| January 4, 2009
You are welcome to reflect on this message
Our focus during Advent has been on the birthplace of Jesus, because a group from our church visited the site on our trip to Israel last March. Come November, we began Advent with Phillips Brooks’ classic, “O Little Town;” followed by a trip to the wilderness: because you can’t get to Bethlehem without hearing the forerunner’s preaching. Then a look back at Bethlehem’s heritage featuring Mother Ruth and King David, that prepared it to be the place where Jesus was born. On Christmas Eve we lit the Christ candle to celebrate our arrival in the little town where “extremes meet.” Today, we leave the manger behind, because Bethlehem has become bedlam. Things got ugly fast. (Matt. 2:16). We’re in Matthew’s Gospel now. Goodbye to Luke and his glorious second chapter.
As soon as our tour bus crossed the West Bank Checkpoint, the first stop is always to shop for souvenirs. We bought a couple of handmade ornaments carved out of the plentiful olive wood taken from Mt. Olivet. Of course it was advertised as being the same kind of wood Jesus’ manger was made from. Only, mangers were hewn from stone. So we know it isn’t genuine. But the thought is nice. At least it looked old. Tourist ornaments are the kind of stuff that comes from Luke. Camels sit respectfully with their legs curled underneath, like camels do. Shepherds politely tend their flocks, one with a little lamb over his shoulders. The Mary and Joseph figurines, with baby Jesus lying in the manger. All of our festive decorations for this season come from Luke.
Matthew mentions no shepherds from the hillside. Rather he tells of Wise Men from the East. Instead of a stable in a barnyard, it’s the king’s palace. There are no angels around because that’s where Herod lives. Mary is no longer triumphantly humming the “magnificat.” But Rachel’s screaming! “I heard a voice in Ramah; Rachel’s weeping for her children.” It’s hard to accept that the gospel has enemies, isn’t it? But that’s Matthew’s take on it. Herod is worried, and Jerusalem’s in grief – calling in the scholars, pretending to worship, while issuing death warrants against babies up to age two. Soldiers searching house-to-house for babies; chariots in the streets; kicking in the doors; mothers hovering over their little ones: “Shh! Don’t even breathe! The soldiers will hear us!”
You won’t find Matthew characterized over at the mall, where Jesus is a hot item; used, to sell everything from Jack Daniels to electronic computer games! Luke’s sentimentalism is what sells. Cozy, Holy Family; adoring animals. Matthew is realistic; reporting that the gospel has enemies, precisely because Christ is the “light of the world.” But there are always consequences when you turn on a light, it illuminates everything; nothing is hidden. On the other side of Bethlehem, when you turn on the light, the roaches start scurrying back to the shadows! No figurines of roaches.
Everybody loves the Gospel of Luke, from whom we get the placid Madonnas and kindly Elizabeths, adoring shepherds, majestic angels and cuddly babies snuggling safely in quaint mangers. Matthew pits the gospel against the forces of hate and fear. Which means for some, the gospel is not good news but bad. In Luke, Jesus is “holy infant--tender and mild.” Matthew has hairbreath escapes and Jesus is an immigrant, fleeing for his life down to the land o’ Goshen. Being true to the text, we start the New Year on a sad note but it’s part of the gospel message – the image of Jesus as a political refugee. Soon after the Christ-Child was born he became homeless, and not just because there was “no room in the inn.”
But once Herod heard about “a baby born to be king,” paranoia took over and he concocted a scheme to get rid of any such pretender to his throne. The “slaughter of the innocents” was the outcome. So like everything else that matters, Christmas is a mixed bag. Because for many, Jesus' birth didn't bring “Joy to the World,” but great despair. It was to avoid an impending massacre that made Jesus a refugee, a victim of the insecurity of power, which won't tolerate any equal, nor any threats, real or imagined. Herod sensed Jesus’ was real. So Matthew’s story of the “flight to Egypt” speaks of harsh and haunting images and a part of the Christmas story that Madison Ave. ignores. Christmas is not a time we want to be listening to “Rachel weeping for her sons, refusing to be consoled.” There’s no expunging Jesus as refugee from the record. From his earliest days he was an outsider, with “no place to lay his head, though the foxes had holes and the birds of the air their nests.” It was a portend for what was to come, “he came unto his own and his own received him not.” It’s hard to picture enemies of the gospel and Jesus as a fugitive, one of the world's unwanted; a societal reject, which we prefer to be kept out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Mostly detained in remote camps, at a comfortable distance where they are unable to disturb the slumbering conscience of the rest of us who “belong.”
Emma Lazarus’ poetry appropriately emblazoned on Lady Liberty in New York harbor still proclaims: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Now that we’ve run out of room, perhaps no more “wretched refuse from their teeming shores.” But the image of Jesus as refugee proclaims that it’s precisely among the world’s “undesirables” that God’s love incarnates.
As time went on, Jesus grew up, to tell a story at the conclusion of Matthew's Gospel where he identifies himself unreservedly with the “hungry, the stranger, the naked, sick, and imprisoned.” Insensitivity to their suffering is the surest way to hell, “If you did not minister to the least of these, you did it not to me. And they will go away into everlasting punishment” (Matthew 25:46). And Jesus will continue to be a refugee till we learn how to get along with one another. As long as people continue to exclude one another, Jesus will be there including the excluded.
There’s a beautiful legend about Jesus the refugee. When Joseph and Mary fled the wrath of Herod, on their way to Egypt, they took refuge in one of the many caves of that area. It was winter-time and frost was on the ground. Residing in the cave was a little spider, who wanted to do something to help keep Jesus warm. So he weaved a web across the entrance to the cave, making a “spider curtain.” It’s a good thing too because a detachment of Herod's soldiers were stalking the holy family. When they came to the cave, the centurion noticed the spider's web, sparkling with frost, stretching across the entrance. He concluded that no one was inside or they would have broken the web. So the soldiers passed-by and left the family in peace. And that’s why some claim we put tinsel on our Christmas trees. The glittering streamers symbolize Mother Nature’s protection with a spider's web; hoary icicles, which kept the refugee-Christ-child safe in a cave to await his destiny in another cave on another Day.
Yeah Christmas is the when “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son,” with a choir of angels to deliver his birth announcement in the City of David, the good tidings of great joy!” But on the other side of Bethlehem, one lone birth meant the death of many. Because when Herod heard it, he heartlessly decimated Jerusalem’s sons. All except Jesus, for whom God had other plans. Maybe it leaves you with the same theological suspicion I have, namely, why the good news that begins in a manger...ends on a cross.
Pastoral Prayer: (1-4-09)
Revitalize your vision for this church so that when despair threatens. “Be Thou Our Vision.” and bring your grace to bear on all our mistakes. When hard times hit, remind us of Thy faithfulness. When in this year to come, we can’t see beyond the smallness of our world or the limitations of our theology, enable us to see things in a different way. And when in this year to come, we inevitably encounter grief and loss, when life ebbs for those we love, even then we pray, “Be Thou Our Vision,” and encourage us through our faith that you never run out of life.
Intermingle Thy spirit in all the stuff of our lives, so that throughout this coming year, we will have the courage to trust and the creativity to celebrate. At the dawn of this new year, O God, strengthen our grip on Thy promises so we can let go of our need for assurances. May this worship renew our determination to accept Thy grace and forgiveness, and commit ourselves to follow Thy guidance in faithful obedience. We dedicate this new year to Thee, the Lord of all journeys, who willed that Christ be carried into Egypt, and back through the wilderness to the promised land again. Be Lord of our journeys too, that they may carry us into fellowship and fulfillment of him who died and rose and reigns forever at Thy side. Amen. Back |
