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First Sunday in Christmas, 12/29/2013
Sermon on Matthew 2:13-23, by David H. Brooks
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." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 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." *
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. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: "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."
When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "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." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 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. 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."
About two weeks ago, I found myself standing in an outpost of a national toy store chain, and for just few moments I forgot myself, entranced as I was by two small boys playing with a foam rocket launcher. One would put a foam rocket on the end of a tube, and his brother/friend would jump into the air and stomp on a bladder, forcing air into the tube and shooting the rocket high over the store. They would load, stomp, and giggle as the rockets would disappear with a satisfying POP, the predictable reaction to their energetic action. I started laughing myself until the boys' mother turned the corner with a look of wrath that would have left old Scrooge impressed. Since I was not the immediate object of her fury I was able to escape through the stuffed animal section, but I heard her scorching stage whisper: who knew that you two could be so bad??!!
Newtonian physics and badness-all in one store on a December evening.
While we might argue about the precise "badness" of two small boys let loose in a toy store, I have to acknowledge the larger theological point of the mother's question. Rockets-like most things in our physical universe-can be explained, described in great detail, and therefore understood. Being able to say "for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction" is the first step to being able to launch a rocket, whether you say it in English , Chinese or small-boy speak. But badness-how do we account for it? What concise law can sum it up? Certainly, our world today wants desperately to account for badness-for evil-because we believe so strongly in our own power that we are sure that if we could drill down to evil's root cause, solve evil's mathematical proof, well, then...we imagine we could fix it.
This story, of one young family's desperate run for safety, of other families caught in a dragnet of rage, death and grief, always lands with an awful thud on our holiday festivities. We want to stay focused on the joy of the season, but the Church, in her wisdom, points us to other truths that are a part of the entrance of Christ into the world. There are those who are NOT joyous at this news of a savior being born. There are those who react with fury to God's gracious action. For every Mary, for every Joseph who responds in faithful obedience, there is a Herod who would thwart the work of God and who wreaks all manner of destruction.
And how would we fix this dilemma? For in truth, each of us is called to be a Mary, a Joseph-someone who gives shelter to the Christ, who participates in the entry of the Lord into this world, even at risk of our own lives-but we act as Herod, fighting with all that we can muster the claim of the Lord upon us. We are ready to point out to others the manner of their disobedience and maybe even exclaim "who knew you could be so," but how are we to face the truth that we ourselves are in rebellion? The cold fact is that the thing we label evil starts, resides, begins in our own hearts-we resist God; we are, as Luther argued so strenuously, in bondage, and worse of all, prefer our bondage even as we despair over it. God acts, and we react-badly.
And yet...into our rage and despair, into our desperation and fear, into our woe and grief God comes. God does not sit on the sidelines and do nothing, nor does God simply out-Herod Herod and wipe the place clean of enemies, real or perceived. No, God enters into this world, this life, and lives as one who is not bound, not wrapped up so tight in his own heart that he cannot look out at the world without fear or hate. Read again the story of Jesus: so many complain that the Christians simply took other "miraculous" birth stories and co-opted them, but the story of Jesus' birth, on its own terms, reads as rather ordinary and anti-climactic. It tells of a baby born to young parents who don't have much in the way of resources. Both mom and dad are worried about real, solid issues like their marriage, their future, their safety. The news of this birth gets announced to people that important folks would ignore and belittle. On the world stage, politically and militarily powerful people cause others to suffer. In other words, Jesus gets born into the kind of life you and I would recognize. And he grows to be someone who lives his life trusting God and showing others the contours and structure of a life spend trusting God.
Jesus enters into this life as the only antidote to the "who knew" at the center of each of us and to call forth from us a being who can respond with love and trust to the God of creation; a being who can look upon the works of God in the way that someone might look on two small boys acting and reacting and know joy, wonder and thankfulness. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. David H. Brooks
Ebenezer Lutheran Church, Columbia, SC USA
E-Mail: Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com