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“In the Shadow of the Manger”
Matthew 2:13-23
December 30, 2007
Now after [the Wise Men] had left them, 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 saw that he had been tricked by them, 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.
This, is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Echoes and Elastic Time
I have been dodging this text for five years, hoping I’d never have to preach it. Even before I became the Mother of a two year old, I never thought I could add much here, and still don’t really. And just when I thought I had made it through another Advent safe from this horrible Escape to Egypt tale, it caught up with me on the 1st Sunday after Christmas, when I wasn’t looking. So for some reason I gave in this year. I decided to close my eyes, listen one more time, and see what I might hear.
And the first thing I heard today was Echoes. Echoes above and below and in-between the words, echoes from the Future. There are at least two allusions to the Wise Men, who had just visited with Mary and Joseph and little Jesus. They had come as thinly-veiled spies from King Herod, ordered to find the Child, the mysterious King of the Jews, and report back his location right away, so that Herod “might also go and pay him homage.” Yea right. The Wise Men, thank God, did no such thing, and their echoes today pull us forward, forward, forward, at least as far as next week when we celebrate Epiphany of the Lord Sunday, and read again their story again. Echoes of the future.
But those are not the only sort of Echoes. There are also Echoes from the past. As we listen to today’s text, we hear one allusion after another to the greatest event in ancient Judaism, the Exodus, when the Israelite people had been trapped in Egypt as slaves to the mighty Pharaoh. It is no accident, you see. It’s supposed to be ironic that Joseph was told to take his family and flee to Egypt—the Land of Slavery—to escape his own son’s death. And he did. The first thing I noticed was echoes.
And the second was how quickly this passage occurs after Jesus’ birth. We’re only a few beats into the song, only twelve verses after last Sunday with Joseph agreeing to wed Mary and raise her miracle child. This is just the next chapter! But suddenly time feels a bit less linear. Suddenly, as echoes of their future and echoes of the ancient past swirl around, with quotations and references which those earlier readers would have noticed right away…suddenly time seems more elastic. The way the narrative is written, time stretches this way and that: past, future, and present suddenly blending here.
So when we join the 1st century Christians who first heard this story, what is it that we’re supposed to hear? Between echoes of Herod, echoes of Pharaoh, echoes of this newborn’s child, what is Matthew showing us? In every possible way, he’s showing us: Danger.
When Joseph is warned in a dream to flee to Egypt, what comes to mind is the passage next week when the wise men are warned to leave Jesus and go home by another road, stopping King Herod’s terrible plans, at least for a moment. When Herod has the youngest children of Jesus’ hometown murdered in cold blood, the echoes we hear are from Pharaoh—so many centuries before—and his edict to kill the firstborn sons of the Israelite slaves, what we call Passover. The past is speaking, friends, and the future is whispering: Danger! Danger!
Even at his birth, Jesus is shadowed by danger. Erin Martin, whose blog I read this week, calls it
Living in the Shadow of the Manger.
Living in the shadows of danger.
And maybe there’s something we can learn there. When we consider Jesus’ vulnerability, his frailty, mortality, I think of him as an adult, hanging on the Cross. But even this early, in the stable, from the very beginning his tiny life was in danger. And why was that?
Jesus is a Threat to the Powers
Well, before Jesus’ eyes ever opened, before his first laugh, his first step; before Jesus said or did anything, his very Being Alive was a Threat…to the Powers that Be, to the Authorities that Were, to the shadows swirling round that manger.
For Jesus was born both Child and King. The Shepherds knew that, and brought their flocks to witness. The Wise Men knew that, and followed the star just to see. His parents knew that: Joseph, in his way; Mary, in hers.
I am reminded of the song that young Mary sang, in the 2nd chapter of Luke, which we call the Magnificat. Even so early, this mother knows the One whom she carried inside her will turn the whole world upside down! She sings…
He has shown great strength with his arm.
He has scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly…
The problem is that nobody wants to be brought down from their thrones, certainly not by a Child. King Herod, who forbade anyone to be worshipped except himself, most certainly was threatened by Jesus. And so, within just a few sentences, a few precious days after Jesus first breathed that dry desert air, we see Herod already making his move…
The future for little Jesus was filled with danger. And so was his past, for centuries upon centuries before his birth Pharaoh in ancient Egypt also refused to give up his throne. Pharaoh refused to be taken down by the masses of angry Israelite slaves, and so even when Moses begged, “Let my people go,” Pharaoh refused. The Rulers it seem, the Empires, the Powerful through history will not be threatened without a fight. And thus we hear the echoes of violence, of war, and of greed swirling in shadows around the Manger.
The 21st Century Manger
And friends, like I said, I didn’t want to preach on this text today. I didn’t want to peer into those Shadows, because when we do, we see clearly that Jesus was not born into some world of twinkling trees, stuffed stockings, and sentimental carols. Jesus was born in an all-too-real-world ripe with Violence, a world broken by Greed, and weighed down with Grief. It was a world in some ways very different from ours. And it was a world not altogether different from ours.
The vast majority of us sitting here are citizens of a nation at war. The war now is, technically, in Iraq, and unfortunately out of sight often leads to out of mind. Though the death toll rises for both Americans, Iraqis soldiers, Iraqi civilians, we are still a nation at War on Terror, as we have been at War on Drugs, at War in the Gulf, at War in Vietnam, at War in Korea, at war in Europe, at war, at war. In fact, according to UNICEF, less than 1% of what the world annually spent on weapons about a decade ago was needed to put every school-age child on the planet into school by the year 2000. Though many groups worked on it, it never ever happened, for we are a people enraptured with violence (www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp).
And we are still a world divided, whether it is by walls built in the Holy Land—right there in Bethlehem -- between Jews and Palestinians; in N. Ireland between Protestants and Catholics; or in my old state of Arizona between Mexicans and Americans. Walls divide us, whether they’re built of planks, or poverty.
I was reminded this week that ½ world’s population lives on less than US $2.00/day. That’s a little less than what Kyle spends on a cup of coffee at the Phoenix Cafe. We are a world divided. 20% of the population in developed nations consume not 20%, but 86% of the world’s consumable goods. A world divided. My 2 year old has a bookshelf full of books she has memorized, but nearly 1 Billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or even sign their names (www.globalissues.org).
Oh, but those are just statistics. We can snag them easily online. I could have even twisted them to say what I wanted. But I don’t need to. For the truth is that when we look close to home, even into our own lives, we see in richer color the shadows around the manger.
Over the years in parish ministry I have learned to begin expecting phone calls around Thanksgiving from families in crisis, for one of the surprising realities of our culture is that addictive behavior like drunk driving, domestic violence, and certainly depression don’t diminish during the Holiday Season, as one might think. They actually escalate! Christmas is a trying season for many families out there, and many families in here.
Perhaps most of all this year for our beloved Mary Pilcher. Mary gave me her blessing and permission to lift up her own family in light of our difficult text today, her family, as many of you know, that has been weighed down deep with grief at the loss of Mary’s precious 19-year-old granddaughter, Megan, in a fatal car accident in Syracuse NY. As Mary’s church family, our hearts have broken with her heart. Our prayers have joined with her prayers. And through the echoes of our own grief, we join her in the Shadow of the Manger.
The Audacious Good News of Christmas
When we take seriously this most serious text from Matthew, when we stop running like I have and start listening—we might begin to see Christmas a bit differently. Less tinsel perhaps--more grit. Whether echoed from ancient Palestine, from our churches, or from within our own family, the shadows around the manger are dark indeed…which makes the Good News wiggling inside that manger all the more bright!
There is a Good News in Christmas, friends, great Good News! For Jesus was not born into some make-believe sentimental world we’ll never know. Jesus entered THIS world, OUR world WITH us, a child, like we WERE, vulnerable like we still ARE. The Good News of Christmas is Christ Emmanuel, God with us.
Emmanuel, God with us, in our sufferings and our joys.
Emmanuel, God with us, in our brokenness and our wholeness.
Emmanuel, God with us, in the light of the manger and the darkness of shadows.
And friends I wonder whether the most audacious, the most subversive thing that Christians do all year long is what we did last Monday, on Christmas Eve. We gathered right here during those last holy moments before Christmas. We lit the four purple candles of Advent, symbolizing our waiting. And then with the McQuilkin family, we lit the one white Christ candle. When we lit that white candle, we said some powerful things. What we said was that Christmas this year was bringing us more than Presents, more than cookies, more than parties, more than even the Child. Christmas was bring us a King, not any King, but The King of Kings and The Lord of Lords. The very face of God with us.
The Child born into this world of Sin we called the Messiah. The Child who came into the shadows of violence with us, we were bold enough to call Prince of Peace.
There is a shadow side to Christmas, that’s for certain when we read today’s text, which is why I’m so glad it only comes around the lectionary once every three years.
But for now, will you remember with me the Manger, lit up with holy light beside the parents in the stable? Will you remember with me the Shadows…echoing from past to future, from Pharaoh to Herod, from me to you?
Let’s remember the Light. And let’s remember the Darkness. But most of all, let’s cling boldly to the Christmas promise from John 1:4:
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
This Christmas season and all our seasons together, let us walk in the light of the Manger. Amen.
Thanks to Erin Martin’s “Blogging Toward Sunday” from 12/26/07, www.theolog.org.