CHRISTMAS: The Mothers of Jesus

So how about this for a Christmas theme? I know we celebrate Mother's Day the Second Sunday in May, but the birth of Jesus is a great Mother's Moment. Maybe we could do two birds with one stone? No, probably not. Conversely, wouldn't be viable. I think the flower folks and the card folks and the restaurant owners would say, let's not do that, say we did. Let's stick with one thing at a time. It is Christmas week and we are in our minds on the road to Bethlehem. There's Dicphoth with stories from the road. It's fascinating to me. Three of the four accounts of the birth of Jesus could be episodes on that TV program finding your roots. They don't start with a bang or a high drama. The stories in the gospel start with the backstory. And the gospel of Matthew includes something just incredible from the ancient male-dominated world. It's a genealogy that includes, wait for it, women, including women in a genealogy is never done, is noted in previous December podcast where we're working with something that Tim Keller wrote sometime back, a little book called Hidden Christmas the Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. And he has a chapter called The Mothers of Jesus and he talks about this Matthew genealogy this way. This genealogy is shockingly unlike other ancient genealogies to begin with. There are five women listed in the genealogy, all mothers of Jesus. This will not strike modern readers as unusual, but in ancient patriarchal societies a woman was virtually never named in such lists, let alone, five of them. You could call women gender outsiders in those cultures, yet they are in Jesus genealogy. And almost all of the women in his genealogy were Gentiles, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth. They were Canaanites and a Moavitis. To the ancient Jews, these nations were unclean. They weren't allowed into the tabernacle or temple to worship. We would call them racial outsiders. And yet they are in Jesus genealogy. He goes on for a couple of paragraphs, and then he says, it was out of that dysfunctional family that the Messiah came. You know, I think that all of our families are dysfunctional in one sense, one way or another, but it just is a point of great interest that Matthew in particular says this about Jesus roots. So I talked with our daughter because we're talking to Susanna who lives up in Idaho on these podcasts. So I caught up with her this past week. Here she is. Well, there you are, Susanna, on a bright Christmas week morning. There you are, Dad. How is your bright Christmas week morning going? It's, well, it's bright. It's crisp. The sky is Robin's egg blue or some kind of blue. And so I'm grateful. Well, our friend Tim Keller sure thinks in some challenging and good ways, doesn't he? He does, for sure. So when you read his chapter on the mothers of Jesus in Jesus story, what strikes you the most? I think what strikes me the most is the hope of who he chose to be in that lineup of mothers. For me, I just think it's so broad, the different people that he chose to be a part of his family. And there's the one line in there that Tim reminds us that Jesus is not ashamed of us and that he is not ashamed to call us his brethren. I think was the line that he said, the scripture that he said, I think this, this chapter just kind of cracks open that door on the hope that we have that no matter where we are, who we are, Jesus wants us to be a part of his family. So in that genealogy that I read earlier, it lists these, these moms. And you know, probably they wouldn't at least a couple of them wouldn't get the award for women of the year in their town. And Jesus not only allows himself, but just says, these are my human roots and I need to overwhelm that in some way. And that's great. I remember you as a little girl, one of my favorite pictures is your mom used to make outfits for you three girls back in the day. And you're, you must be around two years old, I'm guessing. And you had a long plaid skirt on and this little round head that didn't have much hair on it. And very, very cute. And now here you are down the road, all these decades later. And your mother of three young men in the given, just give us a snapshot of these three young men. How old are they? Their names. Yeah, Jack just graduated from college this past year. He's 22 and newly engaged. So we're pretty excited about welcoming Emma into our family. And then we have Will, who is 20. He's a junior. That is a specific. He is a music and worship major there. And then Addison is 17. He's in his senior year of high school. And we're getting ready to launch, launch him into the great big world. So we're on the cusp of a new mothering season over here. Oh boy, are you going to turn around twice and be an empty nester? Lord, we may have to cry for a second. I mean, we'll get over it, but that feels big. Well, go cry until you look at your grocery bill and it's so much less. So let me toss this out there. I remember when you were expecting Jack, your first. Just give us a few thoughts on the anticipation of motherhood. You know, when a young woman is first pregnant, there's that joy from most part and all of that. Talk to me about anticipation. I think for me, it was one of the most exciting seasons that I've ever experienced just because everything was so new. I had never experienced any of those feelings before, any of those emotions, the feeling of having this little person inside you start to move and grow. I just think there was a sense of the promise of something that was to come. And you didn't know what it was, but it was going to be good. And so I think that for me, I always wanted to be a mom. So the fact that this was a new time for me to kind of embrace a different part of who I was. Got now we're just kind of beside ourselves with joy in that moment when we met him for the first time. I don't think anything can really describe that. The sense of newness that you feel that just the miracle that here was a person who has been with you, but you haven't seen his face before. So I thought for some reason, because you said that I was bald, which I was for a long time, and I still do not have the most hair. I would have liked to have a little mark if that would have been possible. When I was handed Jack, he had just like this whole head of hair. And I remember I, it looked like a little old man wig that on his head. And I just thought, I recognize him. Like that does not look like any of my pictures with my bald head, but there was just an immediate feeling that he's mine. We love him. We're going to love him, you know, for forever. So just that sense of waiting for that day, though, there is a huge buildup to that moment. So here's Mary, probably a 15-year-old, with this miraculous conception, and they're in a little town, in a little country, in a little place, on a dark night. And she holds her baby, jeez, for the first time. And you talk about a promise kept. Right? Yeah, I mean, the anticipation in a general sense of prophecies that were 800 years old, in some cases. And now here's the moment that that's just over the top, isn't it? Well, and I think the same, the same, and that she was looking, you know, into the face of her child, but she was also looking into the face of her savior. I can't imagine what that juxtaposition would have been like as a mom, knowing that you're having to take care of someone, because I think you feel as a new mom, this person that you've been given is so precious. And I wonder what it was like for her in that moment, to just know, you know, she was caring for the one who created her. That had to be so, I don't know, mind blowing, right, mind blowing, dad. And she, in the first chapter of Luke, she says, and they said it's made into a song, she talks about at least getting the larger picture. She may not have known the details of that. And she, she hadn't seen his face either. She, she, like you, had felt a knee in an elbow and a foot. Right. There you go. Well, Susanna, thanks. Thanks for helping me with this and thanks for being a great mom to three strapping young men. Thanks, dad. Thanks for being a great grandpa to three strapping young men. Hey, hey, okay, we'll send money later. Catch you. Bye bye. Bye bye. So this Christmas, I just like to say to each and every mother, thank you. Thank you for your nurture. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your effort in the long days and the late nights. And many of you who have a child or children work not only inside the home, but also outside the home. And often, no doubt, are not recognized either by the children or by we as husbands for all of the thousands of hours that you have poured into the children that you brought up or are bringing up. So this Christmas, thank you. This Christmas, we bless you. This Christmas, we say that our mothers are the people who left their fingerprints on our souls in a powerful way. And we are grateful. God bless, this is Dicfield signing off, we'll catch you next time as we run up to Christmas.