Hope, the Son of David

“Hope, the Son of David” 
Rev. Stephen Milton 
Lawrence Park Community Church, Toronto 
Nov 30, 2024 
Have you tried any of those genetic tests to discovery your ancestry? You 
know, the ones where you send in a saliva sample, and you get back results 
about your genetic family tree? I doubt many people do this hoping to hear 
what they already know. Things only get interesting if you find out you have 
some ancestors from places that weren’t obvious. Perhaps there’s evidence 
that one of your ancestors had sex with someone from a far away continent, or 
someone of a different race than yours. The test may reveal that your 
ancestors were subject to the forces of history more than you suspected. An 
official family line of people from England or Persia may be interrupted with 
some genes from another ethnic group or people of another country. Waves of 
migration, even wars and enslavement may be reflected in your family’s gene 
pool. History happens, and it impacts us all, even at the genetic level. 
In today’s scripture, we hear about a different way of understanding ancestry. 
We heard from the prophecy of Jeremiah. He lived in 600s and 500s BCE. He 
lived in very difficult times. The ancient Israelites were in deep trouble. A rival 
empire, the Babylonians, had swept across the deserts to conquer Israel. They 
had surrounded its capitol, Jerusalem, and laid siege to it for months. The 
Israelites were determined to keep them out and save their city. But the 
Babylonians had a huge army, and it looked very likely that they would win. 
Jeremiah received a series of prophetic visions during this time. God told him 
in these visions that the Israelites would be defeated (Jeremiah 32). Their city 
would be destroyed, and their people scattered to Egypt and Babylon, what is 
now Iraq. God told Jeremiah that this was happening because the Israelites 
had ignored God and God’s compassion for the poor. 
This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand 
of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to 
the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood 
in this place. (Jeremiah 22:3-5) 
The Israelites have worshipped other gods and been cruel to the poor. So, God 
withdraws protection from Israel, and lets the Babylonian empire invade. 
But, In the midst of all this strife, of people starving within the city, with arrows 
and rocks being shot into the city, God makes a promise. The Eternal One says 
that this terrible situation will end. That God will raise up a saviour out of the 
Israelites. This saviour will come out of the family line of King David. He will be 
like a new branch that grows out of family tree of David. Like a green shoot that 
grows out of a stump to become a new tree. Sometime, many generations 
from Jeremiah’s time, a saviour will come. And he will rescue the people and 
bring them peace and prosperity. 
Among Christians, we think that Jeremiah’s prophecy refers to Jesus of 
Nazareth. We hear that idea in the lyrics of the hymn we sang at the beginning 
of the service, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel:” 
O come, O come, Emmanuel, 
And ransom captive Israel, 
That mourns in lonely exile here, 
Until the Son of God appear. 
It is a reference to the exile of Jews in Jeremiah’s time, and expectation that a 
saviour, a Messiah, will come to rescue the people. There is also a sense that 
all people who want peace and a world that is just are living in exile. We are all 
awaiting the coming of the saviour - in the birth and reign of Jesus. 
A saviour will be born in the line of King David’s descendants. In the Gospels 
of Luke and Matthew, there are long genealogies that describe all the sons 
who begat sons from David all the way to Jesus, the saviour, born, a Son of 
David, the Son of God. 
But there’s a problem here.  Everyone who has heard the Christmas story 
knows that Jesus doesn’t have a biological father. In the Gospels of Luke and 
Matthew, it is very clear that God is the father of Jesus, no man was involved. 
Jesus’ stepdad, Joseph, is identified in those genealogies as being a 
descendant of King David. And Jesus is born in David’s hometown of 
Bethlehem. But Jesus of Nazareth has no physical relationship to King David 
through Joseph. So how is Jesus the Son of David? Why does any of this family 
tree stuff matter at all? 
That’s a question a lot of people have asked about their genetic searches in 
our age. Finding out that you are 1/16th Romanian or Jewish or Black African 
doesn’t explain much about your personality. If you didn’t know you were a 
tiny bit Jewish or Black or white or Asian, then it is unlikely that played any part 
in forming who you are. These tests may tell you about what your ancestors 
were up to, and who they slept with, but it won’t explain why you like spy 
novels or rom coms. Or, why you can watch 30 Christmas movies over the 
next month, while your brother thinks they are a complete waste of time. 
When these home genetic tests came out, they promised to revolutionize our 
health care.[1] We would be able to find out what genetic conditions we were 
born with, what ticking time bombs were encoded in our genes. Did we have a 
predisposition to lung cancer, or breast cancer? Or sickle cell anemia? We 
could finally get our hands on the instruction manual for what it means to be 
born as us, a unique individual. But that promise proved to be overblown. 
Scientists have realized that only 6 percent of the population is affected by 
genetic diseases at some point in their lives. Some cognitive conditions, like 
autism and schizophrenia [2] are highly influenced by genes, as well as 
physical conditions like hemophilia [3]. However, for the vast majority of 
common diseases are a combination of nature and nurture, where biology is 
not destiny. The way you live and eat, whether you exercise or not, whether 
you have a high stress lifestyle, whether you are happy, whether you live in 
neighbourhood with lots of toxic smoke or contaminated soil - these are the 
most important factors for understanding what kinds of diseases we get.[4] 
Even if we are born with a genetic predisposition for something like lung 
cancer, it will be how we live that decides whether that genetic potential gets 
triggered. Genes don’t dictate our lives. There is a gap between our genes and 
our lives. 
That gap is also at work in our Christian story. Jesus of Nazareth is born into 
the house of Joseph, a man who is related to King David. But Jesus isn’t 
related to King David genetically. Rather, Jesus is the Son of God. He derives 
his spirit and personality from God. His love and compassion come from God. 
And that is important. If Jesus had been the biological son of Joseph, a 
descendent of David, then people could conclude there was something about 
that family line that contains wisdom and compassion. It has nothing to do 
with God, it is just something in that blood line. These are purely human traits, 
no need for God. 
But instead, we are presented with a saviour who has no human father. Whose 
capacity to work miracles does not come from the line of David, but from God. 
Who had hands and feet like ours, skin that burned in the sun, who ate and 
drank, got thirsty and cold, just like us. Who was fully human thanks to Mary, 
and fully sacred, thanks to God. He is born into the house of David, as 
promised in Jeremiah, but he is not related to David. 
Reasonable people can debate the biological plausibility of this, but we 
should recognize that an important theological point is being made about the 
limits of human agency. We are all like the people in Jeremiah’s time. We are 
surrounded by a world that appears to be going mad, more every day. Violence 
and cruelty abound, rapists are elected president, what was once solid and 
civilized is under siege. And Jeremiah is told that our failure to care for each 
other is what got us here.  
But there is a way out. We need to recognize that to fulfill our calling as human 
beings, to create a just and civilized society, we need to draw on a strength 
that we can’t always find in ourselves or each other. If we think that love and 
compassion are traits that are built into human beings, we are likely to be 
disappointed, over and over again. World events show that our capacity for 
care for each other and strangers is easily overwhelmed. If we carry it in our 
genetic line, it is not enough to create a just society. 
There is a gap between our genes and our lives. 
There is a gap between who we are and who we wish we could be. 
There is a gap between the society we have, and the society we need. Where 
love and justice is offered to everyone. 
And what can bridge that gap is a partnership with God that is built on hope.  
Hope that biology is not destiny. 
Hope that this reality is not all there can be, this is not as good as it gets. 
Hope is what flies over the walls of the siege. 
Hope is what brings us back from exile. 
Hope says there is a better day possible, even when that seems utterly 
impossible. 
Hope is what gave Rosa Parks the courage to insist on sitting on that bus 
anywhere she wanted. 
God’s Hope is what told people slavery would end, that segregation would 
end. 
Hope is what tells us that God will help us build a better society, where there 
is shelter for every single person, and no one will be homeless. 
God’s Hope gives us the courage and vision to imagine a city where no one is 
poor, where everyone gets great health care. God’s Hope promises a world 
where the air is clean, and the rivers are swimmable again. 
Hope is never realistic. 
Hope sees past the siege and the exile. 
Hope is what fills the gap between what is and what should be. 
We are people of hope, a hope led by a saviour who was killed but came back 
from the dead to create a new faith now 2 billion strong. Hope is our 
superpower, one of God’s most precious gifts. Offered to people under siege 
and in exile. Hope will deliver us from evil. 
Amen.