A Sermon preached by Rev. Henley on January 13, 2008
After Christmas had come and gone, after the angels left, after the shepherds left, after the magi left, Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus were becoming a family, as most families do after a child is born. We are not told how old Jesus was when, one night, an angel of Jehovah found its way in to Joseph’s dream. The angel said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him."
So Joseph got up, took baby Jesus and Mary during the night and left for Egypt, where they stayed until the death of Herod. When Herod died, again an angel came to Joseph And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."
When the family returned to Israel, because Herod’s son was the ruler in Jerusalem, Joseph settled his family in Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."
When the cruel and oppressive Herod could not find this baby who was born to be “king of the Jews,” he had all the male infants less than two years old in Bethlehem slaughtered.
Scholars tell us that each New Testament author has her or his own theological framework for Jesus’ story. We can see clearly in this “flight to Egypt” Matthew’s purpose. It is to fulfill the Hebrew Scripture’s prophesy that one…the Messiah would be called out of Egypt, and two…the Messiah would be from Nazareth. Matthew also, with his story of the wholesale slaughter of the innocent male children, connects this story to the early Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, who said that Rachel would weep for her children because they “are no more.” Now to be thoughtful about this part of the story, we could connect Rachel weeping with the historical relocation of the Hebrew people to Babylon. But Matthew wants to connect the loss of the children to the slaughter of the innocents.
There is no historical evidence that the male children were actually slaughtered; however, scholars tell us that Herod was such a cruel and horrific ruler that this event paled in comparison to some of the actual, historical atrocities he committed.
Having said all that about the story, then, what is Matthew’s purpose for this part of Jesus’ story?
Matthew wanted to clearly show that God had a hand in Jesus’ story from the very beginning. God was with Jesus all along the way, just as God is with us all along our way.
See God with us all along the ways as I read from Psalm 139
Lord, you have examined me
and know all about me.
You know when I sit down and when I get up.
You know my thoughts before I think them.
You know where I go and where I lie down.
You know everything I do.
Lord, even before I say a word,
you already know it.
… Where can I go to get away from your Spirit?
Where can I run from you?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
If I lie down in the grave, you are there.
If I rise with the sun in the east
and settle in the west beyond the sea,
even there you would guide me. …
Matthew, knowing the Scriptures, knew this well, and he wanted those early believers to know, just as we are to know now, that God is with us, all along the way.
But there is more, yes, there is more to the story than Matthew’s own theological framework. And I dare say that “more” is more than even what Matthew had in mind.
When I read this story I think of the implications of what it means to “flee for your life,” and I think about how, throughout humankind’s story, so many people have had to flee for their lives. Leaving behind their lives, everything that sustained them, and taking with them only what they could carry. Look at the world today. In the last two decades alone, in the lifetimes of some of our young adults who are here today, there have been millions of people displaced. There have been cruelties and atrocities committed against human beings by their own governments, as cruel and villainous as Herod ever was. Look at the Balkans, Myanmar—or Burma, as we used to know it—Uzbekistan and the surrounding countries. Then, there is the genocide and displacement in many countries in Africa.
Until the last four decades of the twentieth century, we could read about the atrocities in history books and the newspaper. However, beginning with the Viet Nam war you and I, common, ordinary, women and men could watch, not only the war on television, but see the Monks burning themselves up in protest to the cruel regime in Cambodia, and watch the Vietnamese boat people sink in the waters off Southeast Asia. Now, we can type in www.youtube.com on our computer and we can see intimately the oppression, and murder, and horribly ugly side of humankind. It is almost as if we were standing there, voyeurs of tragedy, taking the video clips ourselves.
Human beings, fleeing for our lives has, been as much a part of our story as hunting and gathering.
Is it possible, do you think, that we, here, in this privileged land, can even begin to understand what it is truly like to have nothing, live on very little, fight for water and food from United Nations relief trucks, sleep outside with not anything but a thin blanket surrounded by our hungry and possible ill children?
Is it possible for us, in this United States of America to empathetically walk in the shoes of the Kurds or the Sudanese?
Have you read Infidel? It is Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s autobiography. She tells of her childhood growing up as a Somali in one of the most respected tribes of Somalia. How she was taught to be a good, Muslim daughter and wife. Yet, for some reason, she had the will, the resiliency, and the desire to do more with her life than succumb to the repressive and oppressive conventions of her Somalian, Muslim destiny.
In her book she gives a graphic description of some of her relatives fleeing for their lives from Somalia’s civil war during the 1980s.
Reading excerpts from 150 to 154…
Is God with these people all along the way? Is God with these people the same as God is with us?
How could we ever know what that is like, and to be honest, I would not want to know, first hand.
When people in our country flee for their lives it is from natural disasters—the forest fires, the hurricanes, and floods. And our government and social service agencies take care of us. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, my family and I stayed at motel for two weeks, many families for much longer, and the federal government paid for our rooms.
What a contrast, the reasons we flee for our lives, and the resulting government support when we have lost everything.
Lisa, did select a reading this morning from our country’s story. Our second reading told of a time when our culture and our government allowed individuals to oppress a people brought to our country, stolen from their countries, to build this country.
And while the slaves of our country did not have to flee for their lives before horrific and villainous rulers, if they wanted a life, a life of freedom, which this country granted to every immigrant but them, then they too, had to flee the evil slave owners.
Was God with the slaves all along the way? Was God with them the same as God is with us?
The answer to the question is “yes.” God is with every creature of the creation all along the way. The sustaining love of God is always with us, no matter what. God’s love is eternal, outside of our circumstances. Fleeing for our lives in the desert or fighting for our lives in civil war, there is no place where God is not.
Where can I go to get away from your Spirit?
Where can I run from you?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there.
If I lie down in the grave, you are there.
If I rise with the sun in the east
and settle in the west beyond the sea, …
God is not responsible for the Herods and the Hitlers of this world. God is not responsible for the slave holders or the Somali tribes who tore Somalia apart, or the genocidal generals in the Balkans. God is not responsible for the terror or the rescue of those who flee.
We are. We, humankind, perpetuate the evil, we, humankind, are responsible for eradicating the evil.
The answer is in the last few lines of William Lloyd Garrison’s words.
Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared to do and dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free.
If we live our lives knowing God is with us all the way, then we must live our lives as a people of faith who will do whatever we can, and I repeat, whatever we can, to change the way things are in the world. What will that look like. It will be different for each of us. What is crucial is that each of us knows it is our responsibility, as people of faith, to do something, each and every day, in our own way, to be faithful, to be vigilant, to be untiring in our efforts to free the oppressed and to help those who flee oppression.
Reading I
Matthew 2:13-23
The Escape to Egypt
13When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." 14So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."[a]
16When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18"A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more."[b]
The Return to Nazareth
19After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child's life are dead."
21So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: "He will be called a Nazarene."
Reading II
By William Lloyd Garrison
Let it never be forgotten, that no slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on the person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony of colored witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are adjudged to be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though they were indeed a part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal protection in fact, whatever there may be in form, for the slave population; and any amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them with impunity. Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more horrible state of society?
The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters is vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any thing but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the highest degree pernicious. The testimony of Mr. DOUGLASS, on this point, is sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is unimpeachable. "A slave- holder's profession of Christianity is a palpable imposture. He is a felon of the highest grade. He is a man-stealer. It is of no importance what you put in the other scale."
Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on the side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are you the foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared to do and dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring in your efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. Come what may --cost what it may--inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the breeze, as your religious and political motto--"NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!"