We welcome NL Community member Marla Thurman as today’s guest blogger.

After 20 years of teaching English, you’d think I’d know better than to use generalizations. “People are so selfish!” I will gripe. Or, “People are so closed-minded!”

One night I was taking my friend Tom to dinner. As I drove, we became engrossed in a discussion about an upcoming retreat and I drove right by the restaurant. Noticing my mistake immediately, I smacked my steering wheel and shouted, “People are so stupid!”

It is such a good thing Tom loves me. With a grin nearly pulling his mouth all over his face, he said, “People are stupid???”

I laughed then, so hard I had to stop the car, and I still laugh at this story and tell it to everyone with great joy at every opportunity, but a great lesson was learned that night. Not by “people,” either. By me.

People are stupid, sometimes. So am I. Sometimes. And like the generic “people” mentioned in the beginning of this tale, I can be selfish and closed-minded. Not to mention a whole slew of other not-so-flattering things.

But you know what? People are also loving! People are kind! People go out of their way to do good things! People are lovely and sympathetic and brilliant and giving and strong. People are witty and wonderful and zany! Sometimes I can even be a few of those things, too.

We are God’s creations, and this is the only explanation I have for how we—people—can be so many different things at the same time. Only God is capable of creating beings so crazily contradictory and so perfect at the same time.

What is your favorite observance about the people in your life?

Today’s Scripture reading is one of my favorites. It is 17 glorious verses naming the ancestors of Jesus. The fun starts with Abraham and Sarah and goes through Judah and Tamar, Ruth and Boaz, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, up to and including Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. “Of her,” writes Matthew, “was born Jesus who is called the Christ.” (Matthew 1:1-17)

Why a lengthy genealogy of Jesus? Read Robert P. Maloney, C.M., of the Congregation of the Mission, The Genealogy of Jesus in America Magazine (December 17, 2007).

Why do I love it so? Through there are controversies around the genealogy and how it adds up, how it matches the genealogy in Luke’s gospel, and what it all really means, there is a simple truth that speaks loud and clear to me. The genealogy gives us a sense of Jesus’ people and of how anticipation of Jesus has been interwoven throughout history long before Mary first got word from the angel that she was carrying the child of God. The genealogy of Jesus also reminds my of my people, of how my life is rooted in my family, my grandparents, great-grandparents, and so forth.

In my IHM congregation, there is a saying that we use often: “Everything before us brought us to this moment, standing on the threshold of a brand new day.” In light of today’s reading, we can also say “Everyone before us brought us to this moment …” Like any family “everything” and “everyone” in our history hasn’t always been that pretty, but still, it has all brought us to this moment. Even Jesus had some racy ancestors yet I’d say he turned out okay!

So today let us celebrate our people — our own ancestors and our spiritual ancestors through Jesus the Christ born of Mary.

What familial or spiritual ancestor do you celebrate today?

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