Sermon: "Adam's Family," First Sunday in Advent December 1, 2024

The Second Adam, Bruce Herman (2007)

Scripture: Luke 3:23-38
Preacher: The Rev. Ryan Slifka

O God, beginning and end, by whose command time runs its course:
bless our impatience, perfect our faith, and, while we await the fulfillment of your promises,
grant us hope in your Word.  Amen.

One of my favourite preachers, the late Fred Craddock, tells this story about one of the first preaching classes he ever took. The professor, an experienced southern preacher gave him this advice. “Whatever you do,” he said, “unless you want to lose your congregation, what ever you do, don’t preach on the lists!” The lists being the genealogies, the long, repetitious family trees found in the Old and New Testaments. “What ever you do, don’t preach on the lists.”

Here we are starting a whole new sermon series on Luke’s gospel, one that will carry us through the New Year and past Easter. And here I am starting this series with a list.

Unlike the Old Testament, the New Testament only includes two lists, two long genealogies. And they’re both about Jesus. And if you them up side-by-side you’ll notice some pretty significant differences.

The first difference is maybe a bit more challenging. They don’t quite match up. Especially between Abraham and king David. Some different names, different order.

Some might see this as a blow against the reliability of the scriptures. However, it does suggest that perhaps that providing a perfectly accurate historical record is not the primary purpose of these lists. The main purpose of these genealogies is to say something theological. Something about Jesus. Who he is.

Now, to that end, it’s the third difference where the purpose of these genealogies is found. And it’s found in the order. Where each begin. And where each ends.

Matthew’s gospel, Matthew’s story of Jesus, begins with Abraham, the father of the faith, then through David, and finally to Jesus to Jesus. Matthew is, himself, Jewish, and is writing to convince his fellow Jews that Jesus is the long-waited Messiah. The statement Matthew’s genealogy makes is this:  Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Jesus fulfills the story of Israel.

Look at Luke, though. Luke begins with Jesus, rather than Abraham. Starts with Jesus moves down to David, then through. But unlike Matthew, he doesn’t stop with Abraham. Instead, he goes all the way back to the very root of the tree. He ends with “Adam, the Son of God.” Adam, who, according to the book of Genesis, is the first person.

So what’s the deal? Why the difference?

Remember how Matthew’s written by a member of the Jewish community, for the Jewish community. Luke writes his as a gentile. A non-Jew. Somebody who comes into the story of Israel from the outside. A Greek physician, who has become a follower of Jesus. And he writes his gospel for fellow gentiles, to communicate the importance, the identity of Jesus to non-Jews like him. So he begins with Adam, the very human race itself.

Meaning that the purpose of Luke’s genealogy is to communicate who Jesus is, and what he’s up to has significance for everybody. Jews first, yes, but also Greeks. Persians, Egyptians and Romans. Even twenty-first century Canadians. For everyone who has ever been, everyone who is, everyone who will ever be. Everybody. From Adam on.

And the thing is, that to be a child of Adam doesn’t just represent a genetic link. There’s a moral, a spiritual link there, too.

The Apostle Paul puts it like this in his letter to the church in Rome: “Sin came into the world,” he says. “Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin. And so death spread to all because all have sinned.” In the Biblical story, Adam and Eve were where everything went wrong. They disobeyed God, and were dispelled from the Garden of Eden. This is what Christians often call the doctrine of Original Sin. That every human life that has followed has been tainted by this act.

In the Biblical story Adam is not only a character—a person—he’s also a symbol. A symbol of our human condition. That somewhere in our primordial history, human life went wrong. Took a turn, from life as God intended it to be towards where it is.

Now, we tend to think of the fall or original sin, as a time in the past where everything went wrong. When we moved from hunter-gathering to agriculture. When Europeans landed on North American shores. When we started burning fossil fuels. When the internet came along. Or when woke arrived. That’s when everything went sideways. But the Christian idea is that it’s even further back. Even further down. Universal.

William Barclay, an English Minister and popularizer of the Bible from the mid-twentieth century puts it like this: “Through man’s disobedience the process of the evolution of the human race went wrong, and the course of its wrongness could neither be halted nor reverse by any human means.”[i]

Fred Craddock’s professor said not to preach on the lists, but the problem is that if we look close enough our names are in this one. If you’ve ever read C.S. Lewis’ Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe you’ll remember that in Narnia all the children are referred to as sons of Adam, and daughters of Eve. That’s us. A preacher once said that when ever children used to misbehave her grandmother would say they had a “little of the Old Adam” in them. Adam is our fallen humanity. We have the Old Adam in us. Adam is us. Not as we should be. But as we are.

·       Greed--our insatiable appetite for more, more, more, even while our fellow human beings starve off nothing. That’s the Old Adam in us.

·       Racism, sexism, homophobia—our inability to recognize the image of God in our fellow human beings. That’s the Old Adam in us.

·       Ecological destruction and strain. Domestic violence and child abuse, poverty and drug addiction. War and violence. Idolatry and adultery, disrespect for parents and elders, covetousness, theft and murder. Old Adam, Old Adam, Old Adam. Every sin you’ve ever committed, every failed attempt to get your life together. Every commandment you’ve every broken. That’s the Old Adam in us. In me. In you.

The family tree Jesus enters is not only the human family tree as a whole, but Adam’s family. Fallen, broken humanity. Not humanity as it was created to be, a family tree struck with a moral and spiritual blight. One that can’t cure itself, but seems forever consigned to catastrophe. Ever destined to death.

Adam is us. We’re on his list.

I gotta say, this isn’t the kind of song you’re gonna hear walking up and down the aisle at Thrifty’s come Christmas time. Skip to the baby Jesus, please. Or send me Santa in his stead.

Now, I would agree with this sentiment. Wholeheartedly, even. The Biblical diagnosis of the human being is terminal, for sure.

But this is what makes the gospel, gospel meaning “Good News” so good. The scriptures are honest about the worst of life. How truly self-centred and self-interested we can be. Just how deep the hole is, yes. One we can’t claw our way out of. But the good news is that into the pit has been thrown a lifeline.

Back to Paul. Romans 5:18: “Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” Or his first letter to the Corinthians: “For as by one man,” he says. “For as by one man came death, in one man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”

In the face of our broken, fallen condition, though Paul proclaims to us a New Adam, a Second Adam. One sent to us from the outside.

Like a restart of humanity. Like version 2.0 without all the bugs. Whereas the Old Adam trapped humanity in the bonds of sin and death, Jesus the New Adam has come to reverse the fall. In his incarnation, in his life, death and resurrection, Jesus, the New Adam has come to save us.  He’s come to free us from sin and death, and to restore us sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, reborn by water and the Spirit to our true purpose as children of the living God. To deliver us from the mess we’re in. He has come to break the chains of our troubled human genealogy forever. On account of Jesus we’re off Old Adam’s list. And on the New Adam’s instead.

We’re going to sing a song at the end of the service “These are the Days of Elijah,” by the Irish songwriter Robin Mark.

He says he got the inspiration one night sitting on his couch with a bowl of potato chips in his hand, and—most likely—a beer in the other. It was 1994, and he was watching one of those “year in review” segments on the news.[ii] There was stuff like the world’s largest pizza, and the most cats rescued in Toronto ever. But then, after all that something deeply serious: the Rwandan genocide. Where it’s believed that more than a million Rwandans had been killed in 100 days by their own neighbours, ordinary people like you and me. One of the fastest, most brutal murder campaigns in human history. You want proof of original sin? This is humanity at its worst, the Old Adam completely unleashed on a whole population.

When he saw this, Mark cried out to God: with things like this happening, “how can you say that you’re in control? What kind of days are we living in?” And that’s when he got the answer: these are the Days of Elijah. A lot of the song is from the Old Testament—Moses, Elijah, David, Ezekiel, but the chorus is anchored in Jesus. In the Second Coming of Christ:

“Behold he comes, shining like the sun, at the trumpet call, lift your voice, it’s the year of jubilee, out of Zion’s hill, salvation comes.” 

Even in the face of humanity’s worst, our worst, Robin Mark was able to put together this song because he knew Jesus is God’s promise that the Old Adam in us, has had his day. That on account of Jesus, our human condition may be broken, flawed, and fallen, but it’s not fatal. That we are not prisoners of our genealogy, but on account of Jesus—the New Adam—God himself has become part of our family tree. God has become one of us, one with us, in order to set the world right and to set us free. God has joined our lamentable list! And that one day the God who came to us at Christmas will finally return in glory to finish his work.

Which means that you and I, flawed people that we are, we are not prisoners of circumstance, but we have a whole life and a world of freedom ahead of us. No matter what you’ve done, no matter what you’ve had done to you. No matter how dysfunctional your family of origin. No matter how much the Old Adam in you has pushed and shoved his way through your life, and no matter how powerlessly you’ve stood aside and let him do it. No matter how bleak our world may be… a New Adam has touched down. And though sin abounds, his grace abounds all the more so.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

[i] William Barclay, Crucified and Crowned (London: SCM, 1961), 100.

[ii] Introduction to “Days of Elijah,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shcgmT62r70. A longer explanation of the song can be found here: Robin Mark, “The Story of Days of Elijah,” https://robinmark.com/the-story-behind-days-of-elijah/