Sermon Transcript: December 1, 2024
Today, we begin a new series for Advent entitled Hidden Hope: The Women Who Paved the Way. And it is based on the four—there are four women, other than Mary, who are mentioned in Matthew’s version of Jesus’ genealogy in the Gospel according to Matthew.
Each has their own story in scripture, and we will be visiting them and getting to know them a little bit. Some of them, I suspect, we know or have heard of, and others may be completely new to us. We will get to know them through their stories throughout Advent. Today, we start with Tamar.
Each Sunday, I will have a picture of the individual, and it will go on this Advent display that we have here, thanks to Rob Hirschfeld, who made this for us, along with our Advent candle. Later on in today’s service, when you come forward for communion, if you wish to take a candle and light it off of our Advent candle and put it in the bowl as you think of someone in your own life or in our world who paved the way for you or others, you are welcome to do that. On subsequent Sundays, if you wish to bring a picture of someone who may represent that person, you’re welcome to add to our display as well.
As we observe and honor these women throughout Advent, our display will grow as the light grows with it as well.
Today we hear the story of Tamar from Genesis 38. Her story is part of the story of her father-in-law Judah, whose account runs parallel to Joseph’s narrative in Genesis. I’m going to kind of cut to verse 12. And what we need to know is that Judah has married. They’ve had three sons. Tamar marries the eldest son, and then he dies.
Through a practice known as levirate marriage, Tamar then is, on the death of her first husband, given to the next son, who also dies. And then there is a third son, but he is very young at the time. So Judah says to Tamar to go back to her father’s house until the youngest son is old enough to marry. But he has something else in mind, as we will see.
Genesis 38: 12-26 (CEB)
After a long time, Judah’s wife the daughter of Shua died. Then, after a period of mourning, he and his neighbor, Hirah the Adullamite, went up to Timnah to those who were shearing his sheep. Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is now on his way up to Timnah to shear his sheep.” So Tamar took off the clothing she wore as a widow, covered herself with a veil, put on makeup, and sat down at the entrance to Enaim on the road to Timnah, since she realized that, although Shelah had already grown up, she hadn’t been given to him as a wife.
Judah saw her and thought she was a prostitute because she had covered her face. He turned to her beside the road and said, “Let me sleep with you,” because he didn’t know she was his daughter-in-law. She said, “What will you give me for sleeping with you?” And he said, “I will give you a kid goat from my flock.”
And she said, “Only if you give me some deposit, security, to guarantee that you will send it.” He said, “What kind of deposit should I give you?” And she said, “Your seal, its cord, and the staff in your hand.” He gave these to her, slept with her, and she became pregnant by him.
Then she got up, left, and took off her veil, dressing once again in the clothing she wore as a widow. Judah sent the kid goat with his neighbor Hirah the Adullamite so he could take back the deposits from the woman, but he couldn’t find her. He asked the locals of that place, “Where’s the consecrated worker who was at Enaim on the road?” But they said, “There’s no consecrated worker here.”
So he went back to Judah and said, “I couldn’t find her. The locals even said, ‘There’s no holy woman here.'” Judah said, “Let her keep everything so we aren’t laughed at. I did send this kid; you couldn’t find her.”
About three months later, Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has become a prostitute and is now pregnant because of it.” And Judah said, “Bring her out so that she may be burned.”
When she was brought out, she sent this message to her father-in-law: “I’m pregnant by the man who owns these things. See if you recognize whose seal, cord, and staff these are.” And Judah recognized them and said, “She’s more righteous than I am, because I didn’t allow her to marry my son Shelah.”
For the Word of God in scripture, for the Word of God among us, for the Word of God within us, thanks be to God.
So how many of you have heard of Tamar? Hands? You’ve heard the name? Okay. Did you know her story a little bit, somewhat? Okay, some, a few. Her story is often overlooked, so don’t worry if you haven’t heard of it.
There’s really not much here to celebrate. It’s a difficult story. I actually had to choose another translation because of some of the wording in the translation we normally use. But hers really is the story of too many young women pushed aside, used, abused, living at the whim of men who treat her like property and forced to do whatever it takes to survive.
And yet, she doesn’t give up or give in. She presses on, and she makes the best of it that she can. She comes up with a plan. She risks everything to get the recognition and standing she needs and deserves. And finally, at the end of the story, her courage and her cunning are recognized, and her father-in-law declares, “She’s more righteous than I am.” You darn right she is.
But even then, her story would likely have fallen further down the line than it already has were it not for Matthew, the gospel writer.
In the ancient world, the genealogy only catalogs men. So-and-so, the father of so-and-so, this guy, the son of that guy, on and on. But Matthew does something unexpected. He does something, well, frankly, unheard of in reporting on Jesus’ genealogy. He includes four women, not including Jesus’ mother, Mary—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.
And there’s something else all four have in common besides being women: they’re all foreigners. They’re non-Israelites. Just to put an even finer point on this, typically in reporting on a genealogy, not only would these women’s names not be mentioned, they would go to great lengths to hide them. But not so with these four.
Each has her story—well, part of her story anyway—told in the Hebrew scriptures. But why does Matthew include them? What is he trying to tell us? Honestly, we may never really know Matthew’s full motivation, but the very fact that they are there and included tells us enough, doesn’t it?
How many of you have heard of Tony Campolo? Maybe a few of you? I never know outside of pastor circles how well-known someone like Tony Campolo is—he’s a famous person in pastor circles, but otherwise, maybe not so much. He was a well-known evangelical preacher, but he was the kind of evangelical who was socially progressive. He was a phenomenal speaker and storyteller. He was a sociologist by training, and just a little over a week ago, he died.
He tells the story of one time when he was invited to go speak in Honolulu. Not a bad gig, if you can get it. But because he lived on the East Coast—he was a Philly guy—when he got to Honolulu, his internal clock was all thrown off. He found himself awake at 2 o’clock in the morning, hungry for breakfast.
He went out to look for a place to eat. And you know the kind of places that are open at 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. He found a greasy spoon, and he went in and ordered coffee and a donut. He was not impressed by the cleanliness of the place, but nonetheless, it was the only place he could find.
As he sat there sipping his coffee and eating his donut, a group of women came in. It was a very small place—the kind that only has seats at the counter. He was sitting in the middle, and they ended up sitting all around him.
It turned out these women were prostitutes, and they had just finished their work evening. This was something they did on the regular—they would meet and go to this greasy spoon and talk. Their talk was loud and crude, and Campolo says it was difficult to avoid listening.
At one point, he overheard one of the women tell the others that tomorrow was her birthday. To this, one of the other women replied, “What do you want from me? A birthday cake?” The first woman said, “Why be so mean? I was just telling you. I didn’t expect anything. I’ve never had a birthday party, and I’m not expecting one now.”
When Campolo heard this, he made a decision. After the women left, he went over to the café owner—a guy named Harry, as he had overheard—and said, “Do they always come in here?”
“Yeah,” Harry said.
“Does that include the one who was sitting next to me, talking about her birthday?”
“Yes, that’s Agnes,” Harry replied.
Campolo said, “I have a crazy idea. How about we throw her a birthday party tomorrow?”
After a pause, a smile grew on Harry’s lips, and he said, “Oh, man, that’s a great idea! Agnes is one of the good ones. She’s had a really rough life.”
Harry called out to his wife, who was the cook in the back, and said, “This guy wants to throw a birthday party for Agnes.” She came out and said, “Oh, that’s a great idea!”
Campolo said, “Would it be okay if I went and got decorations? Tomorrow night, before everyone gets here, I’ll decorate the place. And maybe I can get a cake, too.”
But Harry said, “Oh no, no, no. The cake is mine.”
So, at 2:30 the next morning, Campolo brought decorations, and Harry had made the cake. Word had gotten out, and it seemed as if every prostitute in Honolulu was in the café with Harry, his wife, and Tony Campolo.
When Agnes walked in and saw everything, her mouth fell open, her knees wobbled, and she had to sit down. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to her. As they finished, they shouted, “Blow out the candles, Agnes! Blow out the candles!”
But she couldn’t do it. She just sat there staring at the cake, so Harry blew out the candles for her. He handed her a knife and said, “Cut the cake, Agnes, so we can all have some.”
Agnes looked at the cake and then slowly said, “Is it all right if we don’t eat it right away? Could I take it home and show my mother? She lives just around the corner. I’ll bring it back, I promise.”
She picked up the cake and left the café, leaving everyone sitting there in stunned silence.
Campolo finally broke the silence and said, “It seems strange now, looking back on it, but in the moment, it just felt right. I asked, ‘Can we pray?’”
Everyone there looked at him kind of funny, but they agreed. And so, he prayed for Agnes, for her health, and for all the women there.
When he finished, Harry said, “Hey, you never told me you were some kind of preacher. What kind of church do you belong to, anyway?”
And Campolo answered in what he later called one of those divine moments. Without missing a beat, he said, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.”
Harry looked at him and said, “No, you don’t. There’s no church like that. If there was, I’d join.”
Wouldn’t we all?
In his book, The Kingdom of God is a Party, Campolo writes, “Jesus came to create a people who would bring parties to those who have no parties and celebration to the lives of those with nothing to celebrate.”
Friends, that’s what we do at this table. We celebrate. We celebrate each and every one of us. No insiders. No outsiders. No worthy. No unworthy. Just us—all of us. Each of us. Beloved. Beautiful.
Because, you see, we’re all Jesus’ kin.
In recent years, this idea of kinship rather than kingship has caught on, emphasizing that we belong to each other rather than to a hierarchy.
And if I had to pinpoint it, I think that’s what Matthew is getting at with his genealogy: kinship, not kingship.
Father Greg Boyle writes, “No daylight separates us—only kinship, inching ourselves closer to creating the community of kinship such that God might recognize it. Soon, we imagine with this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased.
“We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied, and we locate ourselves—the poor, the powerless, and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised, the readily left out. We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop, and we situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that one day, it will come to pass that we stop throwing people away.”
So, friends, let us come to the table of grace. This is God’s table. It’s not yours. It’s not mine. We are all guests here.
We are all kin. Thanks be to God. Amen.
