Matthew 2:13-23
Pharaoh and Herod vs God’s Love
James Sledge December
29, 2019
Every
evening when I drive home at this time of year, I pass by a house with an
elaborate nativity scene in the front yard. It’s not terribly realistic, but it
is huge, covering half of the front yard. It has steps that go up to the floor
where Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus are, along with wise men and some
animals.
The
holy family and their visitors are wooden, stylized figures, illuminated by strands
of Christmas lights. But on those steps leading up to the floor are two more
realistic figures. They are plastic, brightly colored, and glow from their own,
interior lighting. One is Santa Claus and the other is a snowman, Frosty
perhaps?
A
little odd, I suppose, but it’s hardly the first time I’ve seen Santa and the
manger side by side. I don’t suppose anyone actually thinks that Santa was
there at Jesus’ birth, but I can understand why people might add Santa to the
display. In popular imagination, the story of Jesus’ birth is a joyous, magical,
miraculous story, often depicted as sweet and idyllic, something straight out
of a Norman Rockwell painting.
Likewise
the story of Santa is also joyous and miraculous. It is full of warmth and
happiness and a sense of magic that even adults long for. It is easy to see why
people would feel that the two stories go well together.
It
may surprise some, considering all the attention we lavish on it, to realize
how little coverage the Christmas story gets from the Bible. Of the four
gospels, only Luke tells of Jesus in a manger. There’s no actual mention of a
stable, and many scholars think this manger was inside a home, in the area
where the animals were brought inside at night.
If
the nativity display at your house is like the one at mine, the Wise Men are
visiting the baby in the manger along with shepherds and angels. But the visit
of the Magi doesn’t quite belong with Christmas. Young Jesus is likely a
toddler in this story from Matthew’s gospel, a story that ends with the
fearsome, frightening events from our scripture reading this morning. All the male
children two years old and under in the little hamlet of Bethlehem are taken
from their parents by government officials, and then killed.
The gospel writer borrows a line from
the prophet Jeremiah to describe the scene. The words originally spoke
metaphorically of the children of Israel carried off into exile while Rachel,
one of Israel’s founding matriarchs, weeps for them. But now the metaphor has
turned literal. “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.”
Within
all the varied stories, poetry, tales, prophecy, and more that compose the
Bible, there is an overarching theme of a God who acts in history to save and
to restore. This God is not a creator who builds a clock, winds it up, then
stands far off, but a God who is moved by human suffering and intervenes for
the sake of life and wholeness and salvation.
Within
this overarching theme of redemption and salvation, there are two epic stories.
The first is the Exodus, the rescue of God’s people from Pharaoh’s oppression and
slavery in Egypt. The second is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And
when Matthew tells this second story for his Jewish faith community, he makes
clear allusions to the first.
The
Exodus story begins with brutal oppression of the Hebrews by Pharaoh, and with
the murder of their male babies. The story of Moses’ birth is one of dramatic
escape from the murderous rampage of a powerful ruler. The Bible’s original,
epic salvation story is set in the context of the powerful who use violence as a
means to get what they want and to maintain their grip on it, a method that has
lost little of its popularity among strongmen in our day.
As
with Moses’ birth, our gospel reading sets Jesus’ birth in a frightening world
where the powerful are unmoved by the suffering of children or the cries of
their parents. We often don’t want to think about that at Christmas. Christmas
is supposed to be a time of joy and good cheer, and God knows we need that. Who
wouldn’t want to curl up by a fire, listen to Christmas music, and binge watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s a Wonderful
Life, and Miracle on 34th
Street?
But
while the biblical Christmas story is filled with hope and joy, it is not the
sort that blots out the world for a bit. It may even sound frightening to the
dictator, the tyrant, the sweatshop owner, or the CEO who grows obscenely
wealthy while his employees struggle to get by. Because the good news of
Christmas is that God draws near to the lowly and the outcast. God enters
decisively into the world’s pain and suffering on the side of those who are
oppressed, outcast, forgotten, and dismissed.
And so we should not be at all surprised
to find that the young Jesus is made a refugee by those who employ whatever
means necessary to maintain power and control. Before Jesus ever works his
first miracle or speaks his first parable, his parents must flee to a foreign land.
And this is only the start of a life lived on the margins, a life that
frightens and threatens the powers that be, of his day and ours.
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That
first epic, salvation story in the Bible, the story of the Exodus, turns out to
be a contest between God and Pharaoh, between God and the all too typical,
human ways of ruthless power and might makes right.
So
too the second epic, the story of Jesus, pits the ways of God against those of Pharaoh.
But God does not meet power with power, at least not power as we understand it.
Instead God confronts the power of Rome, the power of hate, the power of
violence, the power of greed, with love, non-violence, self-giving, and
suffering. In Jesus, God aligns Godself with those who are oppressed, those who
suffer, those who are beaten down by the ways of Pharaoh and Herod, the ways of
tyrants and bullies in every age.
That
is the truly good news of Christmas. Yes, I am happy that Christmas tends to
make everyone a little kinder and a little nicer. I am happy that many people
make more of an effort to get along and help others. But that will be gone
soon, if it isn’t already. But God’s favor on the weak, the broken, the
destitute, the oppressed, the forgotten, the marginalized, the hated and abused,
is here to stay.
God’s
love that is stronger than death, that will not give up on humanity, that
stands over and against the ways of Pharaoh and Herod, will triumph in the end.
And those who by faith know this good news are called to join with Jesus, to
live in ways that reveal him and his love to the world.
Christ
is born. God’s transforming love is loose in the world that still struggles
against it. Thanks be to God!
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