For the upcoming Sunday, we may use the texts assigned for Name of Jesus or 1 Christmas.\u00a0 I have used the latter, for even as we celebrate the Light sent into the world to relieve its darkness, so must we see the darkness that holds on in our spirits until, in the fullness of time, our Lord Jesus Christ returns.<\/em><\/p>\n 13\u00a0<\/sup>Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, \u201cRise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.\u201d 14\u00a0<\/sup>And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt 15\u00a0<\/sup>and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, \u201cOut of Egypt I called my son.\u201d\u00a0 16\u00a0<\/sup>Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17\u00a0<\/sup>Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:<\/em><\/p>\n 18\u00a0<\/sup>\u201cA voice was heard in Ramah,<\/em> 19\u00a0<\/sup>But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, 20\u00a0<\/sup>saying, \u201cRise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.\u201d 21\u00a0<\/sup>And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22\u00a0<\/sup>But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. 23\u00a0<\/sup>And he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, that he would be called a Nazarene.<\/em><\/p>\n The Holy Bible, English Standard Version\u00ae (ESV\u00ae) Copyright \u00a9 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.<\/p>\n It would be glorious if these words were engraved on our brains and our hearts, \u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.\u00a0 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.\u00a0 The light shines in the darkness, and darkness has not overcome it.\u201d\u00a0 The great blessing of Christmas is that we get to live in the light that is Christ.\u00a0 Physically that light is represented in the lights on our homes and our Christmas trees, the candles on our mantels, and the bright smiles we offer one another along with our Christmas greetings at church and elsewhere.\u00a0 To the degree that we foster Christ\u2019s light, it burns in our spirits, even to the point where we can forget, at least this time of year, that the light that is Christ came into the world\u2019s darkness to lighten it and then end it.<\/p>\n But until then, try as we might to keep it at bay, the darkness will eventually encroach on that brightness of spirit that comes easily this holy season.\u00a0 We are fortunate in that most of the time what darkness we experience is no more than a shadow on our joy.\u00a0 But this morning\u2019s readings from the Gospel of Matthew reminds us that the darkness can feel absolute, even if it is limited by Christ\u2019s light.\u00a0 It is the first Sunday of Christmas, and hard as it is to believe for us who want to hold onto the light of Christmas long after the needles of the Christmas tree have fallen to the floor, this reading is traditional for the year of Matthew.<\/p>\n And a dreadful reading it is.\u00a0 Christ the Light God sent into the world is, at this point, a helpless child totally dependent on His mother, Mary, and guardian, Joseph despite the angelic birth announcement and the visit of the Magi.\u00a0 Now, a word about Jesus\u2019 birth stories as found in both Luke and Matthew.\u00a0 The stories are different.\u00a0 We do not read the story of the slaughter of the innocents in the Gospel of Luke, only in the Gospel of Matthew.\u00a0 As noted before on the fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve, Matthew\u2019s Gospel focuses on Joseph\u2019s experience and Luke on Mary\u2019s.\u00a0 When we think of the birth of Christ, we schmuss the two Gospels together, and add a dollop of the prologue of John, a process called harmonization.\u00a0 Academics frown on this but let them. It should not bother us for the Church has harmonized the Gospels from St. Augustine\u2019s day if not before, so we are talking the second or third century here, a long time ago.\u00a0 It makes sense to do this, for all Scripture is useful for our instruction in faith and the deepening of our relationship with Christ, and because the point the Gospels come to is the same. That point is, Christ, the incarnate Son of God, is the Light of the world, sent to us by God the Father for our salvation and an end to the darkness of sin, death, and the devil.\u00a0 So, between the Gospels, a big, wondrous vision is built for us of Christ\u2019s incarnation of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit and all that surrounded His wondrous birth.<\/p>\n But there seems little wonder to today\u2019s Gospel reading.\u00a0 On the surface, especially for those unaware of his history and his previous brutality, Herod seems to take the message of the Magi looking for the Messiah born under the star with the proper reverence for a work of God.\u00a0 Find Him and let me know where He is that I might worship Him, says Herod to the Magi.\u00a0 But this is Herod the Great, who was not called the fox by his people for no reason.\u00a0 He was wily, and nasty, and intensely protective of his petty kingship, so much so that he murdered his own beloved wife and her sons and extended family when, in his old age, he became convinced they were a challenge to his rule.\u00a0 So, slaughtering the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem to preserve his crown was very much consistent with his behavior.<\/p>\n Herod was not the first nor was he the last powerful man to target children.\u00a0 When the darkness that is opposed to God is allowed to take over our heads and our hearts, that darkness will direct us to hurt those least likely to be able to help themselves, for power and for the shock of it.\u00a0 We see it now, for what do terrorists do but target preschools and pizza parlors, places children are found?\u00a0 We have seen it too, in Israel\u2019s past.\u00a0 If the prologue of John, the first 18 of the verses of that Gospel point us to Genesis, then the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew points us to the Exodus. What did Pharaoh order when he became concerned that the children of Israel who had come to Egypt for sanctuary grew too numerous for him to control?\u00a0 He made them slaves, and he ordered the murders of all Hebrew little boys.\u00a0 For Israel, the place that had been their sanctuary, a place of refuge, became a place of torment when a powerful man gave into the darkness.<\/p>\n We go, then, from the light shining from the Christ Child, baby Jesus, laying in His manger, cared for by His mother and protected by Joseph, to the darkest kind of evil, the slaughter of children.\u00a0 And all to ensure that Jesus could not become that King of Kings prophesied by Isaiah and other prophets.\u00a0 But we know that God\u2019s purposes cannot be overcome by human evil, even that evil that targets children.\u00a0 Even before the return of Christ, God will turn evil to good, and, again, in the fullness of time there will be no evil, no darkness at all, for God will totally end the darkness, and all the ickedness that comes with it.<\/p>\n That phrase, \u201cin the fulness of time,\u201d is heard over and over in the Christmas readings from the Bible and in the liturgy.\u00a0 Listen to the liturgy of Holy Communion and to the Creed.\u00a0 God spoke through the prophets we hear, and then, in the fullness of time, He sent His Christ.\u00a0 From Isaiah to Jeremiah, the prophets spoke of God\u2019s promise to reconcile a fallen creation with Himself, through the Messiah, the stump of Jesse, the father of King David, whose reign would be for everlasting.\u00a0 Jesus is the fulfilment of all that the prophets promised in God\u2019s Name.\u00a0 \u201cWhen the fullness of time had come,\u201d the Apostle Paul wrote in the book of Galatians, our second reading for the day, \u201cGod sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons,\u201d and daughters, as the case may be.<\/p>\n We who were born under the law, forgiven our sins and made children of God through Baptism, await, again, in the fullness of time, the return of our Lord Jesus Christ and an end to the darkness of sin and death that lays over all of the sweetness of God\u2019s creation.\u00a0What God asks of us now, is that, like Joseph, we attend to His Word and then submit ourselves to it. Not thoughtlessly, like automatons or robots, but with an understanding of God\u2019s intent for ourselves and those around us.\u00a0 If we want to see less darkness, less evil, if we want to see children running, playing, growing into their years and the grace of God rather than murdered for the sake of convenience and power, then our desire must not be for the darkness but for the light. To fight off the darkness that overshadows us, those secret and unhealthy thoughts and deeds which could haunt us were it not for the mercy of Christ, we take our stand with life, and not death.<\/p>\n Paula Murray<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1 Christmas, 2022 | 01.01.23 | Matthew 2:13-23 | Paula Murray | For the upcoming Sunday, we may use the texts assigned for Name of Jesus or 1 Christmas.\u00a0 I have used the latter, for even as we celebrate the Light sent into the world to relieve its darkness, so must we see the darkness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,157,853,108,110,648,3,178,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-15615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-matthaeus","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-02-chapter-02-matthaeus","category-nt","category-paula-murray","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15616,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15615\/revisions\/15616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15615"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=15615"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=15615"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=15615"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=15615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0weeping and loud lamentation,<\/em>
\nRachel weeping for her children;<\/em>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nSermon<\/h4>\n
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