JEREMIAH 31:7-14

PSALM 84:1-8

EPHESIANS 1:3-6,15-19a

MATTHEW 2:13-15,19-23

Sermon – 1/5/03

The second part of the second Chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is where we leave the familiar “’G’-rated” part of the story of Christ’s birth and childhood and collide with the brutal reality of the world into which he was born.

This morning’s Gospel immediately follows the story of the visit of the wise men, the mysterious Magi from the East, the first Gentiles to kneel in adoration before Christ, whose inquiry about the birthplace of the newborn King of the Jews aroused fear and wrath among the political and religious establishment in Jerusalem – the very sorts of people who 30 years later would in fact conspire to put Jesus to death.

When Herod realized that the wise men had not returned and identified the Christ child for him, he was furious, the three verses omitted from the middle of this morning’s Gospel tell us, and sent his soldiers to murder all the little boys of Bethlehem under the age of two, so as to be sure to kill the child proclaimed to be the new King of the Jews. Jesus’ adoptive father, Joseph, had however been warned by God to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus, where they stayed until Herod died. Coached again by God, Joseph and his family did not return to Bethlehem (where Herod’s most brutal son reigned) but settled in Nazareth of Galilee in the north of the Holy Land, where Herod’s less terrible son Herod Antipas was the local vassal of the Roman Emperor.

So, according to Matthew, Jesus’ life was in danger even when he was a toddler. Jesus’ earliest human memories would have been of being a refugee in a foreign country, and Jesus never returned to his birthplace and first home. This is not a picture of tranquility and innocence such as people often like to envision at Christmas – but after all, the message of the angels of peace on earth did not describe a then current reality, but a new reality which would be established by the newborn Savior, and established the hard way, by his suffering and death and the final coming of his Kingdom.

Matthew makes it very clear that the Savior is born because human beings need saving, that there is rampant wickedness and violence on earth which does not flinch at destroying innocent babies in an effort to destroy the Holy One who brings peace.

Not only that, but in Matthew’s story Jesus re-lives some of the key experiences of his people, the Jewish people, in a way that recalls God’s providential guidance in times past.

In the Book of Genesis, the patriarch Joseph, son of Jacob, was providentially guided to Egypt: God used the wicked intentions of his brothers, who sold Joseph into slavery, to bring about their survival as well as Joseph’s during a subsequent famine in the Holy Land. Like the more ancient Joseph, Joseph the husband of Mary is guided by God through dreams, which tell St. Joseph to flee to Egypt, to return to the Holy Land (thus retracing the Exodus journey of the people of Israel) and to settle in Galilee, an area of many Gentiles or non-Jews (thus fulfilling the mission of the Jewish people to be a “light to the nations” according to the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah).

Jesus, like Moses, is threatened with death at a young age by a tyrannical ruler; Herod is like Pharaoh. Jesus, like Moses, comes to adulthood and begins his mission in an area far from his birthplace: Galilee (in the north of the Holy Land) is far from Bethlehem (just south of Jerusalem), while Moses took refuge in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula before he returned to the capital city to lead the people to freedom.

In short, according to Matthew, Jesus experienced in early childhood a long journey which encapsulated both the geographical and theological journeys of the Jewish people over the previous nearly 2,000 years, touching on the experiences of the patriarchs, of Moses, of David (birth at Bethlehem) and of the most outward-looking of the prophets after the Exile of the 6^th Century B.C. Part of the purpose of the infancy narrative in both Matthew and Luke, scholars often note, is to make the connection between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between God’s actions to save God’s people in ancient times and God’s dramatic new offer of salvation to all people through Jesus the Messiah, the Son of Abraham, the Son of David, the Son of God.

O.K., point made. Matthew’s concise and dramatic account – punctuated by his signature formula for quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures (“This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet...”) – makes the role of the stories of Jesus’ infancy as the link between the Old and New Testaments clear. Knowing this, and seeing Jesus’ danger-driven travels as a child gives new power to the phrase “Emmanuel – God with us.”

But there’s even more we can gain from this brief, dramatic narrative for our reflection on our own lives.

Sometimes people today assume that God’s love and blessings are manifested fully here and now and in tangible ways – and that if they don’t feel blessed in the ways they expect such blessings to be manifested, then God has abandoned them, ignored them or is punishing them for some reason.

This is all based on the interpretation by people of the suffering and dislocations of their lives as divine punishment or abandonment. But what if suffering and/or dislocations simply happen in life, if they are simply normal parts of life in the broken world we live in – and what if God has come into this broken world to experience its brokenness fully, to guide us through it and ultimately to triumph over the world’s brokenness – death and sin – and create a new world?

If that is the way things are, then when we experience dislocation and suffering, we can pray to a God who understands both because he has been on the receiving end of both. Even in early childhood, Jesus had a “contract” on his life by a brutal man, Herod, who did, in fact, murder three of his own children. Even in early childhood, Jesus “had no place to lay his head”, as a refugee, a Displaced Person, a homeless immigrant. Even in childhood, Jesus and his earthly father and mother had to start completely from scratch twice in communities far from their previous homes. Have you had some problems and challenges while traveling the road of life? So did Jesus, Joseph and Mary – and God’s guidance was there for them through it all.

Look back at your life. Perhaps there were times that were truly difficult but that now – or perhaps even at the time – you could detect God’s guiding voice steering you (or trying to steer you!) in a good direction. Perhaps we didn’t have dreams like Joseph (though don’t rule that out), but God’s strong and kindly guidance can pop into our lives in unexpected forms and places. No danger is too severe and no place too remote for God’s guidance to get through to us.

And we, each of us, even the oldest among us, are still in the midst of our journeys. We do not yet see “what it all means”, though we may see some of it. We may, in fact, relate to Joseph as described in today’s Gospel. As huge a responsibility as Joseph had, even he only got step-by-step instructions from God. Take Mary to be your wife. Flee to Egypt. Go back to the Holy Land. Go to Galilee. He didn’t know the end of the story, or the full meaning of his part.

But he knows now.

We don’t know now how much what we are called to do by God may mean. We are all on journeys, and some journeys like the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt, may feel very much like trips taken in the dark and like retreats rather than advances. But if we are following the guidance of God in our life journeys, as difficult and scary as the roads may sometimes be, we will always have a Divine Companion and Guide on the road with us, there will be unexpected wonders on the way, and at journey's end we will know joy beyond our wildest imaginings.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church