Matthew 2:13-23
After the
Scripture is read in higher liturgical churches the liturgist will often say,
“The Word of the Lord” to which the congregation responds, “Thanks be to
God”. It seems a bit rote to me
but it works for many. Today the
better response for after Scripture would be, “Like it or Not”. “The Word of the Lord”, “Like it or
Not” because today’s scripture is anything but pleasant to think about much
less reflect upon and talk about together. Without the feminist take on it this scripture is what
Phyllis Trible, Old Testament scholar, would call a ‘Text of Terror’.
·
Like
it or not the Bible doesn’t comment on human behavior by putting on
rose-colored glasses, rather it talks about what is true of human behavior.
·
Like
it or not the Bible shows us the destructive potential of human nature.
·
Like
it or not the Bible illustrates for us that sometimes there are no easy
answers, or any answers at all that are adequate enough to satisfy our longing
and understanding of the meaning of this life.
·
Like
it or not the Bible might disappoint us sometimes, but God however does not.
Our reading
today is of the flight of the holy family into Egypt aka the slaughter of the innocents and it has three elements: the
escape; the massacre of infants; and the return from Egypt, each one worthy of
a sermon on its own. But we need
to look at these three elements in context with one another to understand just
where God is and how we might make some sort of meaning of this story.
The Escape to Egypt
Now after they
(the magi) 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.”
The Massacre of the Infants
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.”
The Return from Egypt
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.”
“The Word of the
Lord” “Like it or Not!”
Three dreams
later and a lot of picking up stakes Mary, Joseph and little Jesus finally find
themselves in Nazareth where he would spend a large portion of his
childhood. But their journey from
sleepy Bethlehem to Nazareth was circuitously dangerous and long. Not by any means a straight route.
And those
dreams! Oh these dreams! I can only imagine that Joseph would
have developed a sleep phobia or some sort of sleep disorder. I’d be awfully afraid to put my head
down at night for fear of yet another angel appearing and what he would say to
me. Yet it was through these vivid
dreams that the holy family was saved each and every time.
I find it
curious also that here they are, in the land of promise, the land of milk and
honey that their ancestors searched and settled in and then they are told to go
back to a place where their ancestors were once slaves. They were told to leave a place of
comfort and safety and go to Egypt, a place that historically was not a safe
haven for their forebears. Yet it
was in this land that the holy family found refuge and a hiding place from a
very fearful Herod and his maniacal decree.
And then, once
back in the Jerusalem district they still weren’t safe because we know that
hatred begets hatred and Archelaus, one of Herod’s three sons, was now the king
in charge of Judea. Joseph lies
down for some sleep and again is warned to head northeast, to the region of
Galilee where another one of Herod’s sons who must have gotten a better gene
from his mother and didn’t seek to kill Jesus ruled. And so they did.
Jesus’ infant years were anything but peaceful and the Bible is anything
but consistent.
In September we
began the narrative lectionary year with the story of Noah and that terrible
flood. We continued with the calling of Abraham and Sarah out of their comfort
zone and off into parts unknown.
She laughed at the thought of children and yet she gave birth to
Isaac. We’ve examined Esau’s
stolen birthright by Jacob and Joseph being sold into slavery and being thrown
into prison. We’ve studied
together the giving of the commandments, David and Bathsheba, and Solomon’s
wisdom.
If you remember,
all of these narratives had aspects of them that were gnarly but yet showed us
God’s reliable presence. Now we
are spending time in the Gospel of Matthew and we begin with another gnarly and
highly dangerous story.
Herod was a mean
and nasty man. He was power hungry
and corrupt. As Lord Acton has
famously said, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”. We can see throughout his life that
Herod was fearful and ruthless. He
was also an assassin who killed two of his own sons, a couple of his 14 wives,
and many other innocents along the way. Is it no wonder that he would want
someone, anyone dead who threatened his kingship, his messiah-ship with a small
‘m’.
But if you think
that the killing of the innocents is some long ago story, think again. Not much
has changed in the human behavior department. We still hunger for power and are filled with fear. We still live with isolation and
injustice in our lives. We still
live according to our own desires and not the divine desire of God.
We only have
think as far back as December 2014 and remember the storming of a Pakistani
school where innocent children were killed, or back to May when we heard of the
abduction of 200 school girls in Nigeria, and further back to December of 2012
in Newtown, our own backyard where this ‘killings of the innocents’ played
itself out once again. We could
have written this Biblical narrative ourselves. While we may or may not know the motives of the perpetrators
there are really no words that can explain by any intelligent reason why these
things happen. But they do and
like Rachel in Ramah all we can do is weep tears of sorrow.
Jesus’ birth
didn’t quite eradicate sin as we like to think. He was born in deplorable
conditions. Sought after to be
killed. Traveled by camel to a
former unsafe place and lived there as a refugee. And then, was executed at the hands of the Romans. I think that the promise of the
incarnation is not that our difficulties will cease to exist; that we will live
charmed lives if we follow Jesus.
The promise of
the incarnation is that God is in the middle of it all doing something
different if we choose to see it.
We see God as a protector when the angels whisper to Joseph to flee the
dangers in Israel for Egypt. We
see God as deliverer when we see that the holy family has safely arrived in Nazareth. We see God as creator because a new beginning
has been given to Mary and Joseph.
This text allows me to see a God who is involved in every way in the lives
of God’s beloved, our lives. And
isn’t that what we all year for?
There is despair
around us but the light of God show us different roads to travel and
alternative ways to live and to cast a vision for the future. And this is the word of God!
Like it or not!
Amen.
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