A Christmas Reflection 2007
Text: Matthew 2:13-23
This time of year is inevitably a time of reflection, of looking back over the past year. We recount important events, we reflect on what this past year has held. Of course, when we think about it, New Year’s is rather arbitrary: it nothing more than a line on a calendar that marks a numerical tick. We know that in the week between Christmas and New Year’s world events continue on as they almost always do, and invariably mess up someone’s list of the most significant events of a given year. The Tsunami that roared across Indonesia and much of the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004 was one of them. This past Thursday’s assassination of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto is another. Just because we’re taking a look back doesn’t mean that stuff isn’t still happening in the moment.
I think we come to expect Christmas to be a magical time, where somehow all the world around us stops being what it is, if only for a moment. We yearn for that moment of peace, that truly “silent night” that we can shut all that other stuff off or out.
Yet that is more what we want Christmas to be… and not how it truly is.
We have to remember that Jesus was born into this tumultuous world that we live in. Today’s Gospel reading… the one that follow those idyllic stories from Christmas eve… is not a calm, serene image at all. It reminds us that the quiet nights that we like to preserve were very quickly interrupted by the tramping of soldier’s footsteps, and a hurried flight in the middle of the night into exile.
As Matthew tells it, immediately following the visit of the Magi from the east, the whole cast flees Bethlehem. The wise men take another route home, avoiding Jerusalem, and Mary, Joseph, and their son Jesus flee the coming danger and make their way to Egypt. As fuzzy as the actual historical details might be, it Matthew is clearly drawing a line between Jesus and the story of the Exodus. In the passage that we heard this morning, Matthew references several different elements Hebrew scripture at least six times either directly or indirectly. Moses was one who also escaped such a feat, and would ultimately to lead his people to salvation to the bonds of slavery. By extension, the same can be said of Jesus.
Yet for whatever layers of meaning that Matthew places here, maybe the most important thing is that according to tradition, for the first part of his life, Jesus himself was a refugee. He and his family fled from war and violence. In other words, instead of an ideal, calm life, Jesus was born into an early life of hardship, being constantly on the move, after having been uprooted by the reality of events in the real world. This would be something that would follow him for the rest of his life… even to the very end on that dark Friday morning. Yet even so, he was able to see and teach us something about how God sees the world… in spite of all the hardship that his own life held.
There is a power to this that we really do miss. As much as we would like the calm, serene images of Christmas, God came into the world to experience life as a human being, with all of its hardships, trials, and gritty reality. At Christmas we try to distance ourselves from the rush of everyday life, and yet there’s an irony that this is exactly why Christ is born… to be in the very midst of all of that… to experience and understand it firsthand…
Maybe that’s the lesson that we forget at Christmas. Instead of trying to remove ourselves from the concern and the cares of the world around us, the reverse is true: face it head on… trusting that the one who comes to us in the manger is in the midst of all of it with us.
After all, that’s what “Immanuel” or “God with us” truly means.
Amen.
This time of year is inevitably a time of reflection, of looking back over the past year. We recount important events, we reflect on what this past year has held. Of course, when we think about it, New Year’s is rather arbitrary: it nothing more than a line on a calendar that marks a numerical tick. We know that in the week between Christmas and New Year’s world events continue on as they almost always do, and invariably mess up someone’s list of the most significant events of a given year. The Tsunami that roared across Indonesia and much of the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004 was one of them. This past Thursday’s assassination of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto is another. Just because we’re taking a look back doesn’t mean that stuff isn’t still happening in the moment.
I think we come to expect Christmas to be a magical time, where somehow all the world around us stops being what it is, if only for a moment. We yearn for that moment of peace, that truly “silent night” that we can shut all that other stuff off or out.
Yet that is more what we want Christmas to be… and not how it truly is.
We have to remember that Jesus was born into this tumultuous world that we live in. Today’s Gospel reading… the one that follow those idyllic stories from Christmas eve… is not a calm, serene image at all. It reminds us that the quiet nights that we like to preserve were very quickly interrupted by the tramping of soldier’s footsteps, and a hurried flight in the middle of the night into exile.
As Matthew tells it, immediately following the visit of the Magi from the east, the whole cast flees Bethlehem. The wise men take another route home, avoiding Jerusalem, and Mary, Joseph, and their son Jesus flee the coming danger and make their way to Egypt. As fuzzy as the actual historical details might be, it Matthew is clearly drawing a line between Jesus and the story of the Exodus. In the passage that we heard this morning, Matthew references several different elements Hebrew scripture at least six times either directly or indirectly. Moses was one who also escaped such a feat, and would ultimately to lead his people to salvation to the bonds of slavery. By extension, the same can be said of Jesus.
Yet for whatever layers of meaning that Matthew places here, maybe the most important thing is that according to tradition, for the first part of his life, Jesus himself was a refugee. He and his family fled from war and violence. In other words, instead of an ideal, calm life, Jesus was born into an early life of hardship, being constantly on the move, after having been uprooted by the reality of events in the real world. This would be something that would follow him for the rest of his life… even to the very end on that dark Friday morning. Yet even so, he was able to see and teach us something about how God sees the world… in spite of all the hardship that his own life held.
There is a power to this that we really do miss. As much as we would like the calm, serene images of Christmas, God came into the world to experience life as a human being, with all of its hardships, trials, and gritty reality. At Christmas we try to distance ourselves from the rush of everyday life, and yet there’s an irony that this is exactly why Christ is born… to be in the very midst of all of that… to experience and understand it firsthand…
Maybe that’s the lesson that we forget at Christmas. Instead of trying to remove ourselves from the concern and the cares of the world around us, the reverse is true: face it head on… trusting that the one who comes to us in the manger is in the midst of all of it with us.
After all, that’s what “Immanuel” or “God with us” truly means.
Amen.
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