Why "The Four"?

This Sunday, January 14th, St. Olaf kicks off an Epiphany season sermon series called, “The Four.” It’s a nod to the first four women named in the genealogy of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew. Now, the genealogy of Jesus is the opening to Matthew’s Gospel; the first 17 verses are all dedicated to the ancestors of Jesus. We see some notable names, like Abraham, Isaac, and King David. You’ll also notice that all of the names are those of men, the paternal ancestors of Jesus…except for five. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and of course, Mary, the mother of Jesus.
 
I won’t make you count all of these names, but it breaks down to 42 generations between Abraham and Jesus. Out of 42 generations, the names of all but five women have been forgotten. Sure, we hear about Abraham’s wife Sarah, and Jacob’s wife Rebecca, but these names were left out of the written account of ancestors. The erasure of all but 5 of these women from Jesus’ ancestry is alarming, but unfortunately not uncommon in the Biblical narrative, or even from history today.
 
The stories of the four women we’ll study in our sermon series, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, have often been told as a half-truth. They’ve had their stories told for them in untrue or incomplete ways that benefit those who have taken advantage of them.
 
Tamar has often been painted as a trickster, using her feminine wiles to seduce her father-in-law. Rahab’s story tells her to be a sex worker-turned-spy, earning her living in traditionally ‘unsavory’ ways. Ruth was a foreigner who had to use a man’s wealth and power to get ahead. And Bathsheba, worst of all, has had her sexual assault by a king with too much power turned into a “she was asking for it” accusation.
 
The point of this series is to tell their stories with “people first” language. Instead of binding their stereotypes to them for all eternity, we look at who they were first and foremost: children of God, Grandmothers of Jesus, who God chose specifically to bring about the Messiah. What happened to them, how they chose to make a living, the grief that overshadows their lives lived…that doesn’t define them. It’s important to their stories, but it isn’t their whole story.
 
Through this series, Pastor Mark and I will tell those stories from the lens of what we know for certain: they are children of God. I hope you join us, too.

See you soon-

Pastor Madison

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If you’d like to read their stories before worship, click these links below:

Sunday, January 14: Tamar’s Story (Genesis 38)
Sunday, January 21: Rahab’s Story (Joshua 2 & 6:22-25)
Sunday, January 28: Ruth’s Story (the whole book of Ruth)
Sunday, February 4: Bathsheba’s Story (2 Samuel 11-12)