1-31-10

Text: Luke 4:1-13

● As far as I am aware, my family tree would be better classified as a “twig”. No one in my family has bothered to investigate our history, maybe for good reason, but maybe because it just didn’t seem to matter much.

            Typically, when people ask me where my family is from (meaning, country of origin), I say, “Kentucky” and if they say, “No, I mean farther back”, I say, “Eastern Kentucky”. If we had a family crest, I never saw it, but am convinced that it probably included a can of Prince Albert and an outhouse.

● Sure, there are always rumors of greatness swimming in many family’s “gene pools”, but none of those seemed to surface at family gatherings. It was just Grandma Leitha and Grandpa Sam, Uncle Charles or Aunt Emma or Grandma Myrtle.

            I know that I am named after my Grandpa James, but not sure why. I know my Grandpa Sam broke his back working in the coal mines which left him in a permanent “hunch”, and my grandma was known to do a “dip-o-snuff”, but the knowledge of those things never seemed to be the stuff that legacies are made of.

● My immediate family never seemed to be able to trace our lineage past my great-grandparents, none of which I had ever met personally. They were simply a few unfamiliar names on some obscure and thoughtless chart. Mostly, it was a lot of blanks.

            Which leaves families like mine with a lot of questions, a great deal of gaps to be filled in: “Who are we? Where did we come from? Did we establish a town or produce any heroes?”

● And, I guess just knowing that these people were somehow related to me never seemed to result in any significant connection.

            Of all of the stories that I have ever heard concerning my family history, I don’t recall any of them being presented in a cohesive fashion. They were never presented in such a way as to say, “Phil, this is who you are. This is our story”.

● Not so with the Jewish people. Being able to trace your lineage was an essential component of your identity and a key element in ensuring that the traditions and distinctives of the family were passed along from one generation to the next. This is especially true for a people who had experienced numerous wars and dispersions, not to mention calculated attempts at genocide.

            You get the feeling as you read the genealogies offered in scriptures, the idea seems to be that you are leading up to the final or more recent/present character.

● As you read through the lineage, you also notice certain defining moments or historical events which help rehearse their story.

            For example, you will find such names as Abraham, who was their founding father with whom God had made a covenant to bless and through him would bless the entire world. There’s typically reference to David, their most beloved King, to whom God made promises about this one would eventually come from David’s line and rule not only over his people Israel, but the whole world.

● There were also often references to the exiles, a time when all hope seemed lost but God, through the prophets, advised them that the true exodus, the true deliverance from exile was to come.

● The story to this point: 

“Who are you?” God’s unique, image-bearing creation. We are told in the story that humanity was somehow invested with qualities of their Creator. The word ‘image’ is the Greek, ‘eikon’- a representation; a likeness that stands for an object by representing it. As icons of God, we are representatives.

“Where are you?” In a beautiful place, perfectly suited for us; for ‘life’, yet a place that’s obviously not what it used to be.

“Why are you here?” To experience vital union with God, selfless and fulfilling interaction with each other, and meaningful and loving care of creation.

In a word, to realize “shalom”; a place where everything was functioning properly (working as it should); it’s ‘whole’.

“What happened?” What we know is, “something went terribly wrong”, and if the story is to be cohesive, it must address the issue.

Matthew’s account traces the history from Abraham to Jesus, but, interestingly, Luke starts with Jesus and works back to Adam and to God himself.

So, Jesus does not become just another family member in the line, he is actually the focal point of the entire list. This, as the author implies, is the one you’ve been waiting for.

“Adam was the son of God”…

            We recognize this phrase used often as a title for the Messiah. So, the implications:

►First, Jesus’ family tree can be traced all the way back to creation itself, to the first human, as a way of saying that Jesus is not only the Messiah of Israel, but for the whole of creation.

                Luke is suggesting that what Jesus has come to do will in some way reach all the way back to address the initial dilemma and somehow offer restoration.

● So, you get the feeling in the story that “sin is a really big deal” and all sin has at least these things in common:

            It’s idolatrous- giving ourselves to or adopting our sense of identity, worth and fulfillment from anything other than God. It answers the question, “Where are you going for life?” These things always “diminish” us; they reduce us to something other than we were created to be.

            It’s essentially mistrust of God- sin was not just one really bad choice, but an affront to the goodness of their Creator-God.

It’s alienation- the worst thing about sin? Separation.

● You get this image of humanity, having been evicted from the garden due to their “declaration of independence”, standing outside with their stuff (didn’t take long to pack, right--- their family picture with God and a few leaves) with one thing paramount in their minds: “How can we get back to the garden experience?”

►Secondly, the arrangement of the presentation is all very important in communicating Luke's message about Jesus.

● In the creation story, Adam had a unique relation to humanity as the head from which all of us came. But in the re-creation story, Jesus’ uniqueness is even greater in his relationship to the formation a new humanity.

So, we are born into Adam, but we are born again into Christ.

            Jesus becomes the progenitor of a new creation.

If Jesus is the new Adam, then he must succeed where Adam failed.

            Having been created for vital union with God, but having determined that God could not be trusted, Adam decided to “go it alone”. That decision put us in direct conflict with God’s good purposes and left us all feeling something we were never meant to experience: “shame” (worthlessness).

We have been so deceived that we actually hide from the only one who truly loves us without condition and who can re-connect us and dispel our fears about ourselves and about life.

● We must realize how much is at stake here. If Jesus fails, he will be in the same class as the first Adam and there will be no new people; the visions of Isaiah where the wolf and lamb will live together and the infant playing near the den of the cobra, will not be realized.

● If Jesus is the descendent of not only Abraham, but of Adam, he must be the truly human one. He must not only come and be the true image-bearer, but also the bearer of all the inhumanities caused by the sin of Adam.

● Here’s the way Paul puts it in Romans 5. Listen and enjoy from the Message (read).