Sermon for Dec 29, 2019
Christmas 1A
Isaiah 63:7-9, Hebrews 2:10-18, Matthew 2:13-23
A popular song this time of year says “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.” Other Christmas songs echo this sentiment, stating “There’s no place like home for the holidays” or “There’s no Christmas like a home Christmas.” Many movies play on this feeling as well, with characters rushing to make it home for Christmas, or panicking when they realize they’ve left their child home alone.
Home invokes the feelings of comfort, familiarity, belonging; being with the people we love most and participating in the traditions we love. Being away from home or family during Christmas time seems lonely, empty, and sad, especially as Christmas is described as a time of comfort and joy. Yet, today’s gospel story depicts the holy family far away from home, away from familiar faces and surroundings, and from all the comforts of one’s own home.
First, Mary delivers baby Jesus away from her family, in a strange building — not even a guest bedroom, as there was no room — in a different city from the one where she lived. Then shortly after the child is born, Matthew tells us this harrowing story of joy turned to dread when King Herod orders the killing of every male child in and around Bethlehem under the age of two. Herod had been given the title “King of the Jews” from the Romans. Yet here were magi telling him that another promised “King of the Jews” had been born around the town of Bethlehem.
While we only hear this story from Matthew, this kind of gruesome reaction is consistent with the reputation of Herod as a great king who secured his power at any cost. Herod is said to have ordered the execution of his own sons when he felt threatened by them. When Herod was named king of Judea, he had the entire rabbinical court executed. And, when Herod was close to death he ordered the killing of many distinguished men at the same time as his death so that there would be mourning on the day he died (that order was not carried out).
Yet Herod’s reign wasn’t all bad. Herod the Great (as he is called) was responsible for major building projects which included a massive fortress, aqueducts and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem — the one that Jesus’ disciples admired because it was so impressive. Some historians say that, on the whole, Herod’s reign was beneficial to the Jewish people.
Herod is not unlike many powerful leaders who, throughout history, have committed atrocities to a group of people in order to protect the status quo for the dominant group. They might rationalize that the end justifies the means, and that the dominant group is entitled to whatever they are protecting.
Just this week I read a harrowing piece of American history about what New Year’s Day has meant for African American slaves. For slave owners, New Year’s Day was “Hiring Day” — a day when slave owners would put up their slaves for auction or rent out their slaves for profit. For the enslaved people, the day was known as “Heartbreak Day” because it was a day when families were often separated and slaves would be forced to go to new masters whom they did not know.
In an autobiography named “Incidents in the Lives of a Slave Girl,” Harriet Jacobs wrote about the dread that slave families would feel during the period from Christmas to New Year’s Eve, waiting to find out whether they would be rented out, and to whom. She recalled an instance when she saw “a mother lead seven children to the auction-block. She knew that some of them would be taken from her; but they took all. The slave trader who took the children wouldn’t tell her where he was taking them because it depended on where he could get the ‘highest price.’ Jacobs said she would never forget the mother crying out, “Gone! All gone! Why don’t God kill me?” (https://time.com/5750833/new-years-day-slavery-history/).
Gone. Displaced.
This happened in America in the 1800s. There are terrible stories of grief and forced displacement even today. So perhaps it would not be all that surprising to anyone that, upon hearing the news that a promised king had been born, Herod would have reacted with excessive violence to protect his status quo. Better be safe than sorry.
As a result, the holy family is displaced.
Warned in a dream of Herod’s intention, Joseph and Mary flee with Jesus to Egypt, where they could be out of Herod’s reach. They’re now even further away from home than Bethlehem. They are displaced people, learning to adapt to new surroundings, new sounds and smells and foods. They are strangers in a new land, not knowing how long they will be away from the comforts and familiarities of home.
Perhaps you have experienced times in your life when you’ve lost your sense of home. Perhaps you are feeling displaced right now. Being physically away from home will naturally bring on this feeling, but other human experiences do so as well. Grief can make us displaced. Losing someone we love can feel like our home has been taken from us. Changes in health and appearance can feel like we are no longer home in our own bodies. Changes in relationships can feel like we are no longer home in our own families. Changes in our church can feel like our church home has become a strange and uncertain place.
As Mary and Joseph settled in Egypt, I imagine that they longed for home. They longed to feel normal again; to be seen as people who belong rather than foreigners or outsiders. To enjoy the comfort of old routines rather than being forced to learn something new everyday. To have a good idea of what the new day and new year would bring rather than living in the uncertainty of transition and the mystery of this new life together.
They were far from home and outside of the land of Israel. Yet here’s what they found: they found God was also there.
For even in a foreign land, God continued to speak to Joseph in a dream, eventually telling him when it was safe to return to the land of Israel. They were outside of Herod’s reach, but they were not outside of God’s reach. The promise of Emmanuel, God with us, was also true in a foreign land.
Egypt was a new, albeit temporary residence for Mary, Joseph and Jesus, but it was not a new place for the people of God, and it was certainly not new to God. Egypt was once the place that enslaved and kept hostage the people of God until God delivered them through Moses. Egypt was also once the place where another Joseph led the people of God to safety and deliverance during a time of famine. Even at that time God was speaking to that Joseph through dreams and turning what was meant for evil — which was Joseph being sold as a slave — into an instrument of healing and deliverance.
Matthew understood these similarities, and so did the Jewish people who first read Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus. They saw how Herod appeared as another Pharaoh, keeping God’s people under his thumb and threatening to destroy anyone who might serve as a Jewish liberator. They heard in the weeping of mothers who refused to be consoled, the echo of Rachel’s cry as her children were being forced into exile, gone; displaced into Babylon. And they saw how God once again spoke with Joseph through dreams, instructing and guiding, and turning what was meant for evil into an instrument of salvation.
Throughout the history of the people of God, God had always been present, calling and responding, guiding and instructing, protecting and delivering. And now God was right in the middle of it; God Emmanuel, God’s very essence in the form of a baby displaced and vulnerable.
The truth is that God’s displacement began much earlier than the day when Mary delivered Jesus and placed him in a manger. It came as God decided to displace God’s own self. As the apostle Paul said, Jesus who was in his very nature God, chose to make himself nothing, humbling himself and taking the very form of a human servant (Philippians 2:6-8). In choosing to be born a human, and a poor one at that, God chose to take part in the very messy and dangerous condition of being subject to the suffering of this world. Jesus himself was tested by what he suffered, the writer of Hebrews states, becoming like his sisters and brothers in every way.
Then Herod died. And Mary and Joseph and the people of God found, once again, that kingdoms rise and fall. Kings come and go. Seasons change. What remains is God’s unrelenting presence, love and deliverance.
As God called Moses to deliver God’s people from bondage, and as God called Joseph to lead God’s people to safety, God also called Jesus to deliver God’s people. Yet this time, the deliverer came to defeat death itself, through Jesus’ merciful and faithful sacrifice.
The God who took the form of a vulnerable and suffering baby is the same God who told Rachel in the book of Jeremiah, “there is hope for your descendants; your children will return to their own land (Jeremiah 31:17).” The God who chose to make God’s home among us in all of our suffering and displacements is the God who makes a home for us. For the Jesus who once told his disciples, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20) is the same Jesus who said “My Father’s house has many rooms; I go to prepare a place for you (John 14:2).”
We are called today to be mindful of those in our midst who are displaced, strangers in their own bodies and families; those who don’t know the comfort of home or whose grief refuses to be consoled. Those for whom Christmas and New Years is a time of heartbreak. We are called to be a haven and refuge, to welcome the stranger and make room for the afflicted.
We are called to challenge and resist the systems that exploit and cause grief and displacement for others, and to question the ways in which we benefit from those very systems.
We are called to be witnesses to God’s unrelenting presence and love and deliverance in our lives together.
And we are called to have hope. We are called to proclaim the hope of our ever present God, Emmanuel. The hope of our risen Lord Jesus and his merciful and faithful sacrifice. The hope of our God who is continuously preparing a place for us, in whom we always have a home.