The Bloodline's Backstory

I love Advent. It is not because I love waiting, because I don't. Advent is the season of waiting, great expectation, and preparing room for the One who comes wrapped up in human skin, bearing our humanity, and returning in final victory. I love Advent because it slows down the paceToo often though, our focus narrows to a manger and a mother, leaving the broader story of Jesus’ lineage behind a veil of silence. Yet the opening lines of the Gospel of Matthew resist that silence. In the genealogy of Jesus, there is an interruption of rhythm, a break in the usual pattern of “father of… father of…” Five women are named—five women whose presence in the text is not accidental but theological, not supplemental but central.

In this sacred season, as we light candles and read prophecies, the Church must also remember the women whose lives, wombs, and choices shaped the bloodline of Christ. And we—especially those committed to the status and role of women—must not miss the invitation in their inclusion.

Tamar: The Woman Who Refused to Disappear

Tamar’s story in Genesis 38 is one of injustice, silence, and resistance. When Judah failed to honor his obligation to her, she dressed herself in the garments of perceived shame and exposed the hypocrisy of power. Tamar's courage forced the truth into the open. She stands in Jesus' line as a reminder that justice often begins with women who refuse to be erased.

Rahab: The Wall-Breaker Before the Walls Fell

Rahab, the Canaanite sex worker, brokered safety for her family and made a theological confession that would rival Israel’s priests: “The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below.” She welcomed the spies, risked her life, and hung a red thread that still weaves through the story of salvation. She was not only spared—she was grafted in. God’s purposes moved through her body and her bravery.

Ruth: The Immigrant Whose Loyalty Redefined Kinship

Ruth crossed borders of land and law. A Moabite widow, she tethered herself to her mother-in-law with a love that reimagined family. Her speech—“where you go, I will go”—is recited in weddings, but it was born in grief and migration. Her story reveals that divine lineage includes women who are foreign, faithful, and fiercely loyal. She is proof that the line of Christ includes those whom society marks as outsiders.

Bathsheba: The Silenced Who Was Seen

Bathsheba is rarely named in Matthew’s Gospel—only referred to as “the wife of Uriah”—yet her presence is unavoidable. Her story has too often been told through the lens of David’s power, but scripture testifies that her grief, her motherhood, and her wisdom shaped Israel’s future. Bathsheba is not a footnote—she is a survivor who became a mother to kings.

Mary: The Bearer of the Uncontainable

Mary of Nazareth bore more than a child. She bore scandal, stigma, and the weight of God’s promise. Her Magnificat turns the world upside down—lifting the lowly, scattering the proud, and feeding the hungry. She sings as prophet, acts as theologian, and births as liberator. Mary is not merely the vessel—she is the first preacher of the Gospel.

Advent Demands We Tell the Whole Story

The presence of these women in the genealogy is not ornamental. It is revolutionary. They are reminders that God’s redemptive work has always moved through women—bold, complex, marginalized, faithful women. Their stories resist sanitized faith. They remind us that wombs are holy, that resistance is sacred, and that God keeps choosing women to bear the weight of divine hope.

In this season, as we celebrate 70 years of women’s ordination in The United Methodist Church, we must ask ourselves: have we truly honored the legacy of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary? Have we made room in our pulpits, our policies, our budgets, and our theology for the fullness of women’s voices? Or have we praised Mary with our lips while keeping Bathsheba out of view?

Let us prepare the way by telling the truth.

Let us honor Christ by honoring the women whose stories made his birth possible.

Let us not only celebrate the past 70 years, but labor for a future where women are no longer the interruption in the story—but recognized as the carriers of it.

Amen and come, Lord Jesus.