There and Back Again
Christmas 2 – Narrative Lectionary 1
January 4, 2015
Grace, Mankato, MN
Matthew 2.13-23
It seems there has been an uptick the last few years with “remade” fairy tales or children’s stories, such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and, if it counts, The Wizard of Oz. What I find interesting is that these are often told from another perspective than is familiar to us. What’s even more interesting is that the other viewpoint is often the typically “evil” character and one who becomes sympathetic from this new vantage point. One takeaway from these retellings is that life is more complex, more gray than black and white, than care to we admit. This holds true for our focus scripture today as we hear the story from Matthew told from a number of viewpoints. The most obvious is Joseph who we believe is sympathetic, but certainly not evil. Then there’s another side of the birth story that certainly is evil, yet not sympathetic, at least not to us: Herod.
We’ve gone through the increasing darkness of Advent that was exploded by the light of Jesus’ birth, and now it seems that we are right back into the darkness again with this brutal story about Herod’s mass killing. If nothing else, the slaughter of the innocents is a grim reminder that evil doesn’t take a break. In fact, it is also a reminder that God’s acts of peace and justice evoke responses of hostility. To say that “No good deed goes unpunished” would sound trite, if it were not for the Herod’s of this world. And if we needed reminding, the fearful response of Herod to the birth of Jesus shows how important God’s incarnation is to this broken world.
Now, it would be easy for us to put some distance between ourselves and the brutality of the text by doing some pew-side theologizing. We could (rightly) talk about the intentional connections Matthew is making between Jesus’ birth and the Old Testament story of Moses birth and subsequent leading of the Israelites out of Egypt. We would see Herod as a latter day Pharaoh, who also fearfully slaughtered innocent male babies and we would talk about God’s miraculous deliverance and provision for his appointed savior. Yet, none of that takes the pain away from parents who witness an untimely and violent end to their child’s life, who wonder how God who is supposed to be with us as Immanuel bails on us when we need him most.
This won’t be the last challenging text we’ll encounter in Matthew, for Jesus says some hard things to say to us. But it will be helpful to remember that these texts aren’t puzzles to be solved for answers as much as they are stories to stretch us in our understanding who God is and what it means to be people of faith. It would be natural to flee from the horror and tragedy of this story, but all appearances to the contrary, that’s not God’s way. For, in fact, God has not abandoned the people and Jesus will return to fulfill God’s mission to bring the world back to him. Jesus will do that by fully entering the darkness. God became flesh and blood not only to experience all of our pain, agony, and heartbreak, but also to show us that we are not alone in the midst of them.
I have known of people who have experienced a tragic loss and who say they are abandoned by their friends afterwards. Why? It’s because people don’t know what to say when this happens. Ironically, when we are going through these difficult times, we just want someone to weep with us and tell us we aren’t alone, that we will get through it. The scripture fulfillment theme in Matthews reminds us that God is in this, even when we can’t see, and that God weeps with us as we weep. As God’s gathered community, we are also called to weep with others. There is more to the story, of course, and the story won’t end until Jesus draws us all into it. Meanwhile, we are to be Rachels to our world, walking with the heartbroken with the love we show best, showing the hurting that Jesus is Emanuel, God with them. That is no fairy tale and it’s the perspective we need. Amen.
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