Sunday, December 14, 2014

Sermon: Keeping Herod in Christmas

This Advent, we began using Brian McLaren's book, We Make the Road by Walking, to shape sermons and worship, a pattern that will continue through Pentecost. The book's chapter for the third week in Advent is entitled, "Keep Herod in Christmas."

Matthew 2:1-18
Keeping Herod in Christmas
James Sledge                                                               December 14, 2014 – Advent 3

At the church I previously served, we held a “Hanging of the Greens” service on a Sunday evening early in Advent. Between Scripture readings, Advent hymns, and Christmas carols, we decorated the sanctuary, and those decorations included a full-sized, wooden manger.
During one of those services, I invited the children to gather around that manger as I offered a short message about the child whose birth we would soon celebrate and about why he was born. As I spoke, I brought out a four foot tall, wooden cross that we typically used during Lent. I leaned it against the manger and talked about this Savior who first slept in an animal feed trough and who would die on a cross. A few among the small group that attended the service remarked on how moving the message of manger and cross was. But most seemed bothered by it.
I left the cross against the manger for the rest of Advent. It was not well received. Some complained that it sapped the season of its joy, and that cross may have generated more complaints than anything done in worship during my eleven years there. I never tried it again.
For centuries Christmas was a rather minor event on the Christian calendar, but, for a variety of reasons, it has gradually eclipsed most everything else, with the possible exception of Easter. It certainly is worth celebrating God’s entry into human history through the birth of Jesus. But as Christmas has gradually become so associated with joy and good cheer, with warmth and family, the “Christmas spirit” sometimes crowds out the Christian message. And if we won’t allow the cross to intrude on our happy, joyful Christmas, even during the reflective season of Advent, I wonder if we’ve gotten a bit off track.
Matthew’s gospel certainly won’t let us linger for long at the manger. In truth, the manger only appears in Luke. In Matthew, we hear of an angel appearing to Joseph in a dream and telling him to take the pregnant Mary as his wife. The birth itself receives only a scant mention at the conclusion of that story. (Joseph) took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
Matthew doesn’t linger at the birth, but he immediately introduces foreboding. The birth of a king, a Messiah, may be good news to some, but it is not for many. Word of a new king does not sit well with the current one. The possibility of a new order sounds dreadful to those heavily invested in the present one. The possibility of a world organized around the ways of God prompts the powers that be to do all they can to cling to power. Herod will enlist the Magi as his spies to deal with this usurper to the throne. And when that doesn’t work, Herod will simply kill all the babies in Bethlehem.
Jesus may be a year or two old by then, but this story is the only one Matthew connects to Jesus’ birth. And so most of us have associated Wise Men with Christmas, and if the crèche at your house is like the one at mine, those Wise Men are already at the manger, or close by awaiting Epiphany on January 6. I wonder if anyone has ever made a King Herod figure for their nativity set. After all, he is just offstage, awaiting word from those Wise Men.
The slaughter of children like that described in Matthew occurs with appalling regularity down through history. Pharaoh once ordered the slaughter of Hebrew infants to preserve his power. Dictators, despots, and militias still kill children as easily as Herod did. In the most recent fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, Hamas launched their missiles from sites chosen so that retaliation by Israel would kill civilians and especially children. Israel obliged, and children were a majority of the casualties.
In the chapter that provides this sermon its title, Brian McLaren writes, “The next war— whoever wages it— will most likely resemble every war in the past. It will be planned by powerful older men in their comfortable offices, and it will be fought on the ground by people the age of their children and grandchildren. Most of the casualties will probably be between eighteen and twenty-two years old— in some places, much younger. So the old, sad music of the ancient story of Herod and the slaughter of the children will be replayed again. And again, the tears of mothers will fall.”[1]
Matthew interrupts our Advent planning and our Christmas merriment with the inconsolable weeping of mothers. We do well to pay attention, for Matthew insists that the arrival of Jesus will force us to make decisions, to choose our loyalties. Writes McLaren, “We do not live in an ideal world. To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to face at every turn the destructive reality of violence. To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to side with vulnerable children in defiance of the adults who see them as expendable. To walk the road with Jesus is to withhold consent and cooperation from the powerful, and to invest it instead with the vulnerable. It is to refuse to bow to all the Herods and all their ruthless regimes— and to reserve our loyalty for a better king and a better kingdom.”[2]

A little over a week ago, a line on Twitter caught my eye and recalled for me that time when I leaned a cross against a manger. The line was from an Advent blog that remembered the brutal rape and murder of four church women in El Salvador during Advent of 1980, an event with some American fingerprints on it. The blog included words from a journal written by one of the women whose work with the poor and destitute put them in such danger.
“The Peace Corps left today and my heart sank low. The danger is extreme and they were right to leave…. Now I must assess my own position, because I am not up for suicide. Several times I have decided to leave. I almost could, except for the children, the poor bruised victims of adult lunacy. Who would care for them? Whose heart would be so staunch as to favor the reasonable thing in a sea of their tears and helplessness? Not mine, dear friend, not mine.”[3]
The blog continued with a call for us to keep our eyes open during Advent waiting, not to hide from the reality of Herods and dictators and older men who plan wars from their comfortable offices, but to be alert, to weep with those mothers and align ourselves with them. Then the blog closed with the line that first caught my attention. “Ultimately, if you can’t stare at the Cross, deeply gazing at the Crèche is not possible.”[4]
In this season of watching, waiting, and preparing the way, in this season of trivial calls to “Keep Christ in Christmas” that often have nothing to do with the kingdom, that new day Jesus proclaims, I hope the crèche does not blot out the cross for us. I think that’s why Brian McLaren calls us to “Keep Herod in Christmas” with these words.
“So let us light a candle for the children who suffer in our world because of greedy, power-hungry, and insecure elites. And let us light a candle for grieving mothers who weep for lost sons and daughters, throughout history and today. And let us light a candle for all people everywhere to hear their weeping. In this Advent season, we dare to believe that God feels their pain and comes near to bring comfort. If we believe that is true, then of course we must join God and come near, too.”[5]



[1] McLaren, Brian D. (2014-06-10). We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (p. 73). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.
[2] Ibid.
[3] From “¡Presente!” December 2, 2014 in There Will Be Bread, a blog by Fran Rossi Szpylczyn at https://breadhere.wordpress.com/
[4] Ibid
[5] McLaren, p. 74.

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