned in the genealogy, Mary, blessed among women. The young virgin who was soon-to-be-wed to her lover. Mary wasn’t sneaky, she wasn’t a prostitute or a foreigner, and she wasn’t an adulterer. But lest you think that the inclusion of Mary has nothing particular to communicate to us, don’t quickly forget that whether or not you are at your wits end and a deviser of scandalous schemes, or outside the faith, or whether or not you have a past that you are less than proud of, or even whether or not you have been selfishly used by men after God’s own heart, you, like Mary, and like the mothers who proceed her are desperately in need of the grace found at the end of that straight line.
All of those crooked stick stories we read about in our Bibles converge at a star at the nend of a terribly straight line. It is here where you are sure to find the Son of Man, the son of Mary and the grandson of Bathsheba, Ruth, Rahab and Tamar. Your stories are a part of this grand story too. Your adventures in motherhood are all a part of His story, an important part—a vital part. You aren’t left out.
So have a merry Mother’s Day this year by celebrating that story, our story.
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