In The Face Of The Real World

12/30/2007                                                           J. Richard Hunt

Texts: Isaiah 63:7-9; Hebrews 2:10-18; Matthew 2:13-23

Here we are on the sixth day of Christmas. The gift of this day, as the song goes, is a gaggle of six geese a laying. Some say those six geese represent the six days of God’s creating all that exists. The author of Hebrews suggests that these days remind us that God is with his children in life’s suffering.

This is the sixth day for celebrating a child born into the real world. Not the tov world God intends. The texts for this sixth day speak of the dark side of this celebration. The Gospel speaks of “Ethnic Cleansing.”

"Ethnic Cleansing"  It is a specter we've watched, with helpless anguish, over the past four years in DarFur and Baghdad. In today's Gospel, Matthew gives us a one sentence window on King Herod's unspeakable attempt to cleanse his kingdom of all Jewish baby boys two years old or younger.

It is an oft repeated atrocity. Through the centuries, tyrants have used this kind of  "final solution" in an attempt to intimidate their people. In their desire to be the only one, tyrants imagine themselves to have ultimate power over life and death.

It is a painfully real and bloody thread that weaves its way through the tapestry of human history.

Over and over the grief-stricken wailing of Rachel for her children echoes from the mouths of those who witnessed such terrors, many generations before the birth of Jesus.

What can it mean that Matthew includes this horror in his telling of Jesus' birth?

Well, first of all, it is in this context that we learn again of Joseph's sensitivity to God's calling. Joseph is willing to listen to God's angel and respond in ways that sustain and nurture life: the life of  Mary and his son, Jesus. The ultimate impact of Joseph's obedience ["obedience" is the right word here because the word "obey" comes from a root meaning "to listen to"] Joseph's obedience, his willingness to listen and respond, ultimately results in the nurture of all life because this child is for the benefit of the whole human family.

Second, it allows Matthew to tell us how Jesus ends up living in Nazareth. First, Jesus' family went to Egypt and then to Galilee where they settled in Nazareth.

Lastly, we learn that those who seek to be the only one, with power over life and death, never have the last word. They are not God. They all die in the end. 

In this way, Matthew wants us to understand the point of the commandments of God which clearly tell us that we have only one who is the only one. 

God is the only one. God is God. God declares: I am your God. You need no other gods. I am your God, the one who created you because I love you. 

You are my people. We belong to each other.

In this way, Matthew makes it clear that, just as God was with Jesus in the face of death, just so, God is with us in the face of the real world. We are created out of God's love; we belong to God. God has a relationship to us that neither the threat of death nor death itself can sever.

When you read to the end of his Gospel, Matthew shows us Jesus raised from the dead speaking to people gathered around him. The message is very clear in that vignette: God is with us even beyond death. Also, in that scene, Jesus tells us that we are to reach out to others in the ordinary of our days with words of nurture, making God's presence and compassion a practical reality in the way we relate to those whom we touch in the real, often anguished world.

On this sixth day of Christmas, we celebrate God’s creative love. 

We remember, to use Isaiah's words, "all that the Lord has done for us" in the face of the real world. 

And we remember the real world into which the pioneer of our faith was born. 

Out of suffering grew a person of God’s compassion for all his people.

In the face of the real world, this celebration asks us to listen and to respond with wise, nurturing gestures toward the children and adults around us. 

When we are willing, as Joseph was, to do this, there will be ultimate benefit for the generations yet to be born.

Amen!