Scandalous Mercy for The Victim and The Victimizer

Flemming Rutlage wrote that, "Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness." In his genealogy of Jesus, Matthew has forced us to look at the darkness. Tamar and the hard-hearted and hurtful hubris of Judah, Rahab and the sickening sin of the Cannanites, and the sad reality of family and death in the story of Ruth. And yet, in each of these dark stories, light begins to break. They all prepare us for Jesus. And then Bathsheba, or maybe we should just say, like Matthew says, "the wife of Uriah the Hittite". Lust and murder bound up in the light coming. God's mercy of the victimizer and the victim. What grace! What scandalous shining in darkness!