Editor’s Note: The team at Good Faith Media will be celebrating Christmas with our loved ones today and tomorrow. Today, we are sharing a poem, which falls outside the scope of our typical news and opinion piece. On Thursday and Friday, look for Christmas reflections from Tori Hastings and Justin Bronson Barringer. We hope the time you spend this Christmas with your friends and families, suspicious and otherwise, brings you closer to the hope, peace, joy and love found in God-made flesh.


The genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of Bathsheba, the son of Sarah (?)

Sarah was the mother-in-law of Rebekah
Who was the aunt and the mother-in-law of Leah
The mother of Dinah and her brother Judah
The father-in-law of Tamar
Who pretended to be a sex worker and so finally became a mother
Thereby solving a problem she didn’t create
And that Judah had made worse

Sometime after her came Rahab, the Canaanite ex-prostitute
And accomplice of spies (that part’s fine, they were the ‘good guys’)
Who was the mother of Boaz, which might explain
Why he was still single even though he was rich
And when Naomi the mother-in-law of Ruth (the Moabitess)
Sent her to snuggle on a pile of barley by night
Why maybe he saw her as worth redeeming

Ruth was the great-grandmother-in-law of Bathsheba
After her second husband, the Israelite,
Had her first husband, the Hittite, murdered
After the king forced himself on her and couldn’t get away with it
Because the Hittite was more honorable than he was

All the mothers in between?
Nobody wrote them down, those unknown non-matriarchs

Until the Queen Mothers, the mothers of kings
Naamah (the Ammonite) birthed Rehoboam, and Maacah bore Abijah
Azubah bore Jehoshaphat, Athaliah ruled as queen after her son died
And after she put almost all her other relatives to death
(She missed one)
Her mother was Jezebel – explains a lot, I guess

Zibiah bore Joash (the one Athaliah missed), Johoaddan bore Amaziah
Jecoliah bore Uzziah, Jerushah bore Jotham,
Abijah bore Hezekiah, Hepzibah bore Manasseh
Meshullemeth bore Amon, Jedidiah bore Josiah (good job mom)
Hamutal bore Jehoahaz, Zebidah bore Jehoiakim
Nehusta bore Jehoiachin, and Hamital bore Zedekiah 

No names for the mothers of Jehoram or Ahaz, though
Maybe they didn’t want to claim them
No names at all until Mary,
Not a foreigner, but a Galilean
Nearly as bad – ask anybody
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Not married, but pregnant
“Favored one,” Gabriel, “Son of the Most High,”
“Throne of David,” “Holy Spirit,” “overshadow,” yada yada
Sure, Mary – sure
The shotgun not yet invented, Joseph married her anyway
He “had a dream”
What a sucker

And what a mess
Where’s the purity? Where are the Proverbs 31 women?
More like Genesis 3 women
Daughters of Eve all
Besides all the foreigners, not part of the chosen
Women of ill repute, real and pretended
Deceivers, manipulators, murderers
And mothers of the same
And if not perpetrators, then victims
Hey, look – I’m not blaming
But you can always find someone who will
Down with the patriarchy, yes
But Lord deliver us from the matriarchy
Lest we end up with biblical womanhood
Of the kind that’s actually in the Bible

I say again, a massive mess
And I find it all – 

Extremely comforting
I don’t know about your family tree
But there are some suspicious branches in mine
Mothers, sisters, aunts, daughters, etc
And the y chromosome crowd
Of which I am a part
Is no better
In fact, inarguably worse

And if God works through the Tamars
In spite of what they did and what was done to them
And through the Rahabs and Ruths
Through the Bathshebas and the Marys
And through all the other unnamed ones
Whose names, and fears, and hopes
And trials God knew and saw

If God works through them
To bring hope, peace, joy, and love to all men
On whom God’s favor rests
And on all the women, too
Maybe God can work through you and your family
And maybe even through me and mine
If it really is true that Mary bore Jesus the Christ
So God could tell us what we really need to know
In a Word
And pour out the Spirit on all flesh
And your sons and daughters prophesy