Scripture: Matthew 12:13-23
(13) Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream
and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there
until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." (14)
Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, (15) and
remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the
Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." (16) When Herod
saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed
all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the
time that he had learned from the wise men. (17) Then was fulfilled what had been spoken
through the prophet Jeremiah: (18) "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud
lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are
no more." (19) When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to
Joseph in Egypt and said, (20) "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the
land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead." (21) Then
Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. (22) But
when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was
afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of
Galilee. (23) There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been
spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."
- Matthew 2: 13-23
It's always something of a jolt after all the beauty and joy of our Christmas
celebrations to be confronted with Matthew's account of the horrible murder of Bethlehem's
children and the flight of the holy family into Egypt where they are forced to become
political refugees. Christmas is only a few days old and Matthew inserts this account of
political intrigue and brutal atrocity into his gospel.
Our cherished views of Christmas - where chestnuts roast on open fires in a snow
covered wonderland, where the best is brought out in everyone and where all is calm and
all is bright - are ravaged by King Herod's attempt to end a new threat to his power once
and for all by murdering every boy child in Bethlehem. "O little town of Bethlehem
how still we see thee lie" is a lie. "O little town of Bethlehem" made
miserable by the birth of Jesus, streets running red with blood while mothers wail,
lamenting their lost children. That's the way the Bible tells the Christmas story.
Although history doesn't tell us too much about Herod, we have the uncanny feeling that
we have seen his kind before. Pharaoh attempted to solve his "Jewish problem" by
killing all the male Hebrew babies in Egypt. He failed. Moses, the first great liberator
of God's people, survived and his people were freed. Now Jesus, the next great liberator
of God's people survives and he will triumph over Herod. Herod will die and retreat to the
back pages of history's blood stained annals along with all the other petty tyrants that
have been threatened by freedom. But Jesus, whom Herod thought he had extinguished, shall
reign forever and ever and his kingdom shall have no end.
It's a politically-charged story, an age-old story of despots and political refugees.
It's a drama over disputed sovereignty. Who is the real king? Will it be the bloody Herod
or the babe in a manger? And if God, indeed, has arrived in the flesh, then what does this
incarnation mean in the face of immense cruelty and systemic evil?
Christmas was different this year, if we are to believe the pundits. We've become more
sober and serious - more willing to examine the deeper things of life. If life is so
fragile, then what we thought was important may be trivial. What we gave too little
attention to: family, relationships, and God may be far more important than our behavior
before had revealed.
But still, we're not so sure we want our noses rubbed in too much tragedy. A little
escapist Christmas fantasy where everyone becomes miraculously transformed into loving,
gentle people has its appeal, but that's not what Matthew tells us its like when God
became human and entered our reality. Matthew's Christmas pageant ends not with winged
angels proclaiming peace on earth but with Rachel weeping for her slaughtered children.
This is what Christmas in Bethlehem is about, the real Bethlehem.
Herod was no fool. He had been in power long enough to tell a rival when he saw one.
What the ignorant shepherds might see as a sweet little baby he saw as a threat to
everything that held him in power and upon which his kingdom was based: fear, secrecy,
terror and manipulation.
We have the uncanny feeling that we have seen his kind before. He joins the company of
great leaders of our age: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein who
did not mind a little murder to advance their high ideals and political aspirations.
The world calls it Beijing when the world stood idly by as tanks crushed democracy
because we wanted to sell them Coca-Cola. The Bible calls it Bethlehem.
The world calls it Bosnia where the world stood idly by while the Serbs wreaked
genocide upon the Croats. The Bible calls it Bethlehem.
The world calls it Rwanda where the world stood idly by while Hutu and Tutsi hacked
each other to death. The Bible calls it Bethlehem.
The world calls it the West Bank, Gaza and Tel Aviv where Palestinian terrorists spill
Jewish, Christian and Muslim blood every day and where state sponsored Israeli terrorists
steal Palestinian land every day. The Bible calls it Bethlehem.
We don't like this Christmas story. The other story that we tell on Christmas Eve of
shepherds and angels and the miraculous birth of a little baby is an easier story to
stomach. Christmas has become for us the fantasy where all families get along, where love
is oozing from every pore, and we can all join hands and sing of joy and peace. Everything
is transformed into a Hallmark card of perfect harmony and soft glowing light.
It's hard to have our noses rubbed into the horror and the heartache of human evil, but
the Bible tells us the truth. The Bible calls it Bethlehem. If we turn down the shopping
mall Musak for a moment and listen, really listen, we might hear the mothers screaming,
weeping for their lost babies wherever in our troubled world the Slaughter of the
Innocents is reenacted. "O Come Ye, O Come Ye to Bethlehem" and see this thing.
And now, only a year distant from the end of the bloodiest century the world has ever
known (if you just count up the bodies of those killed by their own governments, to say
nothing of wars, to say nothing of the hundreds killed on the streets of any U.S. city
this year), we are beckoned by the Bible to Bethlehem. We may call it Columbine, or New
York or South L.A. or Northwest Pasadena - the Bible calls it Bethlehem.
At the end of the story of the nativity, after the angels, shepherds, wise men and the
little baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes, we hear the screams of mothers, weeping
for Jewish babies. Our nose and our conscience gets rubbed in politics and pain, blood and
sorrow, before we leave that little town.
And though it's not the Christmas story we want, it may be the Christmas story we need.
For any God who is unwilling to come to this Bethlehem, won't do us a whole lot of good.
If any God is going to save us, then God will have to come to where we are, even into
these horrible rubble-strewn, blood-stained places, because without such a God there is
little cause for hope.
If love, God's love, is to come down to us, down to the low places: the World Trade
Centers, the death ovens, the battlefields of ethnic cleansing, the suburban wastelands of
teenage alienation, the low places of our own despair and hopelessness, our addictions,
our petty squabbles, our shabby choices, then there is going to be some pain, and yes,
some blood, too. Someone's going to get hurt, for humanity has a long, horrific track
record of hurt and hate and horror.
If our allegiances are to be de-throned, our hates toppled, our propensity for violence
overthrown, it will not be pretty. We will hold on tight to our gods, and will not let
them go until they are pulled away from the clutches of our own dirty hands.
At Bethlehem we see prelude to events that will unfold later at a place called Calvary.
The little baby who threatened King Herod and all the Herods that stain the bloody pages
of history will go head to head with all our kings and kingdoms of this world and threaten
them with sword of truth. He will enter into all the Bethlehems that the world has ever
known and there will be pain and violence and weeping and blood. All for us and for our
salvation. All in the name of love. O come all ye faithful. Come and behold him. To
Bethlehem. To Calvary. To our salvation and our only source of hope. Amen.
