Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
Matthew 2:13-22
I have a miraculous piece of technology hooked up to my television which allows me, with the touch of a button to record a television show and watch it later. Ours is called a DVR, some people have a thing called a TiVo. I probably shouldn’t watch much television, but without this little box, I doubt I would watch any. In case no one has ever noticed, as a pastor, I work some pretty strange hours and am not often home during prime time. My wife, Alisha is the resident expert on this device and I count on her to record shows that I might want to watch. Because of my schedule, I might not have time to watch a show until Alisha has already recorded four weeks worth of episodes. We have to be very careful when we do that so that we are sure to watch them in order. If you watch shows, especially dramas out of order, you can get a little confused. If you watch
That is sort of what we have going on with scripture this week. Next week, according to the church calendar, we will celebrate Epiphany Sunday, the coming of the Wise Men. This week, however, is appointed a scripture that takes place after they the Wise Men have already left. So try not to be too confused.
13Now 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.”
Matthew’s gospel is not nearly as poetic about the birth of Jesus as Luke’s. In my introductory Bible course, people are often surprised that most of our understanding of the birth comes from Luke. In Matthew, this is pretty much what we get:
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in
But for today’s purposes, that tells us what we need to know. Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, one of the most contentious places on earth. A little background on
4Joseph also went from the town of
As
As an aside,
So Joseph, in a dream, is told to leave this dangerous place,
13Now 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.”
Silent night, Holy night, all is calm, all is bright ‘round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild. Run for your lives!
Joseph and his family aren’t the first ones to find safety in
Our Joseph is told to go and he listens.
14Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to
If we look at the prophet Hosea, chapter 11, verse one, we see the scripture being quoted here. The author of the Gospel is using this prophecy as sort of a proof, pointing to Jesus as the chosen one. But it is more than just proof, it is poetry.
Remember I said this isn’t the first Joseph to go to
God saved God’s people by calling them out of
The Bible is very cool when you read closely.
Then something horrible happens.
16When 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
Today, we call this sort of thing genocide. It seems Herod was acting out of paranoia here. We see a better picture of what set him off if we back up to the story of the wise men but remember, we are watching episodes out of order. In simple terms, he senses a threat to his power and lashes out. He is not sure who the threat is, so he kills all the boys. Though there is evidence that with the size of
I just don’t know what people were thinking assigning this text when we are still singing Christmas carols. There is symmetry here though as well. This has happened before. Exodus chapter 1 tells us that when the Hebrew people were in captivity in
22Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the
Pharaoh sensed a threat to his power, the Hebrew people were becoming too numerous, too prosperous, too powerful, so he lashed out.
You may have heard that one of these boys survived by being put in a basket on the
16When 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
Alright, just a little more background, I promise. This quote is from Jeremiah 31:15, which I have to tell you, needs a whole sermon of its own because it is so full of poetic references to other stories in the Bible.
15Thus says the Lord: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.
You may remember I mentioned earlier that Rachel is buried near
19So Rachel died, and she was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is,
If we back up even further in Genesis we read about Rachel. Rachel was Jacob’s second wife after he was tricked first into marrying her sister Leah. Leah had many children but Rachel had none. Rachel finally bore Jacob a son, whom he name Joseph, the one who ended up in
Jeremiah is talking about Rachel in terms of the exile, the destruction of
Just look at all these connections. Our Joseph takes his family to
Joseph, blood, escape,
Which all raises the question, what happened to, “Joy to the World?” Christmas seemed so simple just a couple of days ago. This seems like such a shameful event to have in the Christmas story and it just gets more complicated the deeper we dig in.
It ties us into the history of God’s people, a history stained with blood and sorrow. A history in which God many times intervened to work through prophets like Moses and leaders like Joseph to save God’s people.
When we see Christmas in the framework of the history of God’s people, we see why Christmas is so cool! If the world was all sunshine and lollypops, what difference would it make if God came into it? That God came into a world like this, now that is impressive. That God chose to be born in a city where rulers fly into a paranoid rage and where priests get into fist-fights on Christmas Eve, now that it my kind of God.
On Christmas Eve, after being here all day, I went and wasn’t yet sleepy. I flipped on the television and caught the middle of one of many televised
That helped me fall asleep that night but doesn’t well reflect the Christmas story that tells of Jesus being born in a city that was witness to a massacre, a city that to this day whose holy sites are guarded by blast-proof walls and men with automatic weapons.
This is the story that makes Christmas, Christmas. I mentioned on Christmas Eve how Christmas is about God coming into our dark and scary world. This shows, right from the beginning that God did not come into a world of light, but brought light into the world.
So if Christmas is about God coming into a scary world, what are you doing about it? If Christmas is about God’s entry into a bloodstained world what does that mean for us?
I want to end with two questions.
Are you letting God’s light shine into the darkest and scariest places of your life? I guess that some of us don’t let God into some of the places in our life where we most need God. These are the same places we don’t let our friends, family and spouses into. It is too easy to hold onto this picture of God who is all about polite conversation and moral behavior, but Jesus was born in
Are you willing to go to dark and scary places to be the hands and feet of the savior? I think it is hauntingly and terribly poetic that the
Your homework this week: An essay question. I know people like short answer, but here we go anyway. It is one question:
What are you going to do about Christmas? Knowing God came into our scary world, was born into the continuing history of God saving God’s people and was born into the midst of political intrigue and intense danger, what are you going to do in response? What are you going to do about Christmas?
[1] “Priests brawl at
