Matthew 2:13-16, 19-23
Christmas 2
January 5, 2020
William G. Carter
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.” Then Joseph got up, took the child
and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and 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.” …
When Herod died, an
angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and
said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of
Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.” Then Joseph
got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But
when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father
Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he
went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town
called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be
fulfilled, “He will be called a Nazorean.”
Today it would be easy for a sermon to go off the rails. It wouldn’t
take much. I suppose a preacher could simply point out how the Bible reports an
assassination attempt. A nervous ruler tried to eliminate someone he believed
would be a threat. Say that, the congregation might get the shivers, and some may
buckle their seatbelts for a bumpy ride.
But I’m not going to talk about King Herod. This is still the season
of Christmas, and it’s not his time.
But it wouldn’t take much for a sermon to cause a ruckus. All it
might take is for a preacher to mention the scholarly consensus about the three
wise men. Where did they come from – and where did they return to? Details are
scarce, opinions are mixed, but many believe the wise man traveled from a large
area called Persia. It encompasses the present-day countries of Iraq and Iran.
Just mention that, on a day like today, and good Christian folks may reach for
their smelling salts.
But I’m not going to talk about the Magi. They have already gone
home by another way.
No, this is church so I’m going to talk about Jesus. This is his
church, his time, and his story. And if I talk about him, that might seem curious,
because according to the Bible story, today he doesn’t do anything. He is a
passive participant, taken by his parents to Egypt. He is hidden from his
enemies among his enemies.
When the threat is over, his parents bring him out of Egypt. Yet
there is the possibility of a continuing threat, so his parents take him
somewhere else. They land up north in the Galilee district, far from the
palaces of power, in a small town nobody will be able to find. That is where Jesus
will be raised. He will be taught to pray in the synagogue, instructed in the
promises of God’s scripture, and apprenticed in Joseph’s woodshop.
In two different ways, Matthew says this was the will of God. The first
is that he quotes the Bible prophets, as he has already done three times in
this story. Jesus is relocated in God’s witness relocation program so that “the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be
called a Nazorean.’” Never mind that we can’t find the verse that he’s quoting.
The phrase “he will be called a Nazorean” does not appear in the Jewish Bible.
But it is Matthew’s way of saying that raising the child Jesus in a small
northern town was what God intended.
The other way Matthew
says this is by reporting on Joseph’s dreams. God has been directing the story
by sending a series of dreams.
- Joseph discovers Mary is pregnant, and knows the baby isn’t his. He decides to fulfill the commandments by breaking off the engagement quietly, but God sends him a dream: “take Mary and the child as your own.” And he does it.
- The wise men arrive in Persia to ask, “Where is the king?” The current king says, “Find him for me, and report back.” They find him, but then they have a dream: “Don’t tell Herod nothing.” So they go home.
- Meanwhile, Joseph is pondering how to spend the gold, burn the frankincense, and what to do with the myrrh, when God sends another dream: “Get out of town! Run away to Egypt.” So he wakes Mary at midnight and off they go, far away from Herod’s soldiers.
- Sometime later, maybe a year or a couple of years, God suddenly sends another dream, “The coast is clear. Come home.” So they pack up and head north – until God sends another dream to say, “Head further north, not to Sepphoris, the big city, but to little Nazareth.” Once again, Joseph obeys what he hears God say.
Now, if you are keeping
track, God sends four different dreams, not counting the wise men’s dream. That’s
how God sneaks past Joseph’s conscious defenses – by speaking when Joseph is
asleep, when he can’t defend himself, when he can’t shrug it off. Like another
Joseph in the Book of Genesis, Joseph the woodcutter hears God speak and he
does what he hears. In every case, he “goes the extra mile,” he pursues “the
higher righteousness” that his son Jesus will teach some thirty years later.
On the face of it, it’s
a miracle story, a story of how God rescues his own Son when the child is still
defenseless. I’ve thought about that sometimes. Frankly, I wish God could have
sent the same dream to the parents of all the other children in Bethlehem. The murderous
brutality of King Herod should have been sabotaged by a few more dreams and a
few more angels. That any other lives would have been lost is an enormous
tragedy.
But then I reflect some
more, and I realize that it’s because of Jesus, the grown-up Jesus, that I
could ever name Herod’s actions for what they are. It’s because of Jesus that I
could call “an enormous tragedy” the murderous events that happened far too
often under a brutal empire.
In that time, life was
cheap. Brutality was common. By birthing Jesus into the world, God was
announcing an alternative. There’s another way to treat one another. It’s not a
new way. God’s Law had taught for centuries to love neighbors, to welcome immigrants,
to guard the vulnerable, to act with fairness, to work for justice. There’s
nothing new about any of that. Yet the recurring human problem is the lack of moral courage to treat people the way God tells us to treat them.
So now the newness of
the Gospel is that God’s very instruction – God’s Torah, God’s Word – becomes enfleshed
in Jesus. And God is going to keep him alive until he is old enough to say:
·
“Blessed
are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (5:5)
·
“Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
(5:6)
·
“Blessed
are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. (5:7)
·
“Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they will see God. (5:8)
·
“Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (5:9)
This is the Jesus whom God protects long enough
for him to teach:
·
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for
an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an
evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also…”
(5:38-39)
·
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall
love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children
of your Father in heaven.” (5:43-45)
·
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on
earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but
store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” (6:19-20)
·
“In everything do to others as you would have
them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” (7:12)
Jesus comes to teach and embody the higher righteousness of the
kingdom of heaven. And if all of this seems impractical and impossible, Jesus smiles
at us and says, “All of you are the salt of the earth, but if you lose your
flavor, you are good for nothing but spreading on the road.” (5:13)
From the beginning of the Gospel, God’s plan is to send Jesus into
the world to teach, to heal, to love, to judge, and ultimately to give his life
for the benefit of the kingdom of heaven. In our world, the ways of God have always
been resisted. Yet today we hear the testimony of God’s persistence. It is
heaven’s plan that Jesus should speak the Gospel, that all of us should hear
it, and that a resistant world would be won back one soul at a time.
And even if the evil in the world should finally track down Jesus
and threaten him with a cross, the Gospel tells us that he comes back from the
dead, that he stays with us (whether consoling or nudging), and that he will live
eternally until all enemies are loved, all wounds are healed, and all
injustices judged and corrected.
So at the beginning of a new year, the invitation for us is to
trust this is God’s dream for all of us. The world is not lost, not on your
life – and not on God’s life! The light has come in Jesus the Messiah. No one will
ever be able to snuff it out. God is God, and God sends the light.
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