{"id":9725,"date":"2021-02-07T19:49:43","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T19:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theologie.whp.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/?p=9725"},"modified":"2022-10-03T08:46:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T06:46:28","slug":"matthew-213-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/matthew-213-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew 2:13-18"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared
\nto Joseph in a dream. \u0093Get up,\u0094 he said, \u0093take the child and his mother
\nand escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going
\nto search for the child to kill him.\u0094 <\/em>14 So he got up, took the child
\nand his mother during the night and left for Egypt, <\/em>15 where
\nhe stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord
\nhad said through the prophet: \u0093Out of Egypt I called my son.\u0094 <\/em><\/p>\n

16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he
\nwas furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and
\nits vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the
\ntime he had learned from the Magi. <\/em>17 Then what was said through
\nthe prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: <\/em><\/p>\n

18 \u0093A voice is heard in Ramah,
\n<\/em>weeping and great mourning,
\n<\/em>Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted,
\n<\/em>Because
\nthey are no more.\u0094(NIV) <\/em><\/p>\n

CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS WITH THE INNOCENTS <\/strong><\/p>\n

A well-known Peanuts cartoon by Charles Schulz has Charlie Brown with
\ngreat bewilderment in his face reciting as his part in the Christmas
\nservice the closing lines of today’s text: \u0093A voice was heard in Ramah,
\nweeping and loud lament!\u0094 What could such lines mean and what could they
\nhave to do with Christmas?! Many a preacher has said the same thing,
\nleading some to avoid this text if at all possible. Not only does the
\ntext appear only occasionally when December 28, the Feast of Holy Innocents,
\nfalls on a Sunday, but even this year when that happens, most pastors
\nwill rather choose for this day the text for Christmas I from Luke, the
\nnice familial story which ends with Jesus obeying his parents and growing
\nin wisdom, stature and favor. Today’s text, by contrast, is filled with
\ntrouble.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it’s fascinating how rich in allusion and imagery
\nthese two stories are. The world’s greatest artists, names like Giotto,
\nCorregio, Peter Bruegel the Elder, Veronese, Caravaggio, Donatello, Fra
\nAngelico and Watanbe, have all found the story of the Flight to Egypt
\nand the Slaughter of the Innocents fascinating. Matthew has created powerful
\nstories for us that have deep roots in the Old Testament and offer resounding
\nwords about rescue and salvation. The characterization is often poignant,
\nand the God it describes may seem strange to us, but we would have no
\nother.<\/p>\n

A God Away from Home <\/strong><\/p>\n

The first story is known as the Flight to Egypt. Whom do you think,
\nof all the people in the world, loves this story most today? Perhaps
\nit’s too obvious. Of course, it is the Christian people of Egypt. Today
\na minority, but once the great majority, Egypt’s Coptic Christians love
\nthe fact that when Jesus was on the run, it was safe to come to Egypt!
\nThey have made so much of these few verses that dotting the Nile today
\nthere are ancient pilgrimage sites, Christian resorts if you will, which
\nremember the places in which the Holy family sought refuge as it fled
\nKing Herod. There are so many sites that the Egyptians calculate it took
\nseveral years for Joseph, Mary and the child to make all the stops. Finally,
\nhowever, Herod died, and it was time to return home. In Ma\u0091adi , a suburb
\nof Cairo, there is a church along the Nile which preserves a Bible in
\na glass case that one day came floating by the church. As the curious
\npriest checked, so the story goes, to see what passage lay before him
\non the opened page, you can almost guess what it was: \u0093Out of Egypt I
\ncalled my son.\u0094 The faithful still stand in line to see this affirmation
\nof Egypt’s place in the Christmas story.<\/p>\n

Of course, Joseph has been here before\u0097and so has the son. In ancient
\ndays, another Joseph came to Egypt and finally was carried out, at least
\nhis bones were, along with his long-suffering son, the faithful people
\nof God, back to their ancestral roots in Caanan. This is really an ancient
\nstory, an archetypal story, told over and over, of the God who not only
\nrescues his people, but goes before them, walks along with them, shares
\ntheir suffering and enables their redemption. Matthew tells his modern
\nversion with such grace. Poor Joseph. He never asked for all this. His
\nwife! His wife’s child! But there is this dream that Herod is out to
\nkill the child, and Egypt is a safe haven. In the middle of the night,
\nwhen such things are done, gentle Joseph, the carpenter who never wanted
\nto leave Nazareth, becomes a pilgrim, a wanderer. The child he rescues
\nis a wander too, a \u0093son of man\u0094 with no place to lay his head (Mt.8:20).
\nThis story continues into our own time, and we know it too well. The
\nsons of men are too often wanderers and their God is away from home.
\nIt may seem strange to us, such a God, but we would have no other. In
\na lovely poem about this ongoing exodus, German poet Arnim Juhre gives
\nhis version of the Josephslegende (my translation) and our God:<\/p>\n

Joseph fled from Budapest,
\ndreamed of child murder,
\nstreet riots and persecution.
\nAlthough the border was already mined,
\nhe fled to the West with his wife;
\nfor she was pregnant.<\/p>\n

Another Joseph jumped into his boat,
\nshoved off from Port Said,
\nrowed and said to his wife:
\nThe masters of this world
\nfight over a little body of water.
\nIn the distance ship artillery rumbled.<\/p>\n

In Cairo and in a village in Austria
\nboys were born on Christmas Eve.
\nNo star stood over their quarters,
\nand the shepherds on the fields of
\nthe world
\nsaw hosts who were earthly.<\/p>\n

And God said to Joseph
\nin Cairo and in Austria:
\nFear not!
\nI see that you are in exile.
\nI too am away from home.<\/p>\n

A God Crying in the Night <\/strong><\/p>\n

The next story is usually called the Slaughter of the Innocents. It
\nis the one that gives most scholars trouble because there is no secular
\nreference to this incident and it has no counterpart in Mark or Luke.
\nPerhaps it never happened, they worry. Furthermore, tradition has created
\na mountain out of a molehill here because Bethlehem was just a little
\nvillage. The Orthodox tradition which remembers 14,000 infant martyrs
\non this day is surely wrong. Would a king really be so paranoid that
\nhe would give orders to kill innocent victims under two years of age,
\npretenders to a throne or not? We do know this much, to quote George
\nBush, Herod \u0093was an evil man.\u0094 It is the kind of thing he was capable
\nof doing. He drowned his 16 year-old brother-in-law, killed his uncle,
\naunt, and mother-in-law, his own two sons, and some three hundred officials
\nhe accused of siding with his sons. (Pfatteicher, Festivals and Commemorations,
\n1980, 470) . Herod is the kind of person whose jealously, hatred, and
\nanger puts people on the run. Where the Herods of this world are, the
\ncries of mothers rise up to heaven. It happened with the Armenian children
\nin Turkey in 1915. It happened with Spanish toddlers at Guernica in 1937.
\nIt happened with little girls in Dachau between 1939 and 1945. It happened
\nwith Kurdish children in Sadaam Hussein’s Iraq and with those small bodies
\ncarried in coffins in Northern Ireland. There are many Herods and they
\nwear many masks. Their tasks neither began nor ended in Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

The touching thing in Matthew’s telling of the story is that he remembers,
\nin all this crying, Rachel. Rachel of old. Do you remember her? She was
\nthe beautiful girl that Jacob wanted when he had to settle for Leah.
\nShe was the one he was entitled to after seven more years of work and
\nwho bore him his two favorite sons, Joseph and Benjamin. She was the
\none who crying out in agony, dying, gave birth to Benjamin and generations
\nto come. She, the mother of generations, long dead, weeps symbolically
\nin the Hosea quote, as Jewish children are hauled off into captivity
\nin Babylon\u0097and in many Babylons to come. And Matthew thinks it appropriate
\nto have her weep again here in Bethlehem (where, for that matter, women
\nstill weep at her tomb today). Rachel is always weeping, along with all
\nmothers of the world. And it never seems to stop. And God weeps with
\nthem.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, Diane Sawyer’s Prime Time show was an hour’s footage
\nof a visit to Africa by TV talk show hostess and actress, Oprah Winfrey.
\nAID’s-torn Africa! Terrible statistics in so many countries in which
\nwhole adult populations die as children who are HIV+ are left to fend
\nfor themselves\u0097against robbers and rapists! This is far worse than Bethlehem!
\nIn some countries, half of the population is HIV positive, and millions,
\nmillions, are dying. Of course, Oprah Winfrey is only one person, one
\nchildless mother, and a very rich one at that, who invited 50,000 children
\nto celebrate Christmas under \u0093white\u0094 tents. She symbolically celebrated
\nChristmas with the \u0093innocents\u0094 of the world. Clothes, food, toys, presents
\nfor all. And it’s not just a one-shot gift. She paid some teachers salaries
\nfor several years, so children can have hope. She created $10 million
\nin endowments to help care for children for years to come. Of course,
\nin terms, of the immensity of the problem, it’s only a drop in a bucket.
\nYet the responsibility is not hers alone. It belongs to all of us. In
\nthe background, one can hear Rachel weeping for the mothers, the fathers
\nand the children, \u0093refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.\u0094 Oprah
\nwas weeping and so was I.<\/p>\n

The Meaning of Christmas, Several Days Late <\/strong><\/p>\n

This seems a rather dismal message for the Sunday after Christmas, but
\nperhaps we have to get over the frenzied buying and giving celebrations
\nbefore we can get down to Christmas‘ real meaning. Matthew wants to tell
\nus in this text that we get to hear only once ever few years, if the
\npreacher will let us hear it, that if we’re looking for a God who is
\ngoing to come in power and glory, the triumphalist’s friend, to judge
\nand destroy the Herods of the world so justice, peace and prosperity
\ncan reign, it isn’t going to happen. Not in our time! Not in any time!
\nGod will not come with preemptive wars to stamp out terrorists, electric
\nchairs and lethal injections to snuff out evil men and women, vigilante
\npacks avenging justice on their terms. He comes in the still small voice,
\nin the vulnerable form of a child trapped when soldiers come to murder,
\nin the form of a man trapped in a despicable rat hole, in the guise of
\nvictims everywhere. This God, strange to say, is away from home, is with
\nthe least of his brothers and sisters, is always and only friend of sinners,
\npowerless and weeping children. And we celebrate his presence among us,
\ncelebrate Christmas for real, to the degree that we affirm \u0093innocents\u0094 in
\ntheir desperation, their hopelessness, their final hours. Even more profoundly,
\nwe celebrate Christmas for real– we meek souls receive him still– when
\nwe realize that we, in our own spiritual poverty, in our own psychological
\nholes in the ground, desperately want a God who is Emmanuel, a God who
\nis with us even in the worst of times. He is with us in our loneliness,
\nour hopelessness, our fear. He is with us in our shame, our bewilderment,
\nour exile. He spreads the great white tent of his love over our sin and
\ncalls us innocent along with all the alienated and abused in this world.
\nThis is a text filled with trouble, but it helps us come to terms with
\nthe only peace the world can bring. This is a story about a God who shows
\nup in the strangest places, but we would have no other.<\/p>\n

Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
\nConcordia University at
\nAustin,
\nAustin, Texas
\ndzersen@aol.com <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. \u0093Get up,\u0094 he said, \u0093take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.\u0094 14 So he got up, took the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,727,108,110,648,3,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-9725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-matthaeus","category-archiv","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-02-chapter-02-matthaeus","category-nt","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725","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=9725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13843,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9725\/revisions\/13843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9725"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=9725"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=9725"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=9725"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=9725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}