One of my daughters has recently been doing some schoolwork on family trees and family history.\u00a0 In trying to answer her questions about her ancestors, I have had to do some research of my own.\u00a0 In fact, I have also been inspired to go beyond the information she needs. \u00a0I\u2019ve not gone as far as registering with \u201cAncestry.co.uk\u201d and I\u2019m not in line to appear on the TV show \u201cWho do you think you are?\u201d but I have to say I am genuinely interested in my family\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
I also recognise that you might not be, and that you might be dreading what\u2019s coming next\u2026 don\u2019t worry \u2013 I\u2019ll keep my stories to myself!\u00a0 What I would like to share with you is a reflection about the relationship between history and legacy.\u00a0 A good way to illustrate this is to consider what we know about Jesus.<\/p>\n
There are a number of different ways of looking at Jesus\u2019 history.\u00a0 If we wanted a starter for ten, we could do far worse than the first verse of Matthew\u2019s Gospel: Jesus is \u201cthe son of David, the son of Abraham.\u201d\u00a0 In this sentence, Matthew tells his readers some key facts about Jesus.\u00a0 Abraham was the founding father of the Jewish nation, and David was the nation\u2019s most celebrated king.\u00a0 To have both of these in your family tree was a real privilege and Matthew knew that writing this down would cause his readers to sit up and take notice.<\/p>\n
As we read on we discover a whole load more interesting stuff.\u00a0 It\u2019s largely hidden from people with little knowledge of the Old Testament, but Matthew\u2019s first readers would have caught the references very quickly.\u00a0 There are four women mentioned in Jesus\u2019 genealogy.\u00a0 The mention of women in such lists is rare \u2013 and therefore this is significant.\u00a0 When we look more closely, we may be startled by the stories we uncover\u2026<\/p>\n
As well as Mary, whose story we know well, Jesus\u2019 family tree includes a woman called Tamar who pretended to be a prostitute and slept with her father-in-law in order to trick her way into some kind of inheritance.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho who betrayed her king and city by hiding the Israelite spies and lying to the police.\u00a0 There\u2019s also Bathsheba: Matthew\u2019s entry reads simply, \u201cDavid was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah\u201d, but the story behind this note is dark \u2013 when his adulterous affair caused Bathsheba to fall pregnant and he couldn\u2019t hide it any longer, David (the King) had Uriah (one of his most loyal soldiers) murdered.<\/p>\n
So Jesus\u2019 family tree contains histories of deception, prostitution, treachery, adultery, betrayal and murder.\u00a0 Yet look at how he turned out\u2026 trustworthy, truthful, compassionate and kind, courageous and steadfast; the epitome of selfless love.\u00a0 His family\u2019s history didn\u2019t prevent him from leaving the most amazing legacy the world has ever seen.\u00a0 There\u2019s encouragement here for anyone who looks with sadness at their family background; Jesus understands.\u00a0 Our families may describe us, but they don\u2019t need to define us.\u00a0 Whatever our past, we should work to leave a positive legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my daughters has recently been doing some schoolwork on family trees and family history.\u00a0 In trying to answer her questions about her ancestors, I have had to do some research of my own.\u00a0 In fact, I have also been inspired to go beyond the information she needs. \u00a0I\u2019ve not gone as far as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[39,48,19,47],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-life","tag-family","tag-identity","tag-jesus","tag-legacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions\/166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}