2nd Sunday After Christmas

Matt 2:13-23

Today is the second Sunday of Christmas the bookend to the Christmas season.  On Christmas Eve we all heard the old familiar story of Mary and Joseph huddled around the baby Jesus peaceful in the manger.  We heard of glad tidings of great joy announced by the host of heavenly angels and the joy of the shepherds come to worship the Messiah.  We welcomed the new light coming into the world and rejoiced at its appearing.  But today, we hear the dark side of the Christmas story.  Today we turn to the Gospel of Matthew and we hear a very different account.   One that many, probably most of us would rather ignore.  In fact, it never ceases to amaze me how many lifelong Christians remain totally unfamiliar with this story. 

For although the first visitors to the newborn Jesus, the shepherds, the angles and even the magi were all joyful and filled with praise, beneath their glad tidings danger was lurking.  For in this humble birth, God is doing something truly radical and earth shaking.  Remember the song of Mary, that he will lift up the lowly and tear the powerful down from their thrones, fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty.

And so while the poor and marginalized rejoice with great joy at the coming Messiah, the rich and powerful tremble on their thrones.  God is doing a new thing at Christmas and that is never without danger and risk.  For those in power are rarely willing to give it up without a fight and today we witness the depravity to which some will resort to hold onto their tenuous grip on power.  And so we see a deranged and crumbling despot reach out from his throne and attempt to extinguish this new light coming into the world.

Because Herod’s order to kill all the babies in Bethlehem is about more than just killing Jesus, it’s about smashing hope.  It’s about fighting the Messianic expectations that looked past Herod and his family and their corrupt puppet regime to the coming of a true king.  It was not about killing a baby but about killing hope.  That is why despots target civilians, children and families.  That’s why they make policies where cruelty is the point. To obliterate hope, to make people give up, to stop resisting, to crush their will to go on.  It has happened for thousands of years and it is still happening right now, today in this country and around the world. 

But Herod like so many before and after failed in his plan.  Hope didn’t die that first Christmas.  Despite the tragedy something got out.  The spark stayed lit, that little light escaped from the grip of death and God himself became a refugee. 

For fundamentally Jesus is to his very core first and foremost a refugee.  One displaced from his rightful home by the powers of evil who stands with hope and defiance in the face of insurmountable sin and death.  Now we have often been trained to think of refugees as helpless and pitiable creatures, totally dependent on the goodwill of others.  Maybe it’s the way news outlets cover these conflicts or the way organizations use images of refugees to raise money or political support for the aid of those displaced by war that leads us to consider them as weak, helpless or feeble but I have spent decades living and working alongside refugees and in reality they are some of the toughest people on earth.

They are the people with the wherewithal, strength and tenacity to flee, to escape, to fight back against the icy bonds of encroaching death.  They are the people who cling to hope when everything else is lost, who say loudly with every fiber of their being that they will not die here today, that evil will not bring them down no matter how hard it gets.   These are people who walk hundreds of miles with no food or water carrying everything they own on their backs.  People who swim in the treacherous waters that divide countries in hope of reaching safer shores.  Who survive for years and even decades in flimsy tent cities.  Who leave behind everything they have ever known to board an airplane to a new country to learn and live and thrive if only by the force of sheer will.  These are people who do superhuman things in order to find a way home, even if that home ends up being somewhere they have never been before.

And Jesus our savior finds his place on earth as the ultimate refugee.  He is driven by the power of sin from his rightful place in heaven, from his home at the right hand of God into the cruelty of this world.  Yet he says no to the power of sin, no to the powers of this world that crush and exploit and dehumanize his brothers and sisters.  No to cruelty, to despair, to soul crushing materialism.  And on the cross, He says no death itself.  When Jesus escapes the binds of death, not just here as a child but through his death and resurrection, he brings forth hope for all people.  He tells us that there is nothing he cannot overcome.  Jesus endured the worst that humanity had to offer in order to offer all of us a way to our true home.

And Jesus calls all of his followers to live in this hope.  To join him in renouncing the powers of this world that rebel again God.  And to learn a lesson from him and all our refugee neighbors about never giving up or giving in even in the face of seemingly insurmountable evil. 

New Year’s was this week, the dawning of a new year.  A year where we will be called upon to consider once again what it means to be a disciple of Christ, what it means to be called by God to be a partner is his world changing work.  And it may mean being called to do things that are new or scary or strange, it may mean being called to live in solidarity with those in danger in ways that push us out of our comfort zone.

But Jesus the refugee tells us today that there is always enough hope to keep going.  There may not be a way back but there is always a way forward.   We are never too late, never too far gone to right the ship.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph never went home again; they never again set foot in Bethlehem after that fateful night.  But God still loved and protected them.  They found refuge in a new place where they thrived and raised their son and a loving family.  And God promises us the same that love can win, it is never too late to find a way forward to God’s blessed future.  And that hope is truly worth fighting for.  Amen.