I wonder how many of us watch the TV show “Who do you think you are?” If you’ve never seen it, let me tell you that it’s an ‘ancestry; programme in which celebrities examine their family histories. Not every episode is interesting but some are absolutely fascinating; I particularly remember one about Stephen Fry; he may appear to be a quintessential English gentleman but his maternal grandparents were Slovakian Jews who in 1927 were ‘head-hunted’ to come to Britain and run the new sugar factory in Bury St Edmunds. That saved their lives as many of their relatives later perished in the Nazi death camps. I wonder how many of us have traced back our own family histories and, if so, how far we’ve managed to get: a century, two centuries, or even more?

Something we probably don’t think much about is Jesus’ ancestry. Oh yes, we know that he was Mary’s son but (so we are told) not Joseph’s; there are also hints in the New Testament that he had a number of half-brothers and sisters. Beyond that, though, we know very little apart from singing at Christmas that he “was born of David’s line” – however David must have had lots of descendants in the tight-knit nation of Israel, seeing that he had many f wives and concubines and lived a thousand years before Jesus! I guess that as just many people could claim to be a great-great-great-something of King David as those who claim descent from Owain Glyndŵr or William the Conqueror!

Ancestry was important to the Jewish people – as indeed it has been for many people and in many cultures. Although none of us would want to echo the casual racism of Lady Susan Hussey who kept asking Ngozi Fulani “where she came from”, the fact is that many of us make value judgements on people from the knowledge we have of their background, especially among the aristocracy: “Do we know that family? Weren’t they something in trade?” Of course this can work in more than one way: we may extol someone whose father was a coalminer and instantly despise someone who speaks with a cut-glass accent and comes from a family that has occupied their stately pile since the Wars of the Roses!

But let’s get back to Jesus; and in fact the Bible gives us two different genealogies which, I suspect, are rarely read in churches because we think they are dull and contain lots of difficult names! In fact they are interesting for a number of reasons. The one we heard from Matthew’s Gospel takes us from Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation, through a number of intriguing people such as Tamar (who got pregnant through trickery), Ruth (who wasn’t even Jewish), and Bathsheba (I don’t think we need to say more about her). The line ends with Joseph but – did you notice? – it doesn’t actually say that he was Jesus’ father, only that he married Mary, his mother.

Luke’s genealogy is even more coy (and of course comes soon after his lengthy description of Jesus’ birth). He says that Jesus was the son, “so people thought”, of Joseph, and takes us to King David via a different route to Matthew. But Luke, writing to non-Jews as much as to Jews, wants to make a point: he goes back beyond Abraham, in fact as far as he can to Seth, Adam and finally God himself as the Creator of the human race. Of course these aren’t complete genealogies, and we must wonder where Matthew and Luke got their information from, although ancient oral history can be remarkably accurate. But their point is clear: they are establishing both that Jesus was legally a Jew (which probably isn’t too important to us), and that he was a real human being rather than some mythical demigod who fluttered down from heaven to touch earth for a brief moment.

There’s a story – I think it’s true – of a Bible translator working in some remote tribal group in, let’s say, New Guinea. He has worked hard to decipher and learn a language which has never been written down before and which bears no resemblance to English. Now he’s been translating Matthew’s Gospel and reading each completed section to the local people. Their response is muted: they listen to the tales of Jesus but show no real interest; the translator thinks, “I’ve devoted my best years to this project; have I been wasting my time?” Finally he translates the genealogy of Jesus: more for the sake of completeness than anything else, as it’s clearly not going to interest any of hid potential audience.

But he’s wrong. As soon as he reads out the long list of names, his listeners are full of excitement and demand to hear more about Jesus. The translator can’t understand why, so he asks them. “Well”, they say, “It was only when you read us the list of Jesus’ ancestors that we realised he was a real person”. Ancestry was a vital importance to them.

So who, we ask ourselves, is Jesus? At this time of year we rightly think of him as the Bethlehem baby: but the danger for many people is that they see him as nothing more, as just another part of the Christmas legend which adults (I must be careful with my words here!) know is nothing more than make-believe. For Christians are convinced that Jesus isn’t make-believe but was a real person. Christians believe that he didn’t stay a baby but grew up and did wondrous things. And Christians believe that Jesus was, yes, the son of Mary – but also, in an utterly unique way, the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. That’s the Jesus we’re worshipping and welcoming today.