An homily from St. John’s for the Sunday before Christmas, 7534/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.
In graduate school I studied medieval literature, covering a broad period defined in my program roughly as running from around 410, when the Roman legions withdrew from Britain, and Rome had her first fall at the hands of barbarians, to 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Muslims. At the end of that period it seemed that the center of Orthodox Christianity historically vanished. But there was another hidden center that would arise, directly related to us here today, and that would be, unseen by many for a time, what became Russia, in which many holy people of the old Byzantine world placed their secret hope for a land housing the continuation of Orthodoxy.
In medieval studies, we were taught that what to us modern readers seemed the most tedious or boring readings were often among the most important texts to non-modern people. This is true of the genealogies of the Bible. They are an important glue textually, as I tell my Bible students at Bucknell as well as in our own parish Bible Study. The genealogies are a personal link through the generations, both a time machine of sorts and a spiritual ancestry.com.
In the case of the genealogy of the opening of Matthew, it goes back in time from the birth of Jesus of Nazareth all the way back to the time of Abraham, around 2000 years earlier. And the genealogies from Abraham’s time in the Bible preserved by the Church, as the Gospel of Luke later highlights, go all the way back to Adam and Eve. This is how the Orthodox Christian Bible scholars in Byzantium calculated our Church years, so that today we are in Year 7534. Our new year of 2026, brand new as it is, was based on faulty arithmetic in the Catholic West, by the way, as Jesus was born a few years before that. Nonetheless, the genealogies link us in the Church today, as Israel, all the way back through that family tree to our forefathers Noah and ultimately Adam and Eve. This is part of the lead-up to Christmas, because it is through the birth of Jesus Christ that we become in our baptism and chrismation grafted into the family of the Church.
The Evangelist Matthew’s genealogy is also an explication of our shared human nature, for we are all of the kin of Adam and Eve, and Noah, and kinship remember is related to the origins of the word kind, in terms of being kind to those who are our kin. That is really everyone, starting with our Church family, but that incorporates all peoples and races and nations and ages.
Jesus Christ’s genealogy in the Gospel includes women, unusually since such lists only included usually men as heads of households, namely Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Rahab and Ruth were Gentiles, and Raham, Tamar, and Bathsheba had questionable characters. Yet the genealogy symbolizes the inclusion of all people among Jesus Christ’s human family, the Church. It lists both righteous and wicked people, kings and peasants, men, women foreshadowing the Virgin Mary’s role, and Jews and Gentiles alike. All like us are sinners in the family tree of Christ, all mankind, redeemable through His birth and love for us in His suffering and Resurrection.
The Gospel of Matthew was thought to have been written for a core original Jewish audience by the Apostle Matthew. It serves as a literal link between the Old Testament and the New Testament, as it is the first chapter of the Christian New Testament. For early Christians, although primarily Jewish in background as was the Evangelist Matthew, both the Old Testament and the New Testament were written in Greek, so it also became easy to see them as the same book and not representing different dispensations as some heretics have since wrongly taught. There is continuity between what Father Michael Pomazansky of Jordanville called the Old Testament Church and the New Testament Church, and we read the history of the Old Testament in light of the spiritual meaning and light given to it by Jesus Christ’s Incarnation in the New, which is the whole summation of the Old Testament books of the Bible. Those people of Judah and the Levites primarily, who rejected the coming of Christ, really rejected their heritage and in such a view Judaism became a reaction against Christianity. For in the Church lies the fulfillment and realization of Israel and the re-gathering of all the tribes of Israel, including the lost ones, in the gathering of all nations in her. Because the Gospel of Matthew starts with “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,” the symbol of the Evangelist Matthew given by the Church Fathers is the Man among the four creatures of Ezekiel’s vision of the Cherubim. It emphasizes the human coming of Christ, fully God and fully man unconfused and undivided, and receives the honor of being the Gospel on the Sunday before Christmas.
Jesus Christ is described immediately in the Gospel as the son of David and the son of Abraham, and then the detailed genealogy begins. As the son of David, He is King, and as the son of Abraham the fulfiller of God’s convenant to Israel, which would become known to the world as His Church. As Christ, or the anointed one, he fulfills the offices of both King and Priest from the Old Testament, as those anointed by the Lord. This is why the regicide or killing of the last Orthodox Christian imperial family in 1917 was so serious. It marked the killing of the anointed of the Lord, but also the effective end of Orthodox Christian kingship that in major form had extended back through Russia, the Third Rome, all the way back to Byzantium and the Second Rome of now-fallen Constantinople. The martyrdom of the Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia in that different genealogy of earthly history, for many holy elders and fathers marked a beginning to the last days of prophecy, although our Lord told us that of that time and that day we know not. Many holy fathers believe that the time of the Final Judgement is extended for the sake of the prayers of the faithful that they and more people may be saved. This is what lends urgency, brothers and sisters, to our mission work in America as Orthodox Christians. May God strengthen our efforts at mission work even here in our humble country Church, so that ourselves and others may find our Lord’s Church to be an ark in these latter days!
To return to the genealogy in Matthew, it lists 14 generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and from the Babylonian exile and destruction of the First Temple to Christ another 14 generations. The third chain of names in this Gospel only seems to include 13 generations, though, leading to speculation that perhaps this is to symbolize how the Virgin Theotokos is not in the listed lineage. In any case, her absence relates probably to how the Evangelist is showing the legal and royal lineage through generations involving the descent from the Patriarch Abraham and David. This Gospel also seems to skip some generations and leaves out a few names, so that the number 14 may have been both for purposes of memorization and also symbolic, for according to a Jewish tradition of using numbers for letters, 14 signified David’s name. David as Prophet and King provided an authentication in the genealogy for Jesus as the Son of David and Christ, uniting also those offices in Israel in their highest fulfillment as Messiah and God Incarnate. In noting a few differences between the genealogies in Matthew and in Luke, some Church commentators have said that Matthew may be following Joseph’s lineage, and Luke following Mary’s. Scholars likewise say that Matthew probably was following the royal succession while Luke traces Joseph’s physical descent. Joseph of course was not who we today would call the biological father but legally the father of Jesus. Differences may also relate to situations of stepfathers within families.
But, in any case, the genealogy of Christ is a reminder of the grounding of the Church as Israel in the whole salvation history of the Bible stretching back thousands of years and now to all peoples. Stay grounded spiritually in this, friends. For just as Jacob’s Ladder is understood by the Church as a symbol or type of the Theotokos, linking heaven and earth, so to0 the Theotokos is the link between this genealogy and the Incarnation of the Son of God, fully God and fully man, for our salvation. To speak of the genealogies as offering grounding, we may be reminded in a mundane typology by the person who is seasick in a boat, and looks to the horizon for grounding. Let us also remember our genealogy in Christ in this way, brothers and sisters. The genealogies also show us a symbol of how the Church is a mystical hierarchy, a network of grace working across and beyond time and space, in the uncreated energies of God.
Brothers and Sisters, we are called to a Christian life that is not an abstract idea, but a lived and embodied experience. The genealogy of the Holy Fathers, which includes those Prophets who spiritually foresaw the coming of Christ, is a link to heaven that is also a reminder of how the Church offers that link right here on earth. The Orthodox Church is both the spiritual and the historical Church. God’s Church is not missing or invisible. The portal right here can be seen in the Royal Doors that open to us, the veil of the Holy of Holies taken away, as the gifts of the Most Holy and Pure Body and Blood of our Lord and God and Savior come to us. So, He came to us more than two thousand years ago as a baby in a cave, honored by angels and by animals and by His family, Who would nurture His Orthodox Church, even here in the quiet fields of Winfield, Pennsylvania, half a world and two millennia away, where He nurtures the spark of God’s love in each of our hearts at this Christmas time.
For Christ is in our midst!
Troparion of the Forefeast of the Nativity (Tone 4)
Make ready, O Bethlehem, * Eden hath been opened unto all. * Prepare, O Ephratha, * for the Tree of life hath blossomed in the cave from the Virgin. * For her womb proved to be a spiritual paradise wherefrom there came the Divine Plant, * whereof eating we shall live and not die like Adam. * Christ is born to raise the image that fell of old.
Kontakion of the Fathers (Tone 1)
Rejoice, O Bethlehem! * Ephratha, make ready! * for behold, the Ewe hasteneth to give birth unto the Great Shepherd Whom she carrieth in her womb. * And seeing Him, the God-bearing Fathers rejoice, * and with the shepherds praise the Virgin who giveth milk.
The Reading from the
Holy Gospel according to Matthew,
§1 [1:1-25]
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac, and Isaac begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Judah and his brethren. And Judah begot Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez begot Hezron, and Hezron begot Aram, and Aram begot Aminadab, and Aminadab begot Nahshon, and Nahshon begot Salmon, and Salmon begot Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz begot Obed by Ruth, and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David the king. And David the king begot Solomon by her that had been the wife of Uriah, and Solomon begot Rehoboam, and Rehoboam begot Abijah, and Abijah begot Asa, and Asa begot Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat begot Joram, and Joram begot Uzziah, and Uzziah begot Jotham, and Jotham begot Ahaz, and Ahaz begot Hezekiah, and Hezekiah begot Manasseh, and Manasseh begot Amon, and Amon begot Josiah, and Josiah begot Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon. And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begot Salathiel, and Salathiel begot Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel begot Abiud, and Abiud begot Eliakim, and Eliakim begot Azor, and Azor begot Zadok, and Zadok begot Achim, and Achim begot Eliud, and Eliud begot Eleazar, and Eleazar begot Matthan, and Matthan begot Jacob, and Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this way: When His mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. And Joseph her husband, being a just man and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call His name JESUS, for He shall save His people from their sins.’ Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel’ (which being interpreted is, ‘God with us’). Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn Son. And he called His name JESUS.