FIRST SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS -- 30 DECEMBER 2007
ST PAUL LUTHERAN CHURCH, ABQ NM -- The Rev. P. L. Holman
Isaiah 63:7-9; Psalm 148; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:13-23
"The Rest of the [Christmas] Story"
+ + +
Children's message: show them the holy family Mary, Joseph and the manger with Jesus from the ceramic nativity set. Who else is there? One person is missing: Herod, King Herod, the guy we just heard about from the Bible. He was angry about Jesus -- afraid of a baby! He thought that baby was trying to take his job. So God told Joseph in a dream to take his family far away from Herod. God spoke to him and Joseph protected his family. Do you have a family that protects you? Yes, the ones in your home, and the other ones like grandparents, and also these members of your church family who promise to help you learn about God and help you make good decisions for your life. Most importantly we all have God, the Perfect Parent, and Jesus, our Brother, who are our "holy" family. Together with the Holy Spirit they will always love and guide us, forgive us and help us grow strong and beautiful in God's eyes.
Let us pray: Thank you, God, for all the families who help keep us strong and safe in your love. Amen.
+ + +
I love worship on Christmas morning. It is usually a small group of folks who come to hear lessons from the Holy Scriptures and sing Christmas carols together, to enjoy the decorated tree and poinsettias in the daylight. This year I selected certain words from each of the seven readings and focused on them as we sang our way through worship. Christmas words like JOY, PEACE, LIGHT and LOVE.
On this first Sunday of Christmas -- the sixth day of Christmas -- we don't get six geese a-laying but rather more Christmas words. We get the rest of the story: words of fear overriding joy, chaos overpowering peace, darkness overshadowing of light, hatred instead of love. The one who was called "Emmanuel" -- God with us -- on Christmas day is now known as refugee, safely in the arms of his parents escaping Herod's anger fleeing Judea to live in Egypt for a time, a holy family seeking to protect the life of their holy child.
It is important for us to remember that these, too, are Christmas words. This too is the Christmas story. For in confronting suffering and struggle, Jesus' life from infancy embraces the very contemporary challenges of asylum and immigration, of slaughter of the innocents in the slavery of sweatshops and prostitution rings, of genocide and terrorist-generated violence, of assassination and mass murders and elder abuse and family violence that are part and parcel of our lives, our journeys, our struggles. These too are embraced by the Holy Hope that is Emmanuel, God with us.
Matthew takes a look back in the gospel reading today. He makes sure his readers know that this one born in Bethlehem, the four-star city of David, is also the one exiled to Egypt (not elevated to Jerusalem); and upon return goes to Galilee -- you know, Galilee of the Gentiles, the foreigners, the city that never fully recovered after its fall to the Assyrians. This is not a step up on the status ladder either, for good Judean Jews considered Galilean Jews only little better than the Samaritans To make matters worse, the family settles in Nazareth, a little nothing sort of village. Yet this early life transience is a sign from God, spoken by the prophets Matthew says, a sign that all of this is unfolding according to God's plan. God provides even in the most difficult and unexpected situations.
This "rest of the Christmas story" is holy stuff -- a blessing to be reminded that God meets us where we are and God's hand provides even when things don't go as we wish. As we look back at our own lives, at our family stories brought forward into these holy days, joys mixed with longing and pain, it is a blessing to be reminded that God provides. As we look back at our life together in 2007: stories of the massacre at Virginia Tech, and killing rampages in Omaha and Colorado; stories of lost miners and those killed trying to find them; of execution style murders in New Jersey and nooses in Jena, Louisiana; of slaves freed in China and continued killings in Rwanda, Darfur, Afghanistan and Iraq; and in our own country of elder abuse and child abuse, of missing children and absent parents -- to be reminded that God meets us where we are providing comfort for the suffering, saving grace for all the lost, and a vision for those with voice and hands to get up and do something so that death and abuse and war and hatred no longer have their way, but rather life and trust and peace and love.
On this day of the holy family 2007, a priest from Omaha NE recalls the journey of a husband and wife through a local shopping mall early in December, "a journey filled with dreams and expectations of Christmas. A few days later, the wife and her family journeyed down the aisle of our campus church accompanying her husband to the Mass of Christian Burial. He had been shot and killed while trying to stop a very sick young man from his killing spree. Their lives and all of our lives here were interrupted, visited by the unexplainable. There they were -- their entire family together in church praying for forgiveness, even for the killer. Dreams and hopes were present, trust accompanied these fragile but strong women and men, young and old who were all preparing to visit Bethlehem soon. Their Christmases are forever [changed] from a Hallmark-perfect glossy to a graceful presentation of tears as they present [to the Lord] not gold and incense, but their questions, doubts and the ultimate ‘let it be done’ [echoing the prayer of Mary]. The 'holy' of their family was not that they were in church. It was their living with the humanity passed on to them as a gift from God. It continues to be in how they [leave] the church [each week] and live with dreams, hopes, and tears altogether." [Larry Gillick, SJ, www.creighton.edu]
It was a powerful statement the ABQ JOURNAL front page made on Friday morning, the day after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated: A DANGEROUS WORLD IS NOW MORE DANGEROUS. Yes, and also, the Word of God made flesh among us proclaims, also more dangerously hope filled: for death does not have the last word, but LIFE.
The rest of the Christmas story unfolds in our midst reminding us that we have the holy hope that makes looking forward possible. We are a people -- a world -- with real needs: in need of a future; in need of belonging; a people held captive by powers beyond ourselves, and a people -- sinners, actually -- in need of being set free. As we move forward into the growing light of Epiphany days and all the changes and challenges 2008 is sure to bring, God is with us. We can trust that no matter the temperature outside or the chaos that roils around or within us, God in Christ travels with us offering the power of forgiveness and family, promising by his blood never ever to abandon those who put their trust in God.
The prophet Isaiah proclaims: we are wrapped in the 'thick mantle' [to borrow Walter Brueggemann’s phrase] of God's saving acts. Even though we are, have been and will be again and again and again people who deal falsely in one way or another, who time and again betray the God who loved the world enough to be born and die for it, our God will never betray us. That is thick mantle of holy hope for all who sit in darkness and cold of body or soul.
Yesterday I overheard someone complaining that winter is difficult because we have to put on so much clothing. It made me wonder: what if? What if instead of complaining as we don our scarves and coats, our thick hats and mittens, we think of them as signs of that thick mantle of God's grace. As we bundle up instead of grousing intentionally remember the thick mantle of God's saving love, imagining the warmth of this clothing being the warmth of God's swaddling us -- our blessing and ours to share with others.
We collected a lot of mittens, scarves, gloves and hats along with blankets for folks to help keep them warm this season. That is something, but it only scratches the surface of the need. Systems need reforming; attitudes need reshaping; God's Word needs studying and our God needs praising from the hearts of all who sit in darkness of any sort, whose souls are cold from apathy and inaction. One day the Christ-child shall indeed become King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and all the Herod-like tyrants of this world shall be no more. For now, we have work to do, and what was true for the people long ago continues to be so now: God is with us.
Merry Christmas! Amen.