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Christmas 1, 12/26/2010

Sermon on Matthew 2:13-23, by Luke Bouman

Matthew 2:13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, 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." 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." 16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: 18 "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more." 19 When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, 20 "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead." 21 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. 23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."

When Stories Get Messy

Most people like their stories neat and clean. They will put up with a certain amount of conflict and tension so long as there is a happy ending. If you want to mess with people and their sensibilities, then add something unresolved into the mix and let them chew on it. The late Herb Brokering was a master at messing with people. In his classic book of "I" Opener parables, he tells the following story.

"Once there was a girl

who was Mary every Christmas Eve.

She reminded everyone of her,

and she didn't even have to volunteer.

Then she met a fellow named Joe.

He was older

and good to her.

Her skin is still soft.

She cannot be Mary

this Christmas,

because she is pregnant."ⁱ

Herb is poking fun and challenging people who like the nice sanitized Christmas story. Most people don't actually imagine Mary pregnant. We clean up that part. We don't stuff pillows under the robes of the young ladies in our pageants. Our shepherds are well groomed, our angels are, well, angelic (or at least under stern orders that they better be, or else!). Our wise men come and go. Most years we stop right there. This year, we don't.

On the day after Christmas we encounter this reading. The wise men leave. Joseph, ever the dreamer, hears God speak once more and rescues Mary and the baby from a raging Herod. Then the horrors strike. Herod, out of paranoia and self-importance, orders all of the babies age two and under in and around Bethlehem murdered. We've seen this before, in Egypt with Moses. Powerful people will do almost anything to preserve their power, even killing babies. Even though we know that things like this happened and continue to happen, we look away. We don't like this reading. We don't want to know that there is a price to be paid. Isn't there something else to read? Must we look at this?

I, for one, think that we must look. We must name our sinfulness. We must name the selfishness of this act and thousands like it throughout history. We must acknowledge not only that things like this happen, but that we are implicated in ways that we may not even know. We like that our new flat screen TVs were cheaper than ever this year. We like that our clothes continue to be a bargain. Never mind that the latter, and perhaps the former, were made in factories overseas, often by young, exploited labor, some of whom give their lives and health so that we can have what we want for a low price. We, of the western world, are powerful. We allow, and support by our purchases and often by our silence the practices that condemn children to live without parents, and perhaps to die themselves. This is what powerful people do. This is what Herod does. This is what we do. "We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned... by what we have done and by what we have left undone." We must look, and know that we are caught in the same trap as Herod.

There are some I know who wonder how God could stand by and let all those babies die, while allowing Jesus to escape. But Jesus does not escape. Jesus does not get out of this. His sentence is just delayed, not commuted. God in Jesus chooses to enter the world as a child, and there is only one exit strategy from such a cataclysmic decision. God in Jesus must die. God in Jesus will die. Just not in this massacre. First Jesus must live, grow, learn, and experience life as we do. He grieves with the Widow at Nain, over the death of her son. He weeps with the sisters, Mary and Martha, in Bethany, at the death of their brother, Lazarus. Jesus enters into the pain and loss of everyone he encounters who watch as he opens the doors of hearts and enters. Finally Jesus, himself, enters death at the hands of yet another powerful tyrant trying to preserve the status quo. It is this death that makes all of the difference.

The powerful live in fear of losing what they have, even though they know deep down that they will lose all in death. The powerful imagine that death is the worst thing that there is, and therefore they wield death like a weapon against those who might take power away. Death is the ultimate motivator, until...

Jesus could not be contained by death. God's love could not be held by the power of death. Herod could not stop Jesus from becoming Messiah. Pilate could not stop Jesus from establishing a "kingdom" far greater than Rome at its zenith. The weapons of the powerful are stripped of their effect. Death is no longer final. It doesn't get the last word.

This does not mean that death is not potent. Nor does it take away the loss of the grieving mothers of Bethlehem, ancient or modern. But the God who grieves with them, the God who goes to the grave with these mothers, has a new word of life to speak. Jesus doesn't survive this massacre to escape the pain. Jesus survives to give hope to the hopeless. We are released from our captivity to sin. We are no longer slaves to the selfish use of power, or to the senseless victimization of the powerless. We are free to be human with one another: to join God in weeping with the poor and dispossessed, as well as rejoicing in the restoration of all humanity. God is ending the cycle of violence and the necessity of our participation in the cycle.

The point of the incarnation is transformation, after all. The problem is that the story is messy while it is all being worked out. And it is still messy because it is still being sorted out. But those of us who live in the present age are not destined to live within the faulty thinking of the past age. Messiah has come! Jesus is born, has died, is raised from the dead! The question is, "How do we live, now, because Jesus is Risen?" How do we say no to the powers of this world, and yes to the power of God's love? How do we live God's future in this present messy world? Just because we don't fully know the answer to these questions does not mean that we simply resign ourselves to living in the past. We may not know where or how God is leading us. We do know that our captivity is ended. The power of the modern day Herods will no longer bind us. We no longer need to be afraid.

One of the most interesting things about the "Harry Potter" series of books is how it deals with just this topic. It is the fear of death that drives the antagonist in the series, Lord Voldemort. It is the fear of death that causes people to cooperate, even against their wills, with his minions. By the end of the series, Harry has come to understand, as Dumbledore explains to him, that there are many worse things in the world than death. Harry walks to his own death, not unafraid but willingly, and that makes all the difference. In many ways, J. K. Rowling's story is much more like the Christian story than perhaps even she knows.

Jesus doesn't die as a baby, but enters death willingly as an adult. For us, that very act will have made all the difference. Death's power is destroyed, and even the Herods of the world are freed from its evil. This is good news for everyone: for grieving mothers and for powerful tyrants, even unwitting ones like us.