The Empire Strikes Back

Scripture:  Isaiah 60:1-6,  Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14,  Ephesians 3:1-12,  Matthew 2:1-23

Our reading from Matthew’s Gospel takes place a long time ago, in a land not quite as far away as Tatooine or Alderon, but a solid ten to eleven hour airplane flight from Philadelphia nonetheless.  On Christmas Eve we read the stories about Mary and Joseph being visited by angels, about the birth in the manger, and about visits from shepherds and wise men….all the familiar, comforting readings we associate with Christmas.  But on Christmas Eve, we also read, as we do here at Emanuel every year, the very discomforting story of Herod’s response to the birth of Jesus.  I don’t think many churches read that part of the story on Christmas Eve or at any other time, but when I was here for Christmas 2007, my first Christmas here, that part was included, as it had been in the past – I was deeply impressed that my predecessor, the Rev Eugene Grau, and his predecessors had done that - and I’ve continued it since.  King Herod did not celebrate the birth of Jesus by sending out cards or hanging lights or baking cookies.   The birth of Jesus did not inspire Herod to hum Christmas carols, nor did the birth of Jesus fill Herod’s mind with tidings of comfort and joy.   No, the birth of the baby Jesus filled Herod’s mind with thoughts, not of merriment, but of murder.

That’s right, murder.  Why?  When the Wise Men visited Herod seeking the child, they referred to Jesus as the one who was born King of the Jews.  When we hear these words on Christmas Eve, they are just words we expect to hear at Christmas time – but to Herod, these words were a threat – because as far as Herod was concerned, the Jews already had a king, and his name was Herod.   As far as Herod was concerned, the job title “King of the Jews” was already filled – by Herod.  No others need apply for the position!  And so the words of the wise men were a threat to Herod.  Herod heard these words as a sign that his time in power was ending, and an upstart was coming to take his place.   And so it was that Herod felt his power threatened – by a baby.  And Herod sought to eliminate the threat.  The wise men – who may have been wise in reading stars and scriptures, but were not so wise in reading political leaders - had inadvertently given Herod enough information so that he knew the approximate age of the child – two years old at most - and so Herod had his thugs kill any children of that age or younger who were born in Bethlehem. Gruesome as it sounds, it was hardly out of character for Herod, who was violent, emotionally unstable, paranoid.   Indeed, during his reign, Herod had his wife and two of his own sons killed –a joke popular during his reign said it was safer to be Herod’s pig – which as an outwardly observant Jew, Herod wouldn’t touch - than to be Herod’s son – so why would Herod have scruples to hold him back from killing a few dozen babies in some dusty, out of the way village.  Herod’s act is called the slaughter of the holy innocents, and the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches remember this act with a feast day, Holy Innocents, on December 28 – shortly after the feast of St Stephen, the first Martyr of the church, on December 26.   

But while Herod had lots of blood on his hands, he failed in his attempt to kill the baby Jesus.  Joseph, who like his Old Testament namesake was guided by dreams, was warned in a dream to take the child to Egypt to escape Herod – and so Joseph, Mary, and the baby essentially became political refugees in Egypt.  Later Joseph was told in a dream that it was safe to return from Egypt, but he kept his distance from Jerusalem, settling in Galilee, some 90 miles to the north.

It’s telling to notice the contrasts between Joseph and Herod.  Both Joseph and Herod felt threatened.  Joseph relied on God’s guidance, while Herod violently took things into his own hands.  Two very different approaches to outside threats, with two very different outcomes.  And again, it has to be said that Herod’s gruesome violence was in response to a threat connected with a baby.  A baby.  Herod, with all the power of Rome behind him, was scared by a baby. 

We tend to see Christmas through a layer of gauzy sentimentality. It’s sort of as if the manger in Bethlehem is set inside one of those crystal snow globes that you shake, and the snow comes down on the beautiful scene inside. We read about Mary’s being “great with child” but don’t often think of what it would have meant for someone eight or nine months pregnant to be traveling 90, 100 or more miles on foot or by donkey.  We read about the manger, but don’t focus on the barnyard smells that Mary and Joseph would have found there.  We read about the Wise Men, but we don’t think of what it would have meant for them to travel from distant lands, crossing international borders, possibly fending off bandits along the way, bearing their gifts. And we certainly don’t come to church at Christmas to hear about Herod the homicidal maniac.  But Herod is a character – a villainous character to be sure, but a character nonetheless - in the story of our salvation, as much as the angels with their messages and Joseph with his dreams, and Mary, great with child and the shepherds tending their flocks by night and the wise men with their gifts.

I’d also like to lift up another aspect of the story, which I mentioned in passing earlier, but which I think will be crucial to how we, as individual Christians and as the gathered community of Emanuel Church live in the year ahead.  Remember that, warned by an angel, Joseph fled with Mary and the baby to take refuge in Egypt.  They went to Egypt to take refuge.  In so doing, they became refugees.  It’s not an idea we associate with Christmas, but Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus was a refugee. 

Let me say it again:  Jesus was a refugee.

And again:  Jesus was a refugee.

Why am I hammering on this point?  Because as a country, we don’t much like refugees.   Indeed, we seem to like refugees less with every passing day.  We feel threatened by them.  Scripture is very clear on the duty to care for the stranger and the alien – going all the way back to Leviticus 19:33-34, which states:  “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien.  The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus wasn’t talking about space aliens, not talking about little green men in flying saucers, but about people from other countries.  But while some political and religious leaders love to quote other parts of Leviticus, for some reason they tend to skip over these verses.  But, as the church, we are called to be counter-cultural, to stand against our culture when it is unfaithful.  And, as it happens, we have not only Scripture, but the example of one who came here as a refugee – Isaac, who came here to flee the violence of the civil war in Liberia that dragged on for years and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and yes, children.  In Liberia, Herod was hard at his murderous work, operating under names like Samuel K Doe and Charles Taylor…and Isaac has shown me even fairly mild photos of the violence from which he fled, and the photos are stomach churning, heartrending.  The violence of these Herods reached Isaac’s own family.  We here at Emanuel Church have shown and continue to show hospitality to Isaac, and I think we’re a better church for it.  But Herod is at his murderous work in other places, Mexico and South America among them – indeed, as Herod is at his murderous work in our own country.    Last year we supported St Paul’s UCC in Exton as they welcomed the Beceaunu family, refugees from Romania – I donated to St Paul’s in our church’s name. Back here at Emanuel, we’ve also provided refuge of sorts to Bobby and Tim and others in need of assistance, and Sean and Carol and others have gone out on the streets month after month with food for the homeless along Aramingo Avenue and the surrounding area.  The year to come may bring other opportunities to provide hospitality, sanctuary, refuge, to others fleeing Herod, to the “least of these” whom Christ claims as his own sisters and brothers, other opportunities to “entertain angels unawares”.  I only hope and pray we’re up to the challenge.

The story of Christmas is about making room for God as God came to us in the baby Jesus.  The characters in the Christmas story are defined by whether they made room for Jesus – as Mary did within her own body, as Joseph did within his household, as the shepherds and wise men did within their schedules and travel plans – or whether they didn’t, as the innkeeper made no room, and in today’s reading Herod decreed that there was no room, that all of Judea wasn’t big enough for both Herod and Jesus.  The story of Christmas is about making room for God – and why? - because God first made room for us, in creating our world and in creating us – and as Gentile Christians, God again made room for us among God’s chosen people – as I Peter 2:10 says, paraphrasing from the Old Testament prophet Hosea chapter 1, “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”    God made room for us, and so we are to make room for God in Christ Jesus, and for those in whom Christ dwells.

Do we have room for Jesus, in our church and in our lives?   In the year ahead, will we line up with Joseph, or with Herod?  Will we provide refuge and hospitality, or seek to eliminate it?   There’s no place of neutrality, no place to turn away and pass by.  By our actions or our inactions, inevitably we’ll line up with Joseph, or with Herod – and I pray we choose wisely. 

Because, evil as he was, Herod was right about one thing: there wasn’t enough room in Judea, isn’t enough room in all the world, for both Herod and Jesus.   There isn’t room for the ways of Herod – the ways of empire doing business as usual, where might makes right, where the only golden rule is that he who has the gold makes the rules, where the rich get richer and the poor of our nation starve on our streets and those of other nations die at our borders, where as the African saying goes, the elephants battle and the grass gets trampled – there isn’t room for all of that – and the way of Jesus, the way of self-giving love, the self-giving love of Jesus that operates like yeast in a lump of dough or a mustard seed in a field, a small but powerful thing that eventually takes over everything.  These two ways of living are fundamentally incompatible.  For the Trekkies among us, think of them as being like matter and antimatter – if you put them together, the results are explosive.  The ways of Herod and the way of Jesus, the way of Empire and the way of the Gospel, are unalterably opposed.  And as Christians we are committed to the way of Jesus, the way of self-giving love, the way of making room for Jesus in what Mother Teresa called his distressing disguise of the poor.

My prayer for this first Sunday in 2019 is the same as my prayer at the end of 2018, my prayer for us at the end of every year – that we will make room for Jesus, in our hearts and in our homes and in this church.  Let every heart, every home, every church, prepare him room. Amen.