Author: Julie Wilkinson

We heard an interesting story on breakfast radio this morning. Bobby Charlton was due to welcome twenty six of the thirty three rescued Chilean miners to Old Trafford this evening, as guests of honour at Manchester United’s match against Arsenal.

Every year, my husband and I go away for a couple of nights to celebrate our wedding anniversary, usually somewhere suitably romantic – rural Derbyshire, Lindisfarne, Fountains Abbey, Paris. So you can imagine my surprise when, three years ago, he announced that he’d found the perfect place to go for our fourth anniversary … Sunderland!

I have nothing against Sunderland – indeed, it occupies a nostalgic little spot in my heart as the first home of my brother and sister-in-law, visits spent wandering the beach at South Shields or going to Beamish. But it doesn’t come top of my list of holiday destinations, romantic or otherwise!

Fear not though – my other half hadn’t failed miserably on the ‘good husband’ front; he’d found a holiday cottage in a lighthouse and a good time was had by all. One of the biggest surprises of the trip was a visit to the Winter Gardens in Sunderland itself. There, in the middle of the city on a sunny-but-cold January day, we found an oasis of beauty in the most unexpected of places.

At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be much beauty in the story of Jacob, many times great grandfather of Joseph and, through him, Jesus. He begins by tricking his brother and father into giving him the birthright of the oldest son, fracturing family bonds seemingly beyond repair. He is then tricked himself by his uncle, deceived into marrying the older of two sisters when it is the younger one that he loves and has worked for. Ultimately married to both sisters, with sons coming out of his ears (not literally!) and favouritism rife, this doesn’t seem to be a family worthy of the Son of God.

The cycle of deception at the centre of Jacob’s story is embedded in the Old Testament workings of justice. Jacob has deceived his father and brother, so his deception at the hands of Laban (his uncle) is, in isolation, a restoring of balance. But this kind of justice is also deeply problematic – for each act of deception, while restoring one balance, creates an imbalance elsewhere, causing further damage.  Every time dishonesty occurs, the impact on innocent lives increases, stifling the potential God has created, whether that be the potential of an oldest son to be a good steward of his father’s wealth, or the potential for daughters to be loved and valued in healthy marriage relationships.

Parental responsibility plays its role here – when Jacob deceives his father, Isaac, it is his mother, Rebekah, who instructs him in his dishonesty; when Laban tricks Jacob into marrying his elder daughter, Leah, he makes her complicit in the ruse. Both stories reveal parents encouraging their children in the art of deception, almost teaching them how to deceive. And this parental involvement almost inevitably takes place against a backdrop of favouritism – as the youngest of twins, Jacob was his mother’s favoured son, while his brother Esau was his father’s. This is a mistake which Jacob repeats with his wives, favouring Rachel over her sister, Leah, and later on with his sons, favouring Joseph and Benjamin (Rachel’s children) over their brothers.

I wonder if what we’re seeing here in these cycles is still the fallout from Adam and Eve and the breaking of creation? We can literally see the waves of pain spreading and rippling through the generations, becoming a more and more natural part of how they live their lives.

So, are there any signs of hope in the midst of this destruction?

Yes – for although creation is damaged, God’s image remains reflected in it, however brokenly.

And that means that a man like Jacob, capable of unthinkingly inflicting great pain on his closest family members, is also capable of a depth of love that can only be described as godly. His love for Rachel is characterised by a timeless patience and constancy that made seven years’ labour seem “like only a few days to him because of his love for her.” A reflection of God.

And it means that a woman like Leah, tied in marriage to a man who will never truly love her and forever in the shadow of her more beautiful and beloved younger sister, can name her fourth child Judah – meaning ‘praise’. In the midst of her painful, compromised life, Leah responds to God’s blessing of a son with praise.

It is from this family line – Judah, son of Jacob and Leah – that the genealogy of Jesus comes. From this bleak, messy tangle of relationships, bearing all the rawness of the fall and separation from God, comes Jesus.

And Jesus comes to bring a new kind of justice, showing a better way which wipes out the wrong things we do and releases us from the old cycles causing ever more damage.

Jesus comes into our broken world because God sees his image reflected in us and wants us to fulfil that potential. When Jesus tells the woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more, he does so with no judgement, no condemnation of her wrongs – but perhaps with a desire to see her recognise the signs of God in herself and become the person he meant her be, to fulfil her potential.

Maybe the lesson to learn from Jacob is to look for and truly see the signs of hope, the beauty among the brokenness, the signs that God is present in the world which shine ever more brightly when they shine in the darkness – perhaps none more so than the baby whose birth we remember each Christmas…

I recently read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (it’s very good, I recommend it). It tells the tale of the reclusive and mysterious author, Vida Winter and opens with a quote from her fictional collection of stories:

“All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”

Thinking about it, there’s definitely some truth in there. Ask me to tell you about when I was born and I’ll tell you how I made my entrance into the world almost two weeks after my due date – and haven’t stopped being late since!

For Perez, the fifth ancestor listed in the genealogy of Jesus, we don’t know much about him apart from the details of his conception and birth. To be honest, before I looked him up last week, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you who he was or anything of his story. But he does stand out in the genealogy – he’s one of the few listed with both parents, mother as well as father. At a time when women were culturally subordinate, it was very unusual for a Jewish genealogy to mention them at all; but five women appear in that of Jesus.

Perez’s father was Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob and a brother to Joseph. His mother was Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law. And so begins one of those Old Testament tales of tangled, messy family relationships that are so common in Genesis…

After helping the rest of his brothers to fake Joseph’s death and sell him to some Midianites, Judah left home and went to live in another town where he met and married his wife. This marriage resulted in three sons – Er, Onan and Shelah. When the time came for Er to have a wife of his own, Judah chose Tamar to fulfil the role.

Unfortunately the marriage didn’t last long – Er did things that God said were wrong, so God, in one of those moments we find so uncomfortable, killed him. In line with custom at the time, Judah told his second son, Onan, to take Er’s place as Tamar’s husband. But Onan wasn’t keen on providing descendants on his dead brother’s behalf instead of his own so he made sure he didn’t fulfil his marital responsibilities (to put it delicately!). God wasn’t happy with Onan’s deception, so he killed him as well.

With only one son left and fearful that he would also die, Judah sent Tamar back to her father’s house and told her not to marry until his third son, Shelah, was old enough to be her husband. Time passed, Judah’s wife died, and Shelah grew up – and Judah failed to keep his word to Tamar.

Hearing that her father-in-law was going to oversee the shearing of his sheep one day, Tamar changed out of her widow’s clothes and, covering her face with a veil to disguise her identity, went to wait for him. When Judah saw her, he assumed she was a prostitute and approached her, promising to pay her with a goat from his flock in return for her services. Knowing he hadn’t recognised her, Tamar agreed – as long as he left her his seal, cord and walking stick as a returnable deposit. Their encounter resulted in Tamar’s pregnancy – but when Judah sent a friend back to make payment of a goat, Tamar was nowhere to be seen.

Three months passed before word reached Judah that his widowed daughter-in-law had been acting like a prostitute and was now carrying a child. Judah condemned her immediately, declaring that she should be burned to death. When the people arrived to take her to her execution, Tamar sent a message to her father-in-law along with the seal, cord and walking stick – these were the things that revealed the identity of her baby’s father. On seeing them, Judah realised the hypocrisy of his mistake and granted her a reprieve, recognising that her actions were out of desperation because he hadn’t fulfilled his promise of marriage to his third son.

After nine months of pregnancy, Tamar gave birth to twins. The first baby stuck his hand out and the nurse tied a red string on it so they could recognise him as the firstborn – but he then pulled his hand back in and the other baby was born first. So the firstborn son was named Perez (meaning ‘breaking out’), and the second named Zerah.

Judah finds himself in the same position of power over Tamar as Joseph did with Mary, both men making life or death decisions in response to pregnancies outside marriage. Unlike Joseph, Judah doesn’t hesitate to judge and condemn Tamar. Was this a simple moralistic response or was his fear of the death of his third remaining son in the back of his mind, the death of Tamar a convenient way of removing this threat?

For Tamar, life after the deaths of Er and Onan would have been one of limbo, waiting and waiting for Shelah to grow up and for Judah to fulfil his promise of a third marriage. Unable to live independently, reliant on a father-in-law who had abandoned his commitment to her, her actions, though deceptive, become understandable. Her encounter with Judah is both brave and foolish, a desperate self-assertion to change her circumstances, risking death rather than continue as the non-entity she had become.

The positions of Judah and Tamar reflect the world that Perez was born into, one still reeling from the shockwaves of broken creation. His birth itself reflects the struggle for supremacy, the hierarchy of the firstborn, winning the battle with his twin brother to gain that position (with echoes here of Jacob and Esau).

But perhaps these are the kinds of things, the broken things, that Jesus came to heal? To free people like Judah from fear and from cultural expectations to judge others harshly? To free those like Tamar who are disempowered and subject to the will of others? To show an alternative to the battle for power, a way of peace and justice and servanthood?

Which brings us back to Joseph’s response to Mary, so different to Judah and Tamar. Even before his birth, Jesus’ story is changing things, showing a different way, a better way, repairing that which was broken and building a new kingdom…

I start with a confession. I’m a genealogy geek. I’m fascinated with the line of ancestors that have gone before me, the people they were, the places they lived, the decisions they made, and how all of that forms the foundation from whence I came and on which I stand.

I’m also a storyteller. Stories are a vital part of who I am, of how I make sense of things, of how I discover and refine what I know as truth. Stories are part of my identity.

And I’m a Christian. (Perhaps that’s more of a confession than the genealogy bit…!) And by that, I don’t mean that I’m religious, that I go to church every week, that I believe good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. I mean that I believe in God, I believe that creation and the people who inhabit it have enormous potential and I long to see that fulfilled, and, in an attempt to play my small part in fulfilling that potential, I take inspiration from Jesus and the Bible.

That’s the story I find myself in (to quote Brian McLaren).

As a storyteller, I’m always looking out for things I’ve not spotted before in well-known Bible stories, the gaps that haven’t been filled – the hidden spaces. At this time of year that can be quite a challenge, going through the ever familiar Christmas passages. So I thought I might do something a bit different…

In the same way that I’m fascinated by my own genealogy, I find myself increasingly drawn to that of Jesus. The long, boring list of names at the beginning of Matthew – that interests me! When I read it, I find myself wondering who the people were behind the names? What’s their story? And how might that shed a new and different light on how I understand Jesus?

So, in time-honoured genealogical tradition, I thought I’d do some research! I start this journey without really knowing where I’m going – I don’t know how many of the names listed in Jesus’ ancestry appear elsewhere in the Bible or whether I’ll find out anything I didn’t know before. The results probably won’t be earth-shattering or life-changing. But they might be a little bit interesting…

Here, I’ll be retelling some of the stories that interest me – some may be overwhelmingly familiar, others may be as yet unknown to you – alongside thoughts and questions that pop up as I go.

This is my advent, my waiting, my preparation for Christmas. Join me?