Tree Hugger (Luke 2:23-38)

This past Christmas, I was visiting my wife’s family in Phoenix. On Christmas Eve we went to her old church, Phoenix First. Instead of a regular baby-Jesus type service, Pastor Luke Barnett gave a very energetic run down of the genealogy of Jesus as written in the beginning of the Book of Matthew. After reading the list of 47 names many people in the seats were confused or had mentally wandered off, but Pastor Barnett reeled them back in by hitting the scandalous highlights of the list: Tamar who pretend to be a prostitute to be impregnated by her father-in-law, Rahab who actually was a prostitute, and a very-much-married Bathsheba being taken by King David who then killed her husband. The overlying message is that if you feel unworthy of Jesus’ grace you need look no further than His own family tree to see that past sins are insignificant when it comes to the saving power of Jesus.

In fact this grace is so powerful that it retroactively saved previous generations of God’s followers. This idea created an amazing mental image that I wasn’t able to shake. I had intentions of drawing out this family tree as described in Pastor Barnett's sermon with a common thread linking to Jesus, but I was instead pulled toward the Book of Luke’s interpretation of the genealogy. It didn’t include as much of the scandalous highlights, but it spanned further back to Adam and the original sin. I could see this picture of blood from Jesus pouring down over the names of all of his predecessors.

As I reached Adam at ground level I pondered the best way to visually represent how we were cut off from God because of the original sin and how we have been reconnected through the sacrifice of Jesus. It’s too supernatural to imagine and in many ways doesn’t seem possible, yet here we are. The experiences of Christians should speak for themselves on how closely we truly are connected to God.

If you try removing the roots from your trees: