Theme: Redeemed into a new humanity
In 2014, PBS aired a show called "Finding Your Roots." It featured celebrities who traced their family trees as far back as possible. In one episode, Ben Affleck was the guest. The show traced his ancestry and discovered that one of his ancestors was a slave owner. In an email eventually leaked to the Boston Globe, Affleck strongly requested that the show's producer edit out this fact.
Once the email was published, Affleck apologized for having made the request and admitted that he was embarrassed by his slave-owning relative and wanted to distance himself from him.
In this week's message, Josh did a great job of presenting Jesus in His humanity as the second Adam. What if Jesus were on this PBS show, and they were to trace His roots? His pedigree would be perfect. Wrong!
Rahab was a prostitute.
David was an adulterer and murderer.
Truth be told, all of Jesus' ancestors were imperfect, sinful people because, as Josh pointed out, all human beings after Adam are sinful, imperfect souls.
Was Jesus thinking, "What if this news gets out?" and "I must distance myself from my ancestors?" or "This information could ruin my career as a preacher?" As a side thought, how often do we want those around us to see us as perfect, flawless people without a past that is like a flawed ancestor who we long to hide?
Jesus was not embarrassed by His pedigree. He did not want to distance Himself from it. He embraced it, acknowledging that His Father uses imperfect, improbable, and even undesirable people to accomplish His purpose. People like me. Thank God!
Jesus also embraced another pedigree: that of His Heavenly Father, who sent Him to redeem us from the first Adam’s fall, a perfect man with imperfect ancestry and a Holy, perfect Son of God capable of being the atoning sacrifice for an imperfect humanity. As Josh pointed out, one man’s execution and willing sacrifice at once changed our relationship with the divine and allowed us to be a new humanity.
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8 NIV)
Josh left us a challenge: to confess our flawed humanity and accept it as a reality of our ancestry. However, we are no longer enslaved to live in that reality, as Jesus is the new Adam. Through His obedience and sacrifice, we are now a new creation, a new humanity, and redeemed in our relationship to the divine. Jew and Gentile, Russian, North Korean, Kenyan, and American, all united as brothers and sisters by one man and one God. “Not by works, lest no man may boast.”
Scripture: Matthew 13:54-56 (NIV)
“Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they
were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?”
they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his
brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then
did this man get all these things?”
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, how do I wrap my mind around the reality of who you are, a man born of a woman like me, yet God, born not of man, and without sin nature passed down from Adam. Pure God, yet in the flesh, so as to experience all that we experience. Tempted but not sinful, hungry, cold, without yet not coveting. A man/God without blemish, yet willing to be humiliated, beaten and crucified for those who were your enemies, like me. How do I thank you? I will thank you only by giving you my life, all of my life, every breath and every step. Please take my life for your use and your purpose, whatever that entails. It is all that I have.
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