It was a crisp and quiet December morning, just five months into a war that would eventually drag on for years. As political tensions mounted and soldiers grew weary, no one expected hope to rise from the trenches along the Western front during World War I, but that’s exactly what happened on Christmas Day in 1914. No one really knows how it started, but servicemen began singing Christmas carols loud enough to span the gap of rivalry. Hardened soldiers chose humility. Men laid down their weapons and pride, and some even sang carols in the native tongue of their enemy as a show of compassion. 

I can almost hear it now, their raspy voices raised in unison singing O Holy Night…

“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

As the Christmas Truce of 1914 unfolded, soldiers sang about thrilling hope. Their song, O Holy Night, was originally written in the 1800s when words held different meanings. The wordthrill meant “to puncture” or “to break through a hard surface suddenly.” How appropriate that those weary and warring men sang about a hope that punctures the world. It was exactly the kind of hope they needed.

It’s exactly the kind of hope we need, too.

The Start of a New Family

With a new decade on the horizon, mounting tensions in the Middle East, an impending U.S. election, and a growing suspicion of our neighbors, hope needs to be more than a party thrill; it needs to be a puncture thrill. We need a hope that will break through the weariness we find ourselves living in. The thing about hope is that its very presence is a signal that something is lacking. The Apostle Paul asks in Romans 8, “Who hopes for what he already has?” We hope because we do not have.

This is how the Jews must have felt just before Jesus arrived on the scene. Four hundred years of silence existed between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, so I imagine they were hungry for hope and desperately aware of their lack. But hope rarely comes how or when we think it should, and this was no exception for God’s chosen people. The four hundred years of silence were broken with (…drumroll, please…) a genealogy. The genealogy of Jesus, to be exact, but a genealogy all the same. While this might seem like a pointless list of boring names to you and me, Jews would have paid great attention because your genealogy proved your credibility. They wanted to know if Jesus was the real deal, and his genealogy in Matthew 1 was the perfect opportunity to prove himself. Ancient Jews were familiar with this kind of resume, and they would have expected a list of highly revered men to be named – men who, according to prophecy and popularity, proved Jesus to be the Messiah.

But the list they got is not the list they anticipated.

There are five women named among the litany of men in Matthew 1, which would have been scandalous to the intended Jewish reader. Women were never included in genealogies, especially not women with these kinds of reputations. In a moment that could have sealed Jesus’s credibility as the Christ, Matthew chose to highlight women like Tamar, who seduced her father-in-law to get pregnant in Genesis 38; Rahab, who is described as a prostitute in Joshua 2; Ruth, whose Moabite heritage began with incest in Genesis 19; Bathseba, who held the adulterous affections of King David in 2 Samuel 11; and Mary, an unwed, pregnant teen. This is not the kind of genealogy you would expect from a king. It is not the resume of royalty.

Hope for the Hopeless

However, by reading these five names in Matthew 1, the Jews would have realized something pivotal: Jesus is a new kind of king. In that moment, hope would have pierced the silence – hope for the heathen, hope for the outcast, hope for the foreigner and the friend. Our very first introduction to Jesus punctures the pride of the privileged and swings wide the doors of hope for the hopeless. A simple list gives personhood to what was once property, providing mothers and grandmothers the honor they’re due. It was a shock to the Jewish system, and it pierced through the wall of weariness for God’s most vulnerable people. Our Messiah stepped down from power – in his genealogy, in his birth, and in the small, subversive ways he lived his life.

Jesus is revolutionary because he challenges who and how we want to be, modeling radical humility that makes space for others to find radical hope. Holy expectation was born out of an unexpected list at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel just like it was almost 2,000 years later in the grimy trenches of World War I. Something incredible broke through the tough exterior of egos and left the world watching in wide-eyed wonder.

There’s one thing I know to be true: humility is the path to hope. It was true for our Messiah who held out his history for all to see. It was true for the soldiers who laid down their weapons on December 25, 1914. It can be true for us, too. Humility could be our path to hope. Egos would be broken, weary hearts would rest, and wonder would resume. Wouldn’t that be thrilling?

Jesus is revolutionary because he challenges who and how we want to be, modeling radical humility that makes space for others to find radical hope Click To Tweet