“All The Things That The Lord Has Done For Us”

Text: Matthew 2:13-23

© December 30, 2007 by Steven Werth at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

We just celebrated another Christmas. I hope it was wonderful for all of you. Mine involved a lot of driving, but it was nice nonetheless. After the weeks of Advent and all the commercial buildup to Christmas, we set up our Christmas trees and nativity sets, we sang the Carols, we gave presents to our loved ones, I'm sure some of us made a point to watch It's a Wonderful Life or How the Grinch Stole Christmas and as we listened to the scripture readings and we looked to the stars along with the the magi and the shepherds. We looked forward to the birth of Christ and when Christmas Day came we celebrated. Then the next day it was done, right. Sure, back to work, back to the grindstone. Just out of curiosity, how many people have already put their trees away? Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and most of us are making plans to celebrate the New Year and we're on to the next holiday and the next big thing... The magi and the shepherds are still here with the Angels at the manger scene. Today is still Christmas and the story isn't over.

We heard in today's gospel passage how the story continues beyond Jesus' birth Narrative. We hear the full story of Christmas, and it isn't pretty . We like to think of the Christmas story ending with the birth of Jesus and we like to tag on the words “and they all lived happily ever after.” But the story of Christmas we heard today is by no means that romantic. Shortly after the birth of Jesus, Joseph had a dream. An angel came to Joseph and told him “Get up! Take your wife and the baby, head to Egypt and don't come back until I tell you to!” “King Herod is going to try and find the baby and kill him! There's no time to wait... GO!” This has to be hard for Joseph. He's just come to terms with the idea that this child is of divine conception, and now he has to pack up the whole family and move off to Egypt of all places. Joseph is a builder by trade, and if I had to go out on a limb I would say that neither he nor Mary was fluent in Egyptian. Matthew reminds us that this fulfills a prophecy from the eleventh chapter of Hosea. The author of Matthew knows his scripture. He knows that in Hosea the word “Son” refers to Israel. Matthew makes this reference in order to make it abundantly clear that Christ is the salvation of Israel. The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt, separated from their home land. They fled Egypt and were pursued by a cruel and tyrannical king that wanted them dead, not just the ones who could revolt or fight his armies, he wanted the babies and the toddlers dead so that no one would be able to rise against him. So they fled out of Egypt. Matthew tells us that Christ suffered this same fate as an infant! Cast out from his homeland into Egypt before he was probably even sleeping through the night, fleeing a cruel and tyrannical king that wanted him, and every other infant and toddler dead so that no one would challenge his throne. God was able to offer Salvation to Israel through Christ because even in his infancy he had already lived the life of the nation of Israel.

So this is shaping out to be an exciting story. We have a hero! Joseph who in the middle of the night is slipping out of Israel into Egypt to save his wife and baby. And the baby Jesus, here in this fragile package is the life and salvation of all mankind. Here is the means by which kings are made low and the poor and the week are raised up, and Joseph has to sneak him out of the country to safety so that he can grow up to complete these tasks. And we have the evil villain... King Herod the Great. Herod was actually somewhere between a king and a local governor. He had been appointed by Caesar Augustus in 37 B.C, and he was half Jewish and half gentile. Herod was known as a great builder. He built the Temple in Jerusalem that Jesus taught and worshiped in. It was 70 feet high and built by hand, no small feat. He was also known, at times, to be a fairly compassionate and generous leader. In 25 B.C. There was a terrible famine. Herod melted down the gold plates from his treasury that made up his personal fortune and he bought food to disperse to the people so that they would not go hungry. But when it came to his own power, Herod didn't fool around. He had the entire Jewish Supreme Court, the Sanhedrin, assassinated. He took another 300 leaders out of Jerusalem and had them all killed. He even had three of his own sons assassinated because they were threats to his throne. Somehow I'm not surprised that this is a king that is willing to kill off all the infants and toddlers in order to prevent a newborn king from becoming king. Herod came crashing down with all the might of his power, and Joseph slipped out of the country to a land where he couldn't speak the language... to a land that held his people as slaves... and there he found safety. That took faith. An angel came to him in a dream and he went. That took real faith. God delivered. God does that.

A few years ago, a British newspaper reported a story about a little boy that had been treated at Dorsett County Hospital. The little boy relayed his own account of having his tonsils out. He said, “when I went into the big room it was very bright and there were two lady angels dressed in white. Then two men angels looked down my throat and one said “God, look at this child's tonsils” and God said, “I'll take them out at once.”” It didn't seem outlandish to this child that Angels could be looking after him, it didn't seem strange to him that it could be God's hand that was curing him. We live in such a rational, scientific, and modern world that we tend to very quickly brush aside anything that doesn't fit within our ordered understanding of the universe. Even within the church we tend to very quickly dismiss anything with even remotely supernatural undertones. We brush over the angels in this story. We relegate them to parable, or we restrict them to Joseph's dreams. “Yes, Angels appeared to Joseph, but they were only in a dream, sure they brought a message from God, but they were just a dream.” Well, I'm sorry, but Joseph definitely did not live in a world that could brush aside angels. The world Joseph lived in was a world that was always looking for what God was doing. When the magi appeared, they were following divine guidance. When Angels appeared to them in a dream, they didn't go back to Herod to tell him where the baby was, they left by another route out of the country.

The unfortunate part is that Herod was so infuriated by being tricked by the magi that he ordered all the male children in the region of Bethlehem under the age of two to be executed. This, Matthew tells us fulfilled Jeremiah's prophecy: That Rachel would weep for her children, that she couldn't be consoled because they are no more. This was the first Christmas, bloodshed and Rachel weeping for her slaughtered children. In order for Christ to be saved, and in order for Christ to save mankind, tragedy had to fall on Bethlehem. It isn't a Christmas story we like, but it is a story we have heard before. Rachel is still weeping today. This week there were assassinations in Pakistan, riots in Kenya, wars are raging throughout the middle east and Africa. The Bethlehem Rachel weeps for is very much alive today. Power lures people, wealth lures people, the idea of peace lures people. We want good prices on shoes. We overlook the child labor that went into making them. We want peace in the world, and we overlook the bloodshed that it often costs to obtain it. We have a tendency to measure successes by goals and milestones. We tend look back at our plans and measure them by their end results. Very rarely do we stop and question what God is up to. Very rarely do we stop and ask ourselves if what we are doing is serving God or if it is serving ourselves. Are we Herod, or are we Joseph? Even when Herod was doing good, his heart was intent on his own power and comfort. Joseph's heart was with God, and so Joseph did good even when it meant sacrifice.

King Herod the Great died in 4 BC and his son took the throne. It was then that Joseph once again encountered angels in his dreams. He returned to Israel, but he had been warned that it wasn't safe to return to Bethlehem, because Herod Archelaus was just as bad as his father, so the angels instructed them to go to Nazareth. Had they gone back to Bethlehem they would have again risked being killed. It has been almost 2012 years since Herod the Great died and still, mothers and fathers cry for lost children and make sacrifices to protect them from cruel rulers, and from violence waged in the name of peace. This was the story of the first Christmas, and it is still being played out. It is a hard story. We really don't like to associate Christmas with suffering or with people having to leave their home. People are much happier to come to church on Christmas Eve to hear about the shepherds and the angels kneeling by the baby's side in the manger than they are to hear about the rest of the Christmas story. My son has been listening to the same “Kids sing Christmas songs” CD each night as he goes to sleep for a little over a month now. One of the first songs on the CD that I hear through his bedroom door each night is Away in a Manger. The words to that song, I think, are the perfect reflection of the kind of idea of Christmas that we like to think of. “The cattle are lowing, the poor baby waits. But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes. I love the Lord Jesus look down from the sky and stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.” It is so peaceful and calm and serene, the newborn baby Jesus doesn't even cry. When my kids were newborns they cried a lot. The image of the song is an image of perfection. But it is only just the beginning. We can't leave off there. We can't leave Jesus in the manger cuddled up in swaddling cloths. That's not where it ends. It doesn't end with the empty tomb. It doesn't end with the resurrected Christ. It ends with the promise that all of God's children are forever alive in spirit through Christ.

In verse 10 of Matthew's Christmas narrative, Mary and Joseph are overwhelmed with joy. In verse 13 they find out Herod wants to kill them and their baby. In verse 14 they are fleeing for their lives to a foreign land. The peace and the tranquility of this Christmas story turns so quickly into a story of suffering and of trials. Why? Because we are a people who suffer and we are a people who endure trying situations. If Christ were to stay in the manger it would only be good for the sale of Nativity sets. For our salvation, Christ had to suffer. Christ had to be exiled to Egypt so that Christ could return to Israel. Christmas can't end in the manger. In Christ the entire Microcosm of suffering and joy had to be. Our reading from Paul's letter to the Hebrews tells us that since as brothers and sisters we share flesh and blood, Christ shares flesh and blood with us. Since as brothers and sisters in Christ we suffer, Christ was made perfect through suffering, and that the trials of Jesus have made it so that those of us suffering trials can be helped. The Christ born on Christmas was made human to be like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that in Christ God could be completely merciful towards people and so that by that mercy death could be overcome.

We like to package Christmas up with warm feelings into the picture of the manger scene. We love the image of the newborn God-child, who in perfection has never suffered. I think the image of the exiled Christ child and the petrified but obedient father Joseph are so much more appropriate for Christmas in the world we all know and live in. The last 100 years have spawned two world wars, the rise and fall of kings and empires and republics. Between the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and the tactical nuclear weapons used by modern NATO forces to blast through enemy bunkers, planes, tanks, and weapons stockpiles, in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq over 30 million people have been injured or killed by nuclear warfare. Throughout the world genocide continues to be used as a means for cruel and jealous leaders to gain and hold power and wealth. Millions of people across the world are starving, as nations and communities struggle for self-sufficiency. In our own nation, children make up the majority of the population beneath the poverty line, and major American cities continue to have some of the highest infant mortality rates in the industrialized world. Our world is a world which continues to face trials. The people of our world are a people who have suffered. The message of hope in Matthew's Christmas narrative that should speak most prominently to us is not the untried newborn in the manger, it is the Christ who is facing the trials of the world with us, because in Christ God is working in the world.

On Christmas eve 1914, the first World War was in the full throws of its cruel and bloody path. English and German troops had been lined up in trenches fighting in northern Belgium. At some point during the early evening, the shooting slowed down and singing began to emerge from the German trenches. Stille Nacht. From the English trenches singing began in response. Silent Night, Holy Night, All is Calm, All is Bright... Slowly, the troops began to emerge from the trenches. They met in No-Man's land, a strip of ground that laid between the opposing trenches that was layered with barbed wire, and blood and debris. Together, they read from the 23^rd Psalm in memorial of the dead:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He leads me in the path of righteousness for his names sake. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil.”

They played soccer together, exchanged trinkets and pieces of their uniforms, whatever they had to give, and for one Christmas the guns fell silent and the peace of Christ reigned in the darkest places of human suffering. Even the cruelest and strongest powers could not overcome the grace and the power of a single voice that followed God for the sake of the God who suffered for our sake.

God is working in the world. God has done great things and is doing great things. In just over 36 hours we will ring in the new year. The question to ask ourselves as we settle in to celebrate and we consider our New Years resolutions, “are we going to follow in the path of Herod or Joseph?”