Month: December 2023

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Bathsheba’s Story — Love of Advent

Scripture Focus: Matthew 1.1, 6
1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

6 and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife…

Psalm 51.1
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
    blot out my transgressions.

Reflection: Bathsheba’s Story — Love of Advent
By Erin Newton

These are the matriarchs of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. This is Bathsheba’s story.

Every year on social media, a new debate arises surrounding the culpability of Bathsheba. Some wish to see her as a willing participant in adultery but Matthew’s gospel refers to Bathsheba as Uriah’s wife highlighting the tragedy of what happened to her. When Nathan confronts David about his sin, he compares Bathsheba to an innocent lamb stolen from another man’s flock.

Eyes gazed upon Bathsheba as eyes had fallen upon Tamar and Rahab. She was taken, forcibly widowed, and consecutively mourned the death of her child. Bathsheba’s story begins with sorrow.

Sorrow is a common thread among the stories of these women. For a group of matriarchs of the long-awaited Messiah, you’d expect stories filled with joy and praise. But for many of these women, the stories are full of hardship, grief, and pain. Bathsheba lived with the grief of Uriah’s death. She also mourned the death of her baby.

Bathsheba is not alone in her sorrow. When David recognizes his guilt, he calls upon the love of God for forgiveness. Only divine compassion could heal a heart that took a woman and arranged for her husband’s death.

It has been over three thousand years since Bathsheba lived and her story continues to create havoc and debate. She becomes the scapegoat for anyone looking to blame a victim for her own abuse. She is labeled as a co-conspirator or a seductress—as if readers forget that she was the little ewe lamb of Nathan’s story.

Whether one sees her as a manipulative adulterer or an innocent sexual abuse victim, Bathsheba’s place as an ancestor of Jesus is often diminished or ignored. However, her placement in the genealogy is a coincidence.

God does not sit by aloof to the events of our lives. God redeems our pain.

Bathsheba was a woman of sorrow and of pain. She endured the abuse of power and buried her husband and child. She is misunderstood and misrepresented. But she is a matriarch of Jesus. 

Bathsheba is chosen and honored as one of five women named in Jesus’s family. She is not defined by her sorrow or her once naked body. She does not have to be defined by misrepresentations or skeptical debates.

In the love of Jesus belong the slandered, the misunderstood, and the innocent.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, for my hope has been in you. — Psalm 25.20

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 16  (Listen 2:51)
Psalms 119.97-120 (Listen 15:14)

Read more about Ancient #MeToo Story
The bold voice of Nathan was needed to bring the king to a place of repentance. Bathsheba deserved an advocate.

Ancient #MeToo Story

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Ruth’s Story — Love of Advent

Scripture Focus: Matthew 1.1, 5b
1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

5 …Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth

Ruth 4.15
15 He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”

Reflection: Ruth’s Story — Love of Advent
By Erin Newton

These are the matriarchs of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. This is Ruth’s story.

Ruth rarely needs an introduction. Her story is told in nearly every women’s bible study.

She was not part of a scandalous story like Tamar or Rahab. But like Tamar and Rahab, she was also not part of Abraham’s family. She was not an Israelite but a Moabite. And her story opens with sorrow.

Three deaths cover the first five verses of the book. The book begins with emptiness. Famine and empty bellies. Death and empty households. Immigration and the parting of sisters.

Without a husband or heirs, Ruth joined her mother-in-law to return to Israel and said goodbye to her Moabite sister-in-law. The rumor was that God had been gracious to Israel. The barren land was filling with food.

Despite being a foreigner and a woman—a double disadvantage—she worked to provide for herself and Naomi. You get the sense that Ruth was humble yet intelligent. She understood her place in the Israelite culture but also how to make the most of each situation.

Israelite stories of marriage follow a pattern. Robert Alter points out the typical nature of such scenes: a man journeys from a foreign land, comes upon a well, meets a woman, she draws water for him, a marriage proposal occurs, and she rushes home to tell her family. We see this scene in stories about Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and Moses and Zipporah.

The expected story of betrothal is met with unexpected turns. It is Ruth who stands in the spotlight of the story. In this story it is the woman who travels to a distant land. It is Boaz who ensures Ruth has something to drink. In a story that ought to focus on the patriarch, it is Ruth who exemplifies such qualities.

Boaz redeemed her, but Ruth’s character is the focus of the story. She, like Rahab, heard the stories of God in her foreign land. Like Rahab, she decided by faith for “your God” to become “my God.”

Ruth has both the disadvantage of too much estrogen and a foreign ethnicity, but she is a matriarch of Jesus. Her story reveals how God works in unexpected ways.

Ruth, someone from the outside, is chosen and honored as one of five women named in Jesus’s family.

In the love of Jesus belong the outsiders and the disadvantaged.


Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. — Matthew 5.6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.


Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 14-15  (Listen 5:49)
Psalms 119-73-96 (Listen 15:14)

Read more about Ruth, the Immigrant
Ruth shows us how God’s grace helps us immigrate from our own selfish kingdoms to the kingdom of God.

Ruth, the Immigrant

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Rahab’s Story — Love of Advent

Scripture Focus: Matthew 1.1, 5a
1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

5 Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab…

Joshua 6.25
25 But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day.

Reflection: Rahab’s Story — Love of Advent
By Erin Newton

These are the matriarchs of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. This is Rahab’s story.

Who was this Rahab, the great-great-great-(and so on) grandmother of Jesus? Her identity is somewhat muddled. (Have no fear, she is not the mythic dragon from Job, Psalms, or Isaiah.)

She is likely the woman you remember from Joshua, whose name is rarely said without her epithet, “the prostitute.” How shameful that we demote her to one identity, because she is, in fact, a matriarch of Jesus.

Rahab the prostitute matriarch, like Tamar, was not a member of the Abrahamic family. She did not escape slavery from Egypt nor cross the Red Sea with the multitudes. She was a Canaanite.

Her business was one of pleasure, not love as we dream of it. She used her body in a culture that was more than willing to pay for it. Her job was scandalous and disgraceful to the covenant people encroaching on the borders of Canaan. She is an unlikely character in God’s story of redemption.

The stories of God saving his people reached her ears in Jericho. Stories of wonder and power, stories that herald the supremacy of God. I imagine how she compared the stories to the pathetic notion of her Ba’al killed and trapped by the god of death. Rahab heard and believed in this true God.

By faith, she hid the spies who swore an oath to spare her family. She risked her life to save people who would condemn her land, her friends, her culture, and her job. All because she knew God was coming to her.

The sign of mercy would be the scarlet cord draped from her window. The grandchildren of the people who spread the lamb’s blood across their doorposts would recognize this same sign of faith letting judgment pass safely over her house.

And so she lived among the Israelites. Her old ways would be reformed. Her past would become a testimony. Her future would bear the One whose blood would wash away all sin.

Yes, she was a prostitute.

But she is a matriarch of Jesus. Rahab, the disgraceful member of the enemy nation, is chosen and honored as one of five women named in Jesus’s family. She is not defined by her occupation or nationality.

In the love of Jesus belong the foreigners and the shamed. In the love of Jesus, we are renamed. 

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
Keep me, Lord, as the apple of your eye and carry me under the shadow of your wings. 

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.


Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 13  (Listen 3:56)
Psalms 119-49-72 (Listen 15:14)

Read more about Becoming Part of the Promise
Rahab asks to be accepted by this powerful God who is not only in the heavens but active upon the Earth.

Becoming Part of the Promise

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Tamar’s Story — Love of Advent

Scripture Focus: Matthew 1.1, 3
1 This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham:

3 Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar…

Genesis 38.26
26 Judah recognized them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not sleep with her again.

Reflection: Tamar’s Story — Love of Advent
By Erin Newton

These are the matriarchs of Jesus: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary. This is Tamar’s story.

Born among the Canaanites, Tamar was not one of Abraham’s kin. She married Er, the son of Judah and Shua, his Canaanite wife, and so became (for a short time) part of Abraham’s lineage.

Marital bliss was not to be found, for Er was evil. I imagine a loveless marriage filled with emotional or physical abuse. Perhaps a husband prone to angry outbursts and critical remarks. Perhaps a husband who sought other women or beat his workers. We are left only to wonder. The wickedness of Er, however, exceeded the tolerance of even God, and God ended his days.

Marital bliss certainly vanished. Tamar was a young widow. Among a people heralded for their covenantal righteousness—bound to be blessings among the nations—Tamar would find another form of abuse.

Judah’s second son, Onan, purposely thwarted his cultural duty to provide an heir for Tamar, though not hesitating to take pleasure in sleeping with her. She is used for her body but denied a child. Such selfishness of Onan exceeded the patience of God, and so God ended his days as well.

The final son, Shelah, is given to Tamar as a vague promise. A long time passes. I imagine Tamar living in her father’s house without a husband or child. Two men had abused her and now she must wait for the third. I imagine she worried he would be as terrible as his brothers.

Judah—a man of the covenant of Abraham, the namesake for the nation of God’s people, the patriarch in charge of Tamar’s honor—seeks out a shrine prostitute without hesitation just as the promises to Tamar have been delayed without hesitation. She takes matters into her own hands, maneuvering the situation so that Judah confuses her with a prostitute. She bears twin boys by Judah and reveals his failure of duty.  

The men tasked to care for Tamar placed their pleasures and priorities over her dignity and honor.

This was no story of godly love. 

But she is not defined by the abuse she suffered at the hands of men or by her assertive (and albeit, morally questionable) actions. Once abused and neglected, Tamar is chosen and honored as one of five women named in Jesus’s family. She is a matriarch of Jesus.

In the love of Jesus belong the abused. 


Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
I will thank you, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and glorify your Name forevermore. — Psalm 86.12

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.


Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 11-12  (Listen 6:00)
Psalms 119-25-48 (Listen 15:14)

Read more about The Wrong People
Many of us have felt like we’re the wrong people to build up God’s kingdom…God uses the Tamars…Rahabs…And the Pauls. 

The Wrong People

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Hymn of Hope — Hope of Advent

Scripture Focus: Psalm 116.1-2
1 I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;
he heard my cry for mercy.
2 Because he turned his ear to me,
I will call on him as long as I live.

Reflection: Hymn of Hope — Hope of Advent
By John Tillman

Advent isn’t shy about acknowledging pain and darkness. Advent happens as the world gets darker specifically to remind us that it is into the darkest dark that Jesus came and from the darkest dark that Jesus ignites the light of salvation. Psalm 116 is a lament that never loses sight of salvation’s light and cycles continually back to thankfulness and praise.

Hymn writer Isaac Watts wrote a hymn based on Psalm 116 in 1719. The hymn was later adopted and adapted by African-American churches and the gospel tradition. In 1990, gospel music artist Richard Smallwood wrote new music to the adapted text based on versions he experienced. The work was featured on the soundtrack of the Whitney Houston Christmas film The Preacher’s Wife. The opening phrase closely follows the psalm and Watts’s interpretation.

“I love the the Lord
He heard my cry
And pitied every groan
Long as I live
And troubles rise
I hasten to his throne”
 — I Love the Lord, sung by Whitney Houston on The Preacher’s Wife soundtrack

The psalmist agrees with Watts that troubles rise. The psalmist was “greatly afflicted” and alarmed, saying, “Everyone is a liar,” still, they trusted in the Lord. (Psalm 116.10-11). Death features repeatedly in Psalm 116. The psalmist has been delivered from death to the land of the living. In the end, despite darkness and trouble, the psalmist hastened to the temple courts to give an offering of thanks, praise, and obedience.

Thanksgiving and love are connected to lament. One often leads to another. When we love the Lord, rising troubles lead us to raise laments to God. When we lament, we reflect not only on the suffering of the moment but the salvation of the past. When we remember how good God has been to us and his promises for the future, we respond in hope with thanksgiving.

In this season and every season, no matter what your troubles are, the Lord pities every groan. His Holy Spirit groans with ours when we have no words. (Romans 8.26) Our hope is not only that we can hasten to his temple and throne of mercy but that Jesus hastens to us in response. His Advent brings his presence, compassion, and care.

Reminding ourselves of what Jesus has done and that he hastens to us, we can say, as the psalmist does, “Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” (Psalm 116.7)

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
For god, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. — 2 Corinthians 4.6

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 8 (Listen 3:02)
Psalms 116 (Listen 1:34)

Today’s Readings
2 Chronicles 9 (Listen 5:07) Psalms 117-118 (Listen 2:52)
2 Chronicles 10 (Listen 3:01) Psalms 119.1-24 (Listen 1:34)

Read more about What to Expect when Suffering
Don’t be surprised or ashamed of the emotions that come in times of struggle and pain.

What to Expect when Suffering :: A Guided Prayer

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