The Origins of the Unoriginate God

The gospels provide two genealogies of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There is the beginning of the gospel of Matthew, which we read today – the Sunday before Christmas – The Sunday of the Ancestors of Christ. And there is the genealogy in Luke.

When these readings come up in our lectionary, it can be tempting to zone out and wait for it to be over – rather than to reflect upon their meaning. These long lists of names – which many of us do not recognize – do little to hold our attention or inspire spiritual reflection upon their meaning. Why do we bother with these boring lists of names? What do they have to do with us? There is, however, much to learn about our God and our salvation from these genealogies.

It is possible to go through these names and discover some interesting characters, who show us the absolute humanness of our Lord Jesus Christ and his origins. He is our God, as we know, but “he did not deem equality with God something to be grasped” (Phil 2). He did not choose exclusively exemplary and holy people through whom to come into the world. He chose sinful people - imperfect people. In fact, looking through his genealogy is rather like looking through mine. It’s not always pretty.

 There are among the ancestors of Jesus: adulterers, murderers, and prostitutes. Even out of evils such as these, God brings good – and not only good, but the greatest good – our Lord himself. Our savior, Jesus Christ.

Some of these characters are scandalous, but woe to us if we are scandalized. Woe to us if we turn away from this son of a carpenter – our own genealogies will then rise up and condemn us. Let none pretend that the ancestors who brought them into being are free from sin and error.

We may have family secrets – skeletons in our closets – parents or grandparents of whom we are ashamed. But Jesus has no family secrets – all the skeletons in God’s closet are on full display in the pages of the Old Testament. Jesus becomes a man through such people so that people such as us need not despair nor be ashamed.  Jesus is not ashamed of us no matter who our parents or ancestors are. He is one of us. He is not just anyone, but a particular man, with all that that entails.

In some ways more scandalous than the sins and foibles of some of Jesus’ ancestors is what is sometimes called “the scandal of particularity.”  

How is it that our Lord and God, who is “ineffable, inconceivable, incomprehensible, ever-existing yet ever the same” – as we say in the Anaphora of our Divine Liturgy – would change and become a man – and not only Man in the abstract sense of our human nature, but also a man in the particular sense necessary to that human nature? That is, He became a particular man at a particular time in history in a particular place of a particular race and people.

Jesus, we believe, comes to save the people of every era. Why then was he born more than two thousand years ago? If he is my savior, why does he not belong to my generation? Further, if he is the savior of Adam and Eve, why did he wait so long to come into the world?

Jesus comes to save the people of every race. Not only the Jews, but also the Africans, the Asians, the Americans, the Europeans, and every race. Why then does he come into the world as Jew? I am not a Jew, and yet my salvation comes from a Jew.

Jesus comes to save both men and women. Why then does he come as a man?  

Jesus comes to save people of every age – from the unborn to the elderly. Why then does he die so young? I am five years older than Jesus when he died. Yet he died for me too, even though I have not followed him in this.

These are some of his particularities. And they have everything to do with his ancestors. Because Jesus’ salvific mission to the world is universal – he came to save us all – it can be tempting to try to universalize him – to abstract him – to generalize him. But to do this is to strip him of his real humanity. It is part of being human to have a particular set of characteristics consequent to a particular ancestry.

He is Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary and – so it was supposed – the son of Joseph, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

By the way, these genealogies are in fact both not of Mary but of Joseph. So, they give us not his genealogy according to the flesh but the genealogy of his foster father – a genealogy that places him in a family created not by blood but by marriage. This tells us something of how sacred is marriage. 

Tradition, however, tells us that Mary is also a descendant of David.

All this specificity about his incarnation – that our Lord became a man – is scandalizing to those – such as Muslims and Jews – who do not accept the paradox of our incarnate God. It is a “scandal” to those who have not accepted the revelation of it, because reason alone – just thinking about it – will never get you there. Reason alone will never reveal to you that this poor son of a carpenter from Nazareth – there and nowhere else – is the very God – the Lord Almighty, the Creator of all things. It will never reveal to you that this descendant of Abraham was before Abraham ever was – that this son of Adam is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The only way we can realize our salvation in Jesus Christ – in Jesus of Nazareth – is by this revelation, which is a scandal to unaided reason.

The genealogies wonderfully place our Lord in a particular time and place and of a particular people. God does not have a genealogy – but God become Man must and does have a genealogy and to us who believe, this particularity is the very means of our salvation.

God entered into human history. This genealogy in a sense describes for us the origins of the unoriginate God, which is rather like many of the paradoxes we sing in the Akathist hymn – such as that Mary is the space of the spaceless God. Our reason cannot fathom this paradox, but our faith knows it to be the source of our salvation. God has become Man – with all the particularity that entails – in order that you and I, with all of our particularities, can become one with God.

A Needle is a Needle and a Camel is a Camel.

on Luke 18:18-27

I saw a comic strip recently. There's a preacher character standing in the pulpit before his congregation, rather like I am now standing before you, and he says, quoting Jesus, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” – which is from the gospel we've just heard (Luke 18:25). And everyone in the congregation is looking aghast and worried. But then the preacher goes on to say, “And now I will tell you why that's not what he really meant.” And everyone in the congregation breathes a sigh of relief.

There's nothing new about this attempted dodge. Preachers have been trying to explain away this admittedly poetic image of Jesus since the early Church.

St. Cyril of Alexandria softens the blow a little bit by claiming that “by a ‘camel,’ [Jesus] doesn’t mean the animal of that name but rather a thick cable…. It is the custom,” claims St. Cyril, “of those well-versed in navigation to call the thicker cables ‘camels.’”[i] Okay, sure.

In modern times, it’s not uncommon to hear the claim that the “eye of the needle” was the name of a narrow gate into Jerusalem.

So, we’ve got some claiming that “camels” are thick cables and not animals and others claiming that the “eye of the needle” is a narrow gate and not the tiny hole on one end of a pin. It is difficult – but not impossible – to get a thick cable through the eye of a needle. And it is difficult – but not impossible – to get a camel through a narrow doorway. If we decide to agree with both of them, then getting the rich into heaven is no more difficult than passing a cable through a doorway! That’s downright easy!

Everybody’s trying to soften Jesus’ imagery here. Maybe we need not part with our riches after all – is the subtext.

from phatcatholic

But then there is, for example, St. John of Damascus, who writes,

“‘How hard it is for those who have riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God!’ When all the saints heard this command, they thought they should withdraw from this hardness of riches. They parted with all their goods. By this distribution of their riches to the poor, they laid up for themselves eternal riches. They took up the cross and followed Christ. Some followed [and were] made perfect by martyrdom…, while others by the practice of self-denial did not fall short of them…. Know that this is a command of Christ our King and God that leads us from corruptible things and makes us partakers of everlasting things.”[ii]

I think St. John of Damascus is closer to the mark on this one. While it is true that at times Jesus was given to the use of hyperbole – extreme exaggeration – to make his point. For example, elsewhere he says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Now, we know that Jesus teaches us to love one another, even as he has loved us (John 13:34), and he’s not contradicting that here. He’s using hyperbole to demonstrate how great must be the devotion we have to him as compared what we have to others. But, I don't think that's what's going on with the camel and the eye of the needle. I believe that what Jesus is saying here is literally true even if poetically expressed. Which is to say, the salvation of the rich is literally impossible for them. Harsh words. Bear with me.

These sorts of warnings against wealth were nothing new, by the way, biblically speaking. There is the proverb, “He who trusts in his riches will wither, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf” (11:28). And our holy mother, Mary, the Theotokos, proclaims while pregnant with God, that the Lord “has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away” (Luke 1:53).

It’s not that wealth is not a gift from the Lord. It is. But it is given to be used for his purposes. We like to pretend that our possessions are all our own accomplishment - as if we didn’t get every strength, talent, and opportunity we have from the Lord. We must learn gratitude and learn to recognize that every dollar we have is really the Lord’s. We are the stewards only and not the owners of our wealth. It is God’s wealth and meant to be used for his purposes, especially in this season of almsgiving. Let those who have give to those who have not. “The rich exist for the sake of the poor. The poor exist for the salvation of the rich,” says St. John Chrysostom. That is, the rich will be saved if they give to the poor. That is what their wealth is for.

Let’s not try to explain away Jesus’ admonition, but let’s take it to heart. When Jesus’ disciples hear what he has to say about the camel and the eye of a needle, they have the right instincts, which is not to question whether the Lord really means what he's saying but rather to see the full of implication and ask, “Who then can be saved?” When we hear Jesus say this hard word, we always want to say, “Oh sure the rich can to enter the Kingdom. You don’t really mean that, Jesus.” But his disciples at the time, rightly, took it the other way – “Then no one can be saved. What you’re saying, Jesus, is that this is impossible.” Yes, that’s right.

Notice that Jesus does not answer by saying, the poor only can be saved. Rather, he extends the dread impossibility of our salvation over all humanity saying, “For men it is impossible.” Not only for the rich is it impossible, but for all men and women it is impossible. See how he plainly says this now. A camel going through the eye of a sewing needle is impossible – not just difficult, but impossible – absurdly impossible. Period. And “impossible” is Jesus' own word to describe the situation. He means it. It is impossible. We cannot save ourselves. It’s as simple as that. It’s every bit as difficult as living forever.

“But for God all things are possible.” God alone could pass a camel through the eye of a needle. God alone can raise the dead. He can and he will. Because he loves us. Jesus, and not ourselves, is our savior. The archangel Gabriel says to Mary, “you shall call his name Jesus [which means ‘savior’], for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt 1:21).

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[i] Commentary on Luke, homily 123

[ii] Barlaam and Joseph 15.128-29