“She is more in the right than I…” Genesis 38:26a
I have a nameless grandmother. Dad had no birth certificate, no adoption papers. “Undocumented,” I think of my dad when I hear that word. A doctor in a small town where Dad was born simply handed his infant self over to the couple who raised him. After my father died, I found correspondence he’d had with the lawyer he hired to find that doctor. The doctor signed an affidavit swearing Dad was born in the U.S. so Dad could enroll in Social Security when it started in the 1930s. But Dad’s mother was not named. Her story remains untold.
The Bible does not hide Tamar’s story, though she used stratagems that “proper folk” would deem questionable at best. Tamar’s cleverness succeeds in prodding Judah, her hypocritical father-in-law, into admitting that she was righter than he was. Braver too, though Judah doesn’t acknowledge that.
I wonder about my grandmother’s story. Was she an unwed teen? Or a woman with more children than she and her husband could afford to feed? Was she, like Tamar, called a whore? Or was she called white trash for having committed the “crime” of being poor? I call her brave.
Matthew honors Tamar. She’s the first woman named in his genealogy of Jesus. An unusual choice, naming the mother, a deliberate flaunting of ancient propriety.
Prayer: God, help us be willing to hear hard stories. Help us honor those whom others shun. Amen.
Carol Simon