Great gloss on a passage that preachers often apologize for. I remember it well in the lectionary. It is the Sunday before Nativity, the Sunday of the Ancestors/Forefathers of the Lord. And yes, I think it’s chief message is that faith is primarily personal and not abstractly theological.

I always loved this passage because as a Bible Quizzer it used a lot of key words (words only used once in a given book of the Bible). There is a message there for us. We are God’s key words, uniquely created for the space and time which we inhabit.