Genesis 5:1-3, 21-32
Psalm 15

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, grace to you and peace from our Creator God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray.  We give thanks to you, O Lord our God, for all your servants and witnesses of time past: 
•	for Abraham and Sarah, the father and mother of believers; 
•	for Moses, the lawgiver; 
•	for Aaron, the priest; 
•	for Miriam and Joshua and all the faithful who trusted God in the wilderness; 
•	for Deborah and Gideon and all the judges appointed to lead your people; 
•	for Samuel the prophet and his mother Hannah who trusted in your promise, and all the prophets whom you have called; 
•	for Mary the mother of our Lord; for Simon Peter, Mary Magdalene, and all the disciples and apostles; 
•	and for all who have preceded us in faith and brought us to this day.  
Grant to us the same faith and hope that sustained them in their lives, as we too are witnesses with our lives.  Amen

Open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 5.  You’ll see that I skipped a bunch of verses in the middle of this chapter.  I want to explain why I jumped over them for the reading.

Beginning again with verse 1 …

This is the list of the descendants of Adam.  When God created humankind, God made them in the likeness of God.  Male and female God created them, and blessed them and named them “humankind” when they were created.  

Remember the Hebrew word for humankind is “adam.”  And so God has created humankind and God has given them their name, claiming power over them, and giving them breath and spirit and life, itself.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.  This is where I skipped a bunch of verses, so I’ll read a few of them for you …

The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.  Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years; and he died.

When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father of Enosh.  Seth lived after the birth of Enosh 807 years, and had other sons and daughters.  Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years.

When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan … And you begin to see the pattern … A father names his first son, lives a number years fathering other children, then dies, and we track the first son of his first son, and so on, and so on.  What we have as a result is a list of names that passes from father to son, from generation to generation.

This sort of list is common in Genesis and elsewhere.  We run into it even in the Gospels when we hear the list of Jesus’ ancestors.  But why were these lists important?  What difference does it make if we can trace the genealogy of these people?  What do we learn from these lists of names?

The first thing we learn is some very interesting trivia –

In verse 21 we meet Methuselah, and we hear in verse 27 that he lived 969 years!  The oldest age reported in the Bible – so if you’ve ever heard the phrase “as old as Methuselah” … now you know where it comes from.

In verse 18 we meet Enoch, and in verses 23-24 we learn that Enoch did not die.  He lived for 365 years and walked with God, then he was no more.  God simply took him into heaven.  There are references in later books of the Bible to Enoch and Elijah (who also was taken directly up to heaven by God).  There is speculation that these two might return to earth right before the end of time – a sign that God is returning to reclaim the earth – to overturn what had happened in the Garden of Eden, to start over.

But trivia is not the point – even though it helps us to understand some of the references in other books of the Bible and some of our own modern sayings.

What else can we learn from these lists?

We also learn that there were some VERY long life-spans … but these may not be individual life-spans, as we know them today.  Look at Methuselah, for example (beginning in verse 21).  Enoch fathered him after 65 years, and in verse 25 we see that Methuselah fathers Lamech at 167 years.  These are probably names of tribes rather than individuals.

After the tribe of Enoch had been around for 65 years, there was another group that broke off from them, and they used the name Methuselah.  When the tribe Methuselah had been around for 167 years a new group broke off from them.  The tribe of Methuselah was known for 969 years, and then it died off.

Does this mean that all the people from that tribe died?  Probably not.  It may mean that the tribal name died out.

My family has a similar thing happening right at this time.  My mother’s maiden name is Spagnoletti.  When she married my Dad, the Spagnoletti name disappeared from her line of the family.  But she has one brother who carried on the family name.  He married, but he only has daughters, and they are now married, so the Spagnoletti name will not be carried on to the next generation through his line of the family, either.

Of course my grandfather had several brothers, but the same thing has happened in those branches of our family tree.  Soon there will be no boys who carry the name Spagnoletti into the next generation – and this branch of the name will disappear … it will die out … after 100+ years in this country.

So, we have something similar here in Genesis – when the family name or tribal name dies out, then we see that there is a connection to a NEW family or tribal name … For example, Spagnoletti has given life to the Richter family and the Williams family, and now those families will carry on the traditions and blood-lines of the Spagnoletti clan.

But again, why is this tracking of bloodlines important to the people of biblical times?  Why did they bother to trace Jesus’ genealogy as a part of the story of his life?  What difference does it make?

Last week, we talked about how one generation passed the faith along to the next generation – traditions, worship, understanding of God’s actions, love, forgiveness – all of these things are passed down from father to son, from mother to daughter.

And, if we are going to be true believers – people of faith who believe in the one true God – then we need to have ancestors who have passed along that faith to us.  And we need to be certain that we have not gone astray somewhere along the line – and so, we need to know how the branches of God’s family tree are connected to one another.

We need to be connected back – generation to generation – so that we know we have received from God what God gave to humankind in creation … God’s own image.  God created humankind “adam” in God’s image, and Adam passed that image on to Seth, who was born in the image of “adam” and who passed that image on to Enosh, who passed it on to Kenan … and you see how the pattern works.

Each one of us can track our heritage back to the original creation.  Each of us can claim to be created in the image of our God – the one true God.

Many of us in the modern world do not worry about tracking our lineage back to Adam.  We track the power of God in our lives back to the baptismal font, not to a specific ancestor.  And yet, we often remember the people of faith who have gone before us, because without them, we would not have come to believe in God.  Without them, we would not have heard the story of Jesus.  Without them, the lineage of the faithful followers of Jesus would begin to die out.

And we want to be sure that we are following along the true lines of the faithful … we don’t want to follow the teachings of Peter from Assyria, we want to follow the teachings of Simon Peter from Galilee, who walked with Jesus and saw the empty tomb and touched him after he rose from the dead.

[pause]

Genealogy – the branches of God’s family tree … this is one of the reasons to list the ancestors over and over and over.  The people who recorded the names were keeping track of how the story of God’s people and God’s work among those people was passed down from one generation to the next.

While we might not keep the genealogies as the biblical writers did, we do continue to hold on to the stories and the traditions of those faithful ancestors.  Our congregations bear the names of our ancestors in the faith – St. John, St. Peter the fisherman, Calvary (the mountain that witnessed the death of Jesus).  We carry these stories with us in the community of the faithful.

It is the very reason that we read our Bibles … to cling to the power of God that has been shown to God’s people through the ages.  

Do we need to know the names in all of these lists?  Maybe not, but they sure come in handy if you’re playing Trivial Pursuit!

Do we need to know the connection with the faithful people of the past?  Most definitely, yes.  We need to tell the stories over and over and over, so that we never forget that we, too, have been created in the image of God … that we, too, have the breath and spirit of God blown into our lungs … that we, too, have rebelled and betrayed the trust our God placed in us … and that we, too, have been rescued and given a new birth through the love and forgiveness of Jesus the Christ.

[pause]

It’s rather amazing how much can be packed into a simple list of names, isn’t it? …

Amen