it speaks to what's on our mind (or should be) as christians in a violent hateful unfair world
and it was very well said ..
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January 3, 2016 Epiphany of the Lord Matthew 2: 1-16
Prayer: Dear God, We long to start a new year with hope and promise even as the world around us seems more confusing than ever. Please show us the way to live in a tumultuous, unfair world. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
A World Terribly Like Our Own
It was hard to tell what I received more of in my email in December – holiday greetings or pleas for help – from hunger fighters to gun protesters to affordable housing advocates to foster care proponents.
Perhaps the darkest was a plea to help the Yezidi people of northern Iraq. The Yezidi are a minority population targeted for execution, enslavement, rape and genocide by ISIS. An escaped woman was speaking to the United Nations Security Council, asking the international community to step in.
Add to that the parade of news events in the past year alone, and it becomes more than our minds can take in.
One million refugees flooding Europe.
The Emmanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston.
Simultaneous shootings and bombings in Paris.
An assault on a holiday luncheon in San Bernardino, California.
A Syrian toddler washed up on a beach in Turkey.
What are we to do with that? What are we, as serious Christians, to do with that?
I know you’ve heard the outcries – “where was God in Syria, in Charleston, in Paris?” Where was God?
Somebody will always post an ubiquitous cartoon on your Facebook page: “Well, you know, we’ve taken him out of schools.”
As if we serve a God so puny that he could be taken out of schools or anywhere else.
But 4.3 million Syrians have fled their country, and nine died at Wednesday night Bible study, and 129 died during a beautiful evening in France.
What are we, as serious Christians, to make of that?
The easy answer is that God gave us free will, and some people exercise that free will with awful choices. And that is certainly true. I believe that.
But it’s not terribly helpful, is it?
If you’re looking for answers this morning, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. What I would like to point out, however, is that the world has always been this way. As we talked about in December, the world that our Lord entered as a baby in a manger was this way.
This morning’s Scripture is a story in Matthew’s gospel that is as frightening as anything we face today. It’s the epiphany story, the story that gives today its name: Epiphany of the Lord Day.
It refers to that part of Scripture where the world – in the form of three Gentile wise men – recognized the baby Jesus as the Lord. They had an epiphany.
It’s an amazing story in that it shows the entwining of good and evil at the very beginning of our Christian religion – not unlike the entwining of good and evil with the serpent in the garden of Eden at the beginning of the ancient Hebrew religion.
Not unlike the entwining of good and evil today.
In this infancy story in Matthew’s gospel, we see an undercurrent of danger, of disaster, even of mass murder. Please turn to Matthew 2: 1-16.
2In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’
3When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
6 “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’
7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’
9When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.
10When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
12And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
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.’
14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15and 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.
King Herod was frightened, we read. And so he killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under. Where was God that night in Bethlehem? we might ask.
I am intrigued that this beautiful story of the wise men coming to worship the newborn Christ is interwoven so seamlessly with this mass murder of infants and toddlers. We manage to ignore it in our Christmas pageants and in Amahl and the Night Visitors, which we staged here in2009. It was even omitted from the recommended lectionary reading for today.
But how can we ignore it?
It shows us that our Lord was born into a world terribly like our own – with a mass murderer and armed soldiers presiding over the place of his birth. It shows us what fear can lead to.
King Herod was what was known as a vassal king, ruling Judea at the pleasure of the Roman Empire. He was not a Jew, but an Idumean, a member of a group of people who had been forcibly converted to Judaism by the Maccabees, back when the Jews ruled themselves. So his opponents derisively called him a “half-Jew.”
Herod was a builder. He rebuilt the glorious temple in Jerusalem, the very temple where Jesus would go when he was 12 years old. This reputation for extravagant building earned the king the name Herod the Great.
Apparently, Herod got along well with the Jewish authorities, the Pharisees and the scribes. They were necessary to keep the Jews quiet so Rome wouldn’t have to quell them with armed force.
Still, Herod was frequently frightened and insecure, always worried that someone would steal his kingdom. Out of that fear, he executed a wife, a mother-in-law, a brother-in-law and several of his own sons, whom he suspected of treason.
His murderous ways worked. When the wise men came to worship Jesus, Herod had been on the throne for 30 years.
We like to remember that the wise men – or astrologers -- brought the baby Jesus gifts. Indeed, we have created an entire season of gift-giving to commemorate it.
What we don’t like to remember is that the wise men were supposed to be on an assassination mission.
Herod told the astrologers he wanted to know Jesus’s whereabouts so he could worship him. But they learned in a dream that wasn’t what he wanted at all. So they sneaked out of Judea without telling him.
But even that didn’t guarantee the child’s safety. An angel came to Joseph in a dream to warn him of Herod’s intentions to kill the baby.
So Mary, Joseph and Jesus fled to Egypt. Not realizing they were gone, Herod wreaked havoc on the families of Bethlehem in an attempt to get rid of him.
We think that part of Matthew’s storytelling was aimed at linking Jesus with Moses, who, as a baby, was saved from an Egyptian pharaoh who ordered all Hebrew baby boys killed. And part of his storytelling was aimed at showing the danger of being this Christ, the danger of following this Christ.
Because Herod would kill a town full of baby boys rather than risk one becoming a threat.
Because the Romans and the Jews would eventually find this one too much of a threat and crucify him.
Because our world has not changed one bit regarding people who think this way.
So what are we, as serious Christians, to make of it – this murderous rage that lived in the first century and lived this summer in a Confederate flag-waving young man in Charleston, and last month in a terrorist couple in California, and is undoubtedly, even now, breeding in some sick mind, somewhere?
First, I think we are to adopt humility. That is, to acknowledge that we didn’t take God out of schools or out of the public square or out of Christmas any more than Herod took Jesus out of the world.
Writer Rachel Held Evans wrote a few years back about people who get upset when clerks say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, who get upset when we remove nativity scenes from courthouse lawns.
They imply that we successfully evicted God and got violent shootings as a result.
But that is a crazy and belittling view of God.
Evans wrote: “…(S)omeone told them that God needs a nod from the Empire to show up, forgetting somehow that God showed up as a Jew in the Roman Empire. In a barn. As a minority. After a genocide. To the applause of a few poor shepherds.”
I think I’ve told you before that I had a seminary professor who was incensed by that kind of nonsense. He used to thunder, “Poor ol’ God. As if he can’t do anything without our permission.”
Second, I think we can acknowledge tragedy as tragedy, without trying to interpret it as God’s will. We do not know enough to label something as God’s will. We do not know enough to make that judgment.
Third, there are things beyond our vocabulary, even beyond our knowing. Paul phrased it in a letter to the Corinthians as seeing “through a glass, darkly.”
(I Cor. 13: 12, KJV)
Sometimes it’s best to admit that we don’t know, we can’t know.
Lastly, I think we are to let this Babe of Bethlehem show us how to live in an ugly, terrorist-filled world. Because that is what the world has always been and probably always will be, we have a choice to make:
Do we live in defensiveness, heads down, fists clenched, refusing to engage, building ever bigger walls at the Mexican border, spouting ever uglier commentary toward those who would move here?
Or do we unclench our fists and raise our eyes? Do we tear down our walls? Do we live with generosity and welcome? Do we make room at the inn?
I think we know what Jesus would have us do.
So what are we as Christians to make of the slaughter of innocents recorded by Matthew 2,000 years ago and the slaughter of innocents enacted in our own state, our own country, our own world this past year?
That for whatever reason, a few humans have always behaved this way.
That for whatever reason, God came to live among us to show us another way.
Amen.
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Triune Mercy Center
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