Surprised by Grace (5): Christmas

Christmas has become cliche, under woke attack.
Those who can still investigate and think objectively (another taboo word), will decide for themselves.

The story that came down to us, rightly and wrongly, has an obvious punch of surprise, except for numbed eyes, in its first chapter. There is no manger, no shepherd, no 3 doctors.
Only one boring genealogy that begins with Abraham, and ends with Jesus.

A casual reader can be forgiven for not catching the surprise.
But if a feminist does not catch the surprise, he or she should go packing.
If a global citizenry advocate misses it, go too.
If a champion for the underprivileged misses it, go.

In a patrimonial society, no one would expect to find any woman in a genealogy.
In an honor and shame system, no one would leave traces of disrepute in a genealogy.

In Jesus’ genealogy, there are a total of five women.
And all of the five have something to whitewash.
And everyone of them was indispensable to giving birth to Jesus, whose earthly story only begins in Mathew 2, after the genealogy in chapter 1!
The path to Jesus’ glory and honor must go through the shame of his ancestors.
Surprise.

Tamar is the first woman named. She had sex with her father in law Judah to bear Zerah.
Then appears Rahab, who is known from Book of Joshua and the Letter to the Hebrews as “harlot”.
The third woman mentioned is Ruth, a gentile who sneaked onto the bed of Boaz. From Ruth came generations later, King David.

Fourth is of course David’s woman whom was snatched by King David from Uriah via an despicable adultery-murder scheme in Jewish history, king or not.

And, finally the fifth introduced is Mary. She is the unwed but pregnant wife of Joseph who was purportedly conceived by God’s Spirit. She was her own witness!

What a Hall of Shame of five!

That God allows these blemished women to play a role in the genealogy of the Saviour of humans is surprise enough.
That God allows these facts to be so forever etched in the Gospel, to be read by centuries of humans, thickens the plot.
That God meets any surprised reader of Gospel with a good news of forgiveness of sin is utterly laughable when these five tainted women could give rise to such an extraordinary grace.

Just think for a moment.
All these five women bore shame, disrepute, disfranchisement, marginalisation, suspicion, and possibly downright insults.
They shouldn’t even dare to have hope, let alone a place in the genealogy of the Saviour of the world.
They could perhaps barely hope to spend their lives quietly without ridicule.

Imagine the surprise to the five women.
No longer appendages to men.
No longer filth rags to be dumped.
No longer hopeless.
God chose them.
God used them.
God didn’t see them as they saw themselves, or as their contemporaries saw them.
They became somebody.
They became useful.
They became who they were meant to be.
Surprise!

They have a role to play in giving hope to all disfranchised and desperate, forgiveness to all overladen with their sinful past, value to all who have given up on themselves, that they are worth being the reason of Christmas.

How can anyone with understanding henceforth view Christmas as cliche? Or just a headache occasion for gifts and obnoxious relatives?
How can anyone not at least pause to wrestle with the enormity of such a surprise before passing with a shrug the shoulders or a smirk?

Only seen through this lens, open-minded readers can pick up the surprise.
And with that, the gravity of Christmas.
No longer cliche event on calendar.

The Creator of the Universe in Christmas, through the Savior of the world, raises anyone from dungs to a status of the cleaned and forgiven.

There is no more momentous surprise.
Merry Christmas!