Matthew 1:18-25;

Romans 1:1-7

Kathy Redpath, Pastoral Intern

During the summer that my youngest son, Spencer, was six years old, we spent a week with my mother’s first cousin in Toronto, Ontario. Aunt Bette, as we had always called her, was my mother’s favorite cousin. My mom had died several years earlier, and Spencer no longer really remembered her, so I was glad to know that he would have the opportunity to meet this cousin, the one to whom his own grandmother had been very close.  

  

 On the day that I was planning to take the boys downtown for some sightseeing, Aunt Bette promised us strawberry shortcake for dessert when we got home. I heard Spencer mumbling under his breath, something about “She better make it the right way!”  He and I had previously had the conversation that not everyone makes it the way he likes it—the way his mother always makes it. Secretly, we both thought it was the only good way to prepare strawberry shortcake—homemade biscuit, freshly picked, locally grown berries, half-and-half cream poured over it all. Though this was the only way we ever ate it at home,  I hoped I had gotten through to him the idea that good manners meant that when you’re a guest, you eat it the way it is served, …and that you do so without complaining.

I needn’t have worried. Later that evening, when the dessert dishes were placed on the table, Spencer took one look at the strawberry shortcake and squealed in delight, “Mom! She makes it just like you do!” 

Well, of course she does. I should have known she would. I make it the way my mother, Phyllis, made hers. My mother and her first cousin, Bette, both made it just the way their mothers had made it, and those women—Fanny and Maysie— were sisters, who made it the way their mother, Charlotte Dewar, had always done. The strawberry shortcake making turns out to be one of the traditions that identified us as part of the Dewar family. It’s something we have in common with the family members who came before us.

Looking at Matthew’s gospel, we see that it begins with the listing of the genealogy of Jesus, connecting him through Joseph to his Hebrew family all the way back to Abraham. The way those people did things for many, many generations connected them to one another, and identified them as family. Circumcision of male children was an identifier among the Hebrews, along with the not eating pork and observing the Sabbath on the seventh day. Maybe Joseph’s immediate family could be identified by something as simple as the way they shaped the loaves of bread they baked—each family has its own markers that come from family traditions.  

The passage we read today tells us that Joseph was planning to break his engagement to Mary. He feared that Mary had done something that would bring shame to his family.  Mary’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy could not be condoned in his family’s traditions. This is not something that his family would want to be identified with.

In my own family tree, there’s a grandfather who died before I ever met him. Those who knew my mother’s father usually just pass him off as “not a very nice man.”  I’ve scraped together a few details over the years, and from what I’ve learned, he’s not a character anyone would want to be identified with. Where Joseph had made plans to divorce Mary quietly in order to avoid family disgrace, the Dewar family simply doesn’t discuss the actions of this “black sheep.” He did not embody the kind of behavior that we would like to have as our tradition, the kind we’d like to identify us.

So, even as family, it is evident that we are choosey about which traditions we want to carry on and which we’d rather not perpetuate.

In the epistle reading we just heard, Paul begins his letter to the Christians in Rome by introducing himself to them——and Paul chooses to identify himself, not with his Hebrew past, but with the connections and traditions he shares with the Christians of Rome. He introduces himself as an apostle, as one called to share the gospel of God with those who belong to Jesus. In effect, he’s telling them that they are all of the same family. He’s reminding them that they share the traditions of living according to the way Jesus taught them to live. Through their baptism into Jesus Christ, Paul and these people of Rome, share important traditions, traditions that identify them as family. 

We here at Christ Lutheran church could also be called “family.”  We’re not all related by birth, but we are related by baptism. We are baptized into the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of this baptism, we are all part of a large family that begins with Jesus, our brother, and that includes the apostle Paul and all the Christians in Rome to whom Paul was writing. 

As members of this family of Christ, we can be identified by some of the traditions we carry on. During his time on earth, Jesus taught us the traditions he’d like to identify us. He modeled for us the lifestyle choices that he’d like for us to continue, by which he’d like others to be able to identify us. Jesus emphasized traditions like feeding the hungry, like comforting the lonely, like providing for the needy.  These are some of the traditions he’d like to identify us as being members of his own family.

At the beginning of 2007 Christ Lutheran church was asked to donate 6,715 pounds of food for the local food pantry. By the time December rolled around, the official tally of food items donated to feed the hungry was 7,488 pounds of goods, and more is still arriving –that’s already 773 pounds more than requested!…We can be identified as part of Jesus’ family by the way we help to feed the hungry. 

Two weeks ago, about thirty members of Christ Lutheran church joined with a dozen or so members of St. Christopher’s Episcopal church up the street… These people—all part of the Christian family— spent several hours of their Sunday afternoon cheering up some of our shut-in members by singing Christmas carols with them. In the hallways of the nursing and retirement homes where some of these members live, unscheduled stops were also made to include people we didn’t even know, people who were left smiling because others were willing to sing familiar Christmas songs with them …We can be identified as part of Jesus’ family by the way we comfort the lonely.

Earlier this month, a colorful flock of about 75 “angel tags” appeared on the Christmas tree out in the Narthex. One by one those tags disappeared. A week or so later, gift-wrapped packages of all sizes and shapes began to pile up under the tree. Items had been purchased for each of the children whose names were printed on those 75 tags.  Members of the Christ Lutheran church family were willing to provide gifts for people they’ll never meet…  We can be identified as part of Jesus’ family by the way we respond to people in need. It’s one more of the ways we continue in the traditions that Jesus established during his ministry.   

One of the other things I’ve noticed that identifies us as being part of Jesus’ family is that we continue to carry on these forms of behavior. It isn’t just a one-time thing. Part of what helps others identify us with Jesus is our on-going commitment to behaving in this way day after day, month after month, year after year. It’s the behaviors that can be counted on that become a way to identify us—a way of seeing who we are and to whose family we belong.

In this season of Advent, we can be recognized as part of the Christian family by our anticipation and celebration of the birth of Jesus. God, our father, identifies us as family through our baptism. We can identify one another by the way we live in the promise of that baptism.  As part of Jesus’ family through our baptism, we want to be identified by the feeding, the caring, the helping that we can do in his name. The joy we have as family members spills over into our daily lives as we live in the traditions that Jesus gave us.

The way I make strawberry shortcake identifies me as part of the Dewar family, related to Phyllis and Bette and Fanny and Maysie and Charlotte…but we can all live in the daily hope and identity to which our baptism calls us. Through it, we are part of the Christian family, related to Jesus, related to Paul, related to the first century Christians in Rome, …and related to all those who are claimed by Jesus through baptism.