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."I remember, years ago, attending worship on the 1st Sunday of Christmas, and being quite bummed to encounter this text.
When 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 Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
"A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more."
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."
Sorta negative.
Sorta explodes one’s hope for a continuation of the warm fuzzies that were stirred on Christmas eve.
Is this choice of texts perhaps an almost necessary nudge, to raise our eyes from our own selves, and to fix our eyes on the refugee, the lost, the one in need?
I think of a meditation by Al Rogness, Never Alone: he says:
In a profound sense we can never be alone, not even with God. When we pray to him and invite him to come to us, we discover that we have no private party with him. He brings with him all who are his. He also brings with him all who are in need and says: “Whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for me.” So, as we go to our private rooms or sit alone with God, we sense the vast company to which we belong in him, and we cannot escape those whom the Lord asks us to help and to love.
2 comments:
Thanks for that Rogness quote. I like that.
sermon illustration deal:
*
o
In an episode of the TV series “M*A*S*H”, two doctors and a nurse desperately try to keep a fatally wounded soldier from dying on Christmas Day lest the man's wife and children back home forever after have to associate Christmas with their loved one's death. When the man expires just before midnight anyway despite their best efforts, Dr. Pierce moves the clock hands forward twenty minutes and then puts “December 26” on the death certificate. "No child should have to connect Christmas to death" he says in defense of his unethical faking of a medical record.
If we're honest, we all feel the same way. That's why one commentator once compared Matthew 2 to an obnoxious and most unwelcome guest at your Christmas party--the kind of person who talks too loudly and who spills eggnog all over your nice Persian rug. The so-called "Slaughter of the Innocents" is about as un-Christmasy a Bible passage as we could imagine. But maybe that's not Matthew's fault but our own. Maybe it is OUR conception of the true meaning of Christmas that needs revising, not Matthew's narrative.
Post a Comment