“God with us” is more than a nice Christmasy slogan; it is a shocking metaphysical claim. God—infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth—with us—creatures who are definitively not infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in our being (We get old.), wisdom (Are we all wise?), power (We get weak.), holiness (Do I really even need to ask about this one?), justice, goodness, and truth.

On January 2, 2023, Quentin Colon Roosevelt became one of the youngest ever people elected to office in Washington, D.C. at 18 years old. His office? Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner for Single-Member District 3D03. You can be forgiven if you have not heard of Mr. Colon Roosevelt or his elected office and if you do not particularly care about his youth in relation to that office. But it might intrigue you to know that Colon Roosevelt is the great-great-great grandson of Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt. At least this incredibly specific piece of information will be helpful if it is ever a question at your local bar’s trivia night! For Colon Roosevelt, being related to the 26th president of the United States was a helpful talking point in his campaign to capture his office. (He ran unopposed).

Many of us relate to our ancestry in precisely this way—as a bit of trivia, vaguely interesting to those who care and entirely unremarkable (even when it’s cool!) to people who do not. For that reason, whenever we run across an ancestry list within the pages of the Bible, we allow our eyes to glaze over until we reach a more interesting passage. They teach you as a writer not to start with boring but to start with a hook.

And yet, Matthew’s gospel kicks off its Christmas story with 18 verses of genealogy. We are tempted to think that Matthew is trying to do for Jesus what Colon Roosevelt did for himself: make an otherwise unremarkable person at least vaguely interesting because of who his great-great-great grandfather was. After all, this Jesus that Christians worship was born to a poor carpenter and his wife who had mysteriously gotten pregnant before their wedding. He was born in a place much less interesting than Washington D.C.—in Bethlehem, a place often forgotten—and then grew up in Nazareth, about which people often declared, “Can anything good come from there?”

Not very impressive, but at least he’s got the cool trivia fact of being distantly related to a king. Glen Scrivener writes about this passage, “We could compare the family of Jesus to the last derelict descendant of a once-great family. They were Roosevelts, Lincolns, or Jeffersons, but had fallen far over the years.”[1]

And yet, Matthew knows exactly what he is doing (as Scrivener would agree). First, this genealogy bolsters Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah; he is in the right family at least. But second, Matthew deliberately opens his gospel with this genealogy to show something profound, something that would shock his first readers and something that should still shock us today in this Christmas season: that God is with us. In covenant and through crisis, God is with us in Christ.

Matthew 1 reestablishes what the entire Old Testament has declared: God’s covenant faithfulness. Verse 1 lists three names: Jesus—we will get to him soon enough—and David and Abraham. For a first century Jewish reader, the covenantal radar lights up at the mention of these two men. For moderns to understand this genealogy, we must learn why these two names are highlighted.

First, Abraham. Way back in Genesis, God had initiated a covenant with Abraham, a committed relationship of blessing and obligation. Genesis 12 records its beginning. After commanding Abraham to leave his country and go to a new land, God tells him, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Later Genesis 15 reveals that it will be through Abraham’s descendant that all the families of the earth will be blessed. Abraham does indeed have a child, and God makes a nation out of this child, but blessing to all the families of the world? Remains to be seen.

David is the other headliner name of the genealogy. God also made a covenant with David. After David ascended to the throne, God promised him in 2 Samuel 7 to raise up his offspring after him, who shall be from his body, that God will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. We often today miss the enormity of this promise, but when Matthew was written, this promise was still a lifeline for the Jewish people. They were waiting, not really with bated breath anymore, but the name of David would rouse the whisper of a hope that things could get better.

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