The gospel for today is St. Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. It is Matthew’s way of showing how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament storyline and takes up the first 17 verses of the gospel – and since Matthew’s gospel is almost always the first book of the New Testament, one could say it is the first 17 verses of the entire New Testament! … and I am sure most people skip it and move on to the Nativity and Infancy narratives.

Genealogies in the Old Testament are always working to communicate multiple layers of information to readers. Genealogies obviously trace family trees, but they also help us follow priestly and royal lines through Israel’s story. You can see each of these types of genealogies in the first nine chapters of Chronicles. In fact, there’s little doubt that the author of Matthew had the book of Chronicles and its genealogies in mind when he wrote his own Gospel account and began it with a genealogy.

Okay… But why does this genealogy matter?