January 1, 2017 – Matthew 2:13-23
Matthew 2:13-23
God-with-Us, God-with-Others Through Us
First Sunday of Christmas – January 1, 2017
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
On the fourth Sunday of Advent I preached about God-with-Us, Emmanuel, in Jesus.
And what great good news that is.
Jesus is God-with-Us through thick and thin, in good times and bad times.
On Christmas Eve we had a beautiful service, we sang beautiful songs, lit beautiful candles,
and heard the beautiful and heart-warming story of Jesus’ birth in Luke –
that was a good time!
Today, on the First Sunday of Christmas, we would love that beautiful,
heart-warming feeling to continue.
But strangely the lectionary will not allow us to do that.
The lectionary has its own wisdom.
And though we have managed to avoid this for several years,
today we have Matthew’s difficult and heart-rending story that has come to be
called “The Slaughter of the Innocents.”
The petty king Herod, a puppet king of the Romans in Palestine, cannot endure the thought of
a rival and so makes of thousands of babies a sacrifice to his insecurity.
From the birth of a child to the deaths of thousands in a single week.
The Bible is a strange document – and the lectionary is its servant.
It is very difficult on this day to say after the reading “The Gospel or Good News of the Lord!”
But we do.
And there is a good reason for that.
And the reason has something to do with the fact that God in Jesus is God-with-Us,
through thick and thin, through the best and worst that we experience.
For on this day we discover that Jesus understood what it was like to be a refugee.
We discover that Jesus – from childhood –
knew what it is like to experience fear and uncertainty.
He knew what it was like to experience homelessness.
He knew what it was like to go to a strange country where you likely were not welcome –
and be shunned, and maybe bullied, and not know the language.
And when you think about it a little, you realize how contemporary this story is.
Millions of people experience exactly the same things every single day on our planet.
And Jesus knows what that is like.
And, sadly, how many children share the fate of those who did not manage to flee to Egypt?
How many have been sacrificed to the insecurities of modern day tyrants?
We know the name of one – Alan Kurdi. How many thousands don’t we know the names of?
The thing is, this story in Matthew, though difficult, is not really that difficult to relate to.
Most of us are glad to be able to flip the calendar over to 2017 this morning.
2016 was a dark, difficult year.
So many shootings and so much terror,
so much division and unrest, so much violence and tension.
It is scandalous.
What happens to Jesus and the children in the story is scandalous.
And what happens in our own day is scandalous.
It is scandalous that the number of children who rely on food banks is rising.
It is scandalous that in our neighbourhood children are hungry, neglected, abused and afraid.
It is scandalous that around the world many children suffer the fate of Alan Kurdi.
And yet – the good news in this story is that Jesus is God-with-Us.
The God we meet in Jesus knows the fear, the tension, the uncertainty and the grief that
accompanies him and his family on their flight.
Jesus experiences all this and knows it intimately.
And here’s the thing: would you trust a god that didn’t know this?
That didn’t know from experience how you feel when you are at your lowest?
Would you trust a god that claims to champion the vulnerable without knowing what it is like
to be a vulnerable person?
Like many things in life, if you haven’t experienced something,
you really don’t know what it is like.
Most of you know my Dad died last week.
And it is such a strange experience losing a parent.
It is unlike anything else I have ever known – except when I lost my mom almost 25 years ago.
There is nothing else quite like the experience of losing a parent.
Parents have an almost mythical dimension to them.
They gave birth to you and nurtured you – or didn’t nurture you.
One way or another their existence is almost unlike any other persons’ in your life.
And when they die their death is almost unlike any other persons’ in your life.
Only those who know what it is like from experience can really know what it is truly like.
And that – here is some more good news – that puts them in an ideal situation to help you.
You can say that about a lot of things, right?
For those who have lost a spouse the best help comes from those who have experienced that.
For those going through separation and divorce the best help comes from
those who have gone down that road.
For those experiencing addiction the best help comes from those who have struggled themselves.
And for those with mental illness the best help come from those who know
what that is like from the inside.
The thing is: I think that when Jesus went with his family to Egypt
the welcome they received was probably not that great!
Their Egyptian neighbours probably complained about the people who looked different,
ate different, and had a different religion with strange customs and different holidays.
Government officials probably complained about those “other people” and the strain they were
on their country’s resources.
Some probably complained that Joseph the carpenter took away a job from
some more “deserving” Egyptian.
The thing is: I like to think these experiences that Jesus came to know first-hand in his own body
shaped and greatly aided his later ministry!
Don’t you think?
Don’t you think it helped him in his ministry to the people on the margins?
And his ministry to the vulnerable?
And his ministry to those ostracized because of race or gender or illness?
Jesus was famous for ministering to all these people – scandalously so.
And I like to think he could do it effectively because he knew exactly what it was like.
He knew what it was like to be an outsider, to be unwelcome, to be vulnerable.
That was good news to the folks back home in Nazareth and Galilee.
And that is good news for us.
Jesus doesn’t just know what it is like to be vulnerable,
Jesus uses that knowledge to minister to the vulnerable.
Theologians like to throw around the term incarnation, that in Jesus God took on human flesh.
But a story like this helps us to really think about what that means.
It means that in Jesus God experienced what we experience, all the joys and sorrows,
and is very close to us when we experience them.
And can minister to us and love us because God in Jesus knows just what that is like.
As biblical scholar Melissa Bane Sevier beautifully writes:
When we find ourselves at the pinnacle of Christmas joy,
we experience Jesus as a boy delighting in every new discovery.
When we know difficulty, illness, or loss, we experience Jesus as one who knew deep suffering.
When we wonder who cares about all the forgotten people, we experience Jesus as
a young boy whose family was forced to flee an evil regime to survive.
Jesus was God incarnate, in the flesh.
And now, the even deeper meaning of Christmas and the incarnation is this:
you now are Jesus in the flesh.
You are the body of Christ on earth.
Be born in us today, we sang together on Christmas Eve.
Be born in us, be incarnate in us.
The story of Christmas lives on in you:
when you are a companion to the lonely and harness the loneliness you have known in order to
bring companionship;
when you serve food at the food bank and harness the hunger you may have known or
the delight and goodness in food;
when you care for family, friends, and neighbours and harness the experience of having been
cared for when you needed it most.
When you do these things and countless others, it becomes Christmas every day of the year.
When you incarnate the one who knew loss and uncertainty and ostracism and
ministered out of those experiences.
Who had a deep compassion and deep love for those he ministered to because
he knew just what they were experiencing.
This is a difficult story but one that is filled with good news.
The good news of God-with-Us in Jesus through thick and thin.
And the good news of God-with-Others – through you.
So together, let us say “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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