Sermon 12/30/07 (Matthew 2:13-23)

“Desperate for Maternity Leave”
Matthew 2:13-23
Rev. Désirée H. Gold
St. Mark’s United Church of Christ, Baltimore, MD
Sunday, 30 December, 2007
First Sunday after Christmas

The gifts have been opened. The Christmas dinner has been eaten. ....And, yes, the birth of the baby Jesus has even been celebrated! Here we are, five days after Christmas, feeling satisfied, or tired, or hopeful... or just anxiously heading to the mall, so we can return those gifts we didn’t want and take advantage of the “post-Christmas” sales.

Overall, it has been a joyful season. Even if we did not, ourselves, feel particularly joyful during this holiday season, the signs of celebration were all around us. Cheerful carols, the jolly laugh of Santa Claus, the frenzied shops where loved ones carefully chose gifts. And yes, the hopeful (if not very jolly), Advent season, with its candles, special music, beloved scriptures, and Nativity scenes: the remembrance of Christ’s miraculous coming into the world, as a tiny human child. What joy!

We know this Christmas celebration so well. Year after year, we welcome the baby Jesus into our midst, so that we feel like family (indeed, we are God’s family), and we just want to admire the baby for a few more weeks. We want to spend time with the infant who, no matter how many times he is born into our world, never ceases to amaze us.

... But... we are caught up short. Just five days past the birth of the Christ-child, just six days after we gathered in this place on the magical night that is Christmas Eve, ... now, suddenly, we are flung back into violence, we are flung back into strife. We are flung back into the world from which we had hoped that baby Jesus would save us.

The infant Jesus, his mother Mary, and father Joseph, who were so venerated on Christmas Eve, are forced to flee from Judea to Egypt, in order to escape a wrathful, violent Herod. Herod, jealous of a tiny infant who had already been named “king” lashes out in a tremendously violent act, set out to kill all the children in and around Bethlehem, ages two and under.

We know this story so well that the words no longer sink into us as deeply as if we were hearing it for the first time. But imagine this! Every child under the age of two was to be killed. Bethlehem was not a large town, so the actual number of infants murdered was not that many. But the horror of having a small child torn from your arms, in the interests of a jealous king, is unimaginable. The terror of wondering, “Will my child be next?” is unthinkable.

We know the story of Mary and Joseph’s flight to Egypt so well that its impact may not sink in as it once did. But imagine what it must have been like for them! Already, they had faced difficulty. Joseph’s young fiancée had gotten pregnant before they were married -- a disgrace. Then, while traveling, they were unable to find a place for Mary to give birth, and their child was born in the discomfort of a barn. Those Christmas scenes, which we picture with such sentimentality, were nothing compared to the postpartum horror they faced.

As you now know, I collect Christmas cards, and a while ago I bought a box of cards that depicted the flight to Egypt. The painting on the cards was rather dark, in blues and greens and blacks, and it was not particularly cheerful. But it was a peaceful scene nonetheless, and the message inside the card was a traditional message of Christmas joy.

Although I liked the card, the flight to Egypt was anything but peaceful, and joy would have been the last feeling on Mary and Joseph’s hearts. Their newborn child’s life was in danger, at the hands of a ruthless king. Imagine knowing that your infant child is about to be slaughtered! I can barely imagine their breathless flight to Egypt, their tearful, fearful ride out of Judah.

Like so many of our Biblical stories, this story seems out of place. After all, we are just recovering from the joy of Christmas! Then... smack! This horror appears.

Scholar Frederick Niedner wonders, “Must we listen to this? Have we no season to block out the sounds of grief?”1 Yes, even the Christmas season (and in the church year, the season of Christmas is not yet over), is beset by grief, beset by pain. How can we deal?

On Christmas Eve, we celebrated the light that pushes forth from the darkness. ... But now the darkness seems to be pushing back down, trying to block out the light. What happened to the hope?

Those of us who know the story well know that the desperate escape of Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus will be successful. We know that Jesus will grow up, will become a rabbi, a healer, and a miracle worker. But we know also, that he will not escape death forever. We know, too well, the violence of the cross that the grown Jesus will face. And we know, in Niedner’s words, that “Mary will [finally] suffer the cruel robbing of her womb,” in Jesus’ death on the cross.2

That satisfaction, that exhaustion, that hope, that joy, that we were feeling this week after Christmas now feels more like a tumble of emotions churning in our gut. We don’t know what to think! Are we supposed to celebrate the baby Jesus, to coo at his sweet newborn face, his amazing presence in our midst? Or are we to remember the horrifying flight to Egypt... and the cross?

The point is, we are faced with both. On Christmas Eve, I spoke of God entering the world in human form, to experience all that we are as people. On Christmas Eve, those were words of hope! We know the presence of God so well, because God dared to take human form, because God dared to become like us, with all our foibles, weaknesses, ... and the possibility of death. For this reason, the baby Jesus was forced to flee the wrath of Herod... and for this reason, Jesus was able to die on the cross. In the hopeful words of Christmas Eve, he became like us.

The sadness, the fear of the flight to Egypt seem incongruous to us. They jolt us to bitter awareness after the happy haze of Christmas Day. But are they really so strange? It would be wonderful if such violence did not exist in our world, yes. We pray every day for peace in Iraq, in Israel and Palestine (the place of Jesus’ birth). Now we pray for peace and an end to violence in tumultuous Pakistan. As someone who rides the bus, I shudder at the recent violence on Baltimore buses. Violence -- whether it is a wrathful first century king, the assassination of a world leader, or the violent acts of teenagers in our own communities, is all around us. I believe fervently that God does not create the violence in our world; God has given us free will, and unfortunately we do not always use it well.

But God is willing to meet us where we are, and that means that God is present not only in the hopefulness of Christmas Eve, but also in the violence of Herod’s wrath. Not only in the miracles of Jesus’ healing and the wonder of his resurrection, but also in the tragedy of the cross. We are able to know God, because God knows us so well that God is able to meet us where we are, in all our joy, all our pain, all our hope, and all our sorrow.

The story of the incarnate Christ is not without violence, it is not without sorrow. But it is never without hope.

Now let us pray.

1 Frederick Niedner, “Rachel Weeping,” The Christian Century Dec. 14, 2004: 17.
2 Ibid.