Canter Bridge

A genealogy like the extensive one that occupies the opening chapters of the Books of Chronicles is a black hole of tribal memory. Like those astronomical oddities, the recitation of the carefully archived names evokes an incalculably dense matrix of human experience. There are hundreds of them. Each lived, loved, ached, rejoiced, ate, defecated, hoped, despaired, died. Each was to some greater or lesser degree mourned by those who survived him.

Each had a name. It was remembered, enrolled, treasured. It lives on in the Chronicler’s pages, to be read on mornings like this one by a reader who can no longer penetrate the staggering density of life that has been reduced to these precious, remembered names.

The organization given to this spiderweb of named relations speaks of a concern—no doubt polyvalent and shifting—for order, for the sense that there is shape to this family, for the notion that we came from somewhere in a way that can be explained, that makes sense. Presumably, many also read with hope that this people was at the same time being shepherded to a destination that, in turn, was not chaotic but rather the outworking of some survival-bent logic.

Jesus, too, engages in some genealogical analysis. The Jewish religious leaders with whom he finds himself in dispute lay claim to a rather audacious set of roots: ‘Abraham is our father’, they reply to Jesus’ suspicion that their spiritual parentage is rather less respectable than that. Then the stakes rise and these dangerous words are spoken:

We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.

Jesus remains unpersuaded. His words run hot, though the text suffers the regrettable fate of written report: it cannot tell us his tone.

If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Genealogical repartee seldom trades in such absolute alternatives. Jesus is getting at something elemental. Our claimed pedigree often has little or nothing to do with the roots from which we draw our orientation and sustenance. One can claim God as one’s father yet live as a child of hell. Indeed, we so often do just this.

Genealogical sinews are, I suspect, stronger than we know. The immense gravitational force of the Chronicler’s named names shape a nation via dynamics and processes that we know only in part. Nations as well as middle-aged men and women become more like their parents as they grow older. Ancient trajectories exert their influence as the vigors of youth wane and the project of becoming something new loses its core strength.

The beauty of this is that, at our best, we become tender, patient with our legacy, relaxed about our short syllables in our people’s long list.

The terror is on the other side. If indeed we are children of hell, we act more like ourselves as our costume wears thin.