A sermon preached on Sunday 29th December. This goes to the heart of Christmas - the messiness of the world; it's violence and misused power; and yet God is with us in this place. How can our lives walk another way - a way of peace? The texts were: Isaiah 63:7-9, Hebrews 2:10-18 and Matthew 2:13-23
Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night and went to Egypt.
The great of violence and destruction is real: the holy family flee.
As the priest-poet Malcolm Guite puts it:
We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,
Or cosy in a crib beside the font,
But he is with a million displaced people
On the long road of weariness and want.
For even as we sing our final carol
His family is up and on that road,
Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,
Glancing behind and shouldering their load.
We live in a murky, brutal and wounded world. It is into such a world as this that the Christ-child is born.
It is a world where children are held at borders, separated from parents; where families fleeing war and violence risk crossing the Mediterranean Sea in the hope of safety; where refugee camps become the only home a child knows; where human trafficking is still a reality; where the fear and power of tyrants and insurgents bring cruelty and destruction.
A world where fathers get up and take the children and their mothers by night.
Today, we’re confronted with the horror of Herod's fury; it reminds us of the way in which insecurity and power can envelop our lives. The whole of Bethlehem was caught up in the implications of an infant's threat to stability.
Herod snatched away his people's future in the destruction of children. The catastrophic consequences of desire to cling to power is repeated in the lives of men and women in our own generation.
As Malcolm’s sonnet continues:
Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower
Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,
The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,
And death squads spread their curse across the world.
But every Herod dies, and comes alone
To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.
What Herod did is appalling: wickedly massacring children to protect his own power.
This is the world that Jesus came to save.
The Christmas message is that God so loved the world that he sent us his Son.
It is a hopeful because there is no where where God is not; our humanity is glorified.
It is disruptive because divine vulnerability shifts the balance of power in a fearful and war-torn world.
The birth of the Christ-child is just the beginning.
The hope and joy of wise men contrast with Herod's fear and rage. Their gifts reveal who this child is: our king and our God; the suffering servant who lays down his life for love of the world.
Their journey continues along another road; they're witnesses to peace in vulnerability, power in weakness. Joseph must take his family along another road.
They must flee and seek protection.
Herod searches and destroys; he is infuriated and kills.
There is wailing and lamentation.
We feel silenced and helpless; we lament and cry out.
The writer of the Hebrews reminds us that the one through whom all things exist shares our flesh and blood.
Jesus becomes like us and suffered with us; bleeding like us and dying with us us; so that through death he might destroy its power and set us free.
In Jesus, God reaches out to us - to all who suffer - in vulnerability.
God continues to reach out to mothers crying out, to communities whose future is disrupted by the loss of children.
God reaches out in Jesus Christ to bear the weight of pain and violence on the cross.
God reaches out in the resurrection to demonstrate that human wrath does not extinguish love.
God reaches out in the power of the Spirit to call us to live in the light of that hope.
Trusting in Jesus, God with us, is not an escape from world; nor is it an attempt to conquer it in our own strength. Rather, in him we seek the transformation of all that is by acts of compassion and justice which resist abuses of power.
The Gospel makes manifest the power of love in birth and death and in risen life; in a human family, in a complex world, in the midst of agony and grief.
Such love shifts our horizons away from control and manipulation. The change of heart wrought by God's reconciling love disrupts our tribalism; it seeks a kingdom of justice and equity which challenges the human tendency to control or oppress.
The promise of Isaiah - of mercy and the abundance of steadfast love - if fulfilled in God with us.
Mercy and the abundance of love is revealed in the speechless dependency of an infant; revealed alongside all who flee for safety, we see strength in weakness.
In time, Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.
We are to pray that our lives will frustrate the evil designs of others; that we might be agents of hope and reconciliation. Hope that is rooted in a love that liberates, transforms and forgives.
The promise and challenge of that is held in our Eucharist. Here God continues to give himself to us in the ordinary stuff of bread and wine; a sign of abundance and hope in a broken and fragile world. Here we find assurance forgiveness, faithful love and renewed hope; here we learn to walk another way, the way of peace.
Jesus doesn't merely show us love or validate our human expressions of love. Rather he demonstrates redemptive power of love. Only he can forgive us, recall us, draw us into abundant life; he enables us to be agents of resistance, compassion and reconciliation.
Let us pray [from S. Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church]:
Weeping God
whose heart is pierced
by the cry of the innocent:
receive into your arms
the waste of our violent;
confront the powers of fear
by the confidence of love;
and help us stand with all creatures
who bear the weights of cruelty and greed;
through Jesus Christ, Rachel’s child. Amen.
© Julie Gittoes 2019
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