Matthew 2:13-23 | Göttinger Predigten im Internet

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. 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.

¹³Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, 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.” ¹⁴And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt ¹⁵and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” ¹⁶Then 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. ¹⁷Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:

¹⁸“A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

¹⁹But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, ²⁰saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” ²¹And he rose and took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. ²²But 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. ²³And 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.

Sermon

It would be glorious if these words were engraved on our brains and our hearts, “In 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. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and darkness has not overcome it.” The great blessing of Christmas is that we get to live in the light that is Christ. 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. To the degree that we foster Christ’s 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’s darkness to lighten it and then end it.

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. We are fortunate in that most of the time what darkness we experience is no more than a shadow on our joy. But this morning’s readings from the Gospel of Matthew reminds us that the darkness can feel absolute, even if it is limited by Christ’s light. 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.

And a dreadful reading it is. 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. Now, a word about Jesus’ birth stories as found in both Luke and Matthew. The stories are different. We do not read the story of the slaughter of the innocents in the Gospel of Luke, only in the Gospel of Matthew. As noted before on the fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve, Matthew’s Gospel focuses on Joseph’s experience and Luke on Mary’s. 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. Academics frown on this but let them. It should not bother us for the Church has harmonized the Gospels from St. Augustine’s day if not before, so we are talking the second or third century here, a long time ago. 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. So, between the Gospels, a big, wondrous vision is built for us of Christ’s incarnation of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit and all that surrounded His wondrous birth.

But there seems little wonder to today’s Gospel reading. 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. Find Him and let me know where He is that I might worship Him, says Herod to the Magi. But this is Herod the Great, who was not called the fox by his people for no reason. 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. So, slaughtering the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem to preserve his crown was very much consistent with his behavior.

Herod was not the first nor was he the last powerful man to target children. 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. We see it now, for what do terrorists do but target preschools and pizza parlors, places children are found? We have seen it too, in Israel’s past. 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? He made them slaves, and he ordered the murders of all Hebrew little boys. 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.

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. And all to ensure that Jesus could not become that King of Kings prophesied by Isaiah and other prophets. But we know that God’s purposes cannot be overcome by human evil, even that evil that targets children. 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.

That phrase, “in the fulness of time,” is heard over and over in the Christmas readings from the Bible and in the liturgy. Listen to the liturgy of Holy Communion and to the Creed. God spoke through the prophets we hear, and then, in the fullness of time, He sent His Christ. From Isaiah to Jeremiah, the prophets spoke of God’s 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. Jesus is the fulfilment of all that the prophets promised in God’s Name. “When the fullness of time had come,” the Apostle Paul wrote in the book of Galatians, our second reading for the day, “God 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,” and daughters, as the case may be.

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’s creation. What 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’s intent for ourselves and those around us. 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.

Paula Murray