Travelin'

This sermon was preached on December 30, 2007, for morning worship at the Presbyterian Church of Laurelhurst in Portland, Oregon. The text for the day was Matthew 2: 13-23.


This morning’s passage from the gospel of Matthew may seem a bit out of place to us on this Sunday after Christmas. In every sacred and secular way possible, and for months—ever since Halloween!-- we’ve been focused on Christmas. For weeks now, we’ve been giddy with singing and prayer and gift-giving and festive dinners and parties. Just a few nights ago, we gathered together singing joyful carols, lighting candles in the expectant dark, proclaiming the miraculous birth of Jesus, the Light of the World. We’ve been celebrating the Good News that Christ’s birth and presence has changed our hearts, and transformed the world, forever.

So here we are this morning, just a few days out from this most joyful of days, and the news Matthew’s gospel brings to us in verses 13-23 of Chapter 2 is anything but good. We read that King Herod, tipped off to Jesus’ existence by a group of loose-lipped wise men from the east, declares that all infants in Bethlehem are to be killed; and Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus escape in the dark of night, fleeing to Egypt and remaining in exile there until it’s safe to return home.

I’m sure I’m not the only one to read this passage this morning and think, “Whoa! Where did Christmas go?”

It’s an important question. And if you think about it, you may come to the conclusion—as I have-- that’s it’s a question we could, and should, be asking ourselves not only today, but every day, of every year, for the rest of our lives? “Whoa! Where did Christmas go?”

Our gospel writer, Matthew, knows where Christmas is going, at least in his gospel narrative. Christmas is going full speed into the calling of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus in Chapter 3—and our scripture for today, his account of the Slaughter of the Innocents and the Flight Into Egypt, is an important transition point in his telling of Jesus’ story.

Matthew the writer is very much interested in leading us to recognize Jesus, the baby of Bethlehem, as the Messiah long awaited by the Jewish people. In today’s passage, Matthew takes us back to Hebrew scripture three times, finding in Jesus’ exile in Egypt, Herod’s massacre of the children, and the Holy Family’s eventual settlement in Nazareth, fulfillment of scriptural prophecy—as Matthew sees it, proving objectively that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior—and setting the context for Jesus the Messiah’s saving ministry, atoning death, and triumphant resurrection, described and developed in the gospel chapters to come.

Matthew recounts the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt to tell us about who Jesus is. What’s so interesting to me, on this Sunday after Christmas, is how in the process he sees right into the heart of everyone else in his narrative. And what’s in their hearts, so soon after the birth of the Savior, is fear.

King Herod is afraid that this newborn baby, this child the wise men tell him is to be “the King of the Jews,” is a direct threat to him—to his political power, his control over the people and the land—thus his order to murder Bethlehem’s babies. He deals with his fear by taking direct and violent action to destroy its source.

Joseph, warned by the angel, is also afraid—afraid that this little family for which he has taken responsibility will be discovered and killed. Joseph deals with his fear by leaving home and enduring exile in a foreign land--obeying the angel, he flees with Mary and Jesus into Egypt, and then, after it seems safe enough, hiding them in the relative anonymity and obscurity of a backwater town called Nazareth.

Herod is afraid, Joseph is afraid—who else is afraid?

This is one of those times where we can open a Bible and use it as a mirror to see ourselves. The answer, of course, is—it’s us.

“Whoa! What happened to Christmas?”

On this Sunday after Christmas, those of us who read this story, study the scriptures, call ourselves followers of Jesus—we are afraid. We are afraid because this story shows us what we have always suspected; that Christmas has come, and Christmas has gone, and--perhaps--nothing has really changed in our lives or in the world.

As we stand on Christmas Eve with candles lighting up the dark, singing of heavenly peace, we are so much wanting, and counting on, Jesus’ birth to give us a happy ending. We are so much counting on the Christmas gifts and festivities to make everything all right--or at least a little bit better—to heal and fill the hurting places inside of us and put a soft golden glow of happiness on our families, on our work, on our lives.

But even on Christmas, or on the days and weeks afterwards, we have to face the fact that the world keeps turning. People we love get sick and die. Political figures are assassinated. There are tidal waves and earthquakes and storms and famines around the world. We fight with our children. The new toy lies abandoned on the living room floor. We drink and eat too much. Old hurts rise up in our throats to choke us with grief and pain. We have to do the dishes and clean the litter box.

Christmas has come and gone, the world keeps turning, nothing has really changed, and we are afraid—that Christ’s coming is meaningless—that we’re inadequate—or that, despite everything we’ve said and done, Jesus is forever just out of our reach.

The English poet W.H. Auden wrote about this post-Christmas fear and depression in the final poem of his Christmas oratorio called “For the Time Being.” I’ll read you some of that poem so you can see—hear—what I mean.

Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers . . .
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory . . .
For the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. . .

How well Auden sums up those feelings we have: “Whoa, whatever happened to Christmas!”

He calls this post-Christmas period “The Time Being”—which I have always thought has a hint of that exile time, that flight into Egypt, to it—and “The Time Being” for Auden is a metaphor describing Our time, our culture, and our human condition: this time we’re living in, Ordinary time; the time between birth and death; between Christ’s coming and his eventual return in glory; between inspiration and completion; between vision and revelation.

The Time Being is now—this time, any time-- when we’re all trying to live “in the light of Christmas” and realize, as we keep stumbling over our feet, that the world is still pretty dark in these moments before dawn.

Auden says,

To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.

Our gospel writer, Matthew, describes the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt to tell us about who Jesus is—the long-awaited Savior. As we read Matthew’s account, we come to understand who we are—people living in The Time Being, struggling to make sense of Christ’s birth, and Christmas, in a world where tragedy and tedium continue undeterred.

But in the midst of the bleakness and difficulty and tragedy Matthew recounts in our passage for today, there is also a gleam—or maybe it’s a blaze—of something like hope, and courage, and redemption.

For the story of the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt reminds us that God’s work in the world is not an easy, sparkly fairy tale that ends with a simple happily ever after.

It reminds us instead that salvation, like anything truly worth having, is costly; that God’s triumphant sending of Jesus Christ into the world to redeem it, and to assure us eternal life, carried the price of pain, and sorrow, and crucifixion. It reminds us that this world, our world of tragedy and tedium, has always been and continues to be the world in which God is present, God chooses to be involved, and God works, hand in hand with us, to transform and redeem.

It reminds us that deep joy and deep sorrow are intimately entwined in life, and that God’s presence and purpose can be seen, and felt, and known, in both. It reminds us that no matter how difficult things are, how long or how far the exile, or how deep the suffering, neither Jesus’ story, nor ours, ends here; that there is always more to the story, that our future lies in God’s hand, and that God’s promised future—whether in this life or the next-- is beautiful and filled with grace.

So how do we make sense of this post-Christmas world—The Time Being that we find ourselves in—with its tedium, and its trivialities, and its tragedies? How can we find and keep that Christmas joy and confidence, and fan that little flame of the Light of the World until it’s strong enough to see by?

I want to leave you with a connection that struck me as I was reading Matthew’s passage with its theme of exile and return.

Lately, because my office has moved over to Mall 205, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the car (and I guess that, depending upon your affinity for your automobile, you could see that car time either as exile or as paradise). So I’ve been listening to audiobooks on CD during my drives, and I’ve been amazed by how many books I’ve been able to read this way in a very short time.

One of my recent audiobooks was The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd, a wonderful book set on an island in South Carolina, full of the images and atmosphere of that region. One of the characters is an African-American woman, an expert on the island’s culture and traditions, who says during a tour of the island:

“There’s an old Gullah practice. . . Before our people can become church members, they go to a sacred place in the woods three times a day for a week and meditate on the state of their souls. We call it ‘traveling,’ because we’re traveling inside.”

Traveling.

For those of you who don’t know anything about Gullah, it’s a unique African-American culture found on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, where descendants of slaves from different tribes and countries in West Africa still speak a Creole language—called “Gullah”—that mixes English with African dialects, and their Christianity blends with spiritual traditions from Africa.

I find it evocative and powerful to think about the Gullah people—people who were slaves, isolated on islands, unable to really go anywhere—maybe you could describe them as people in exile—naming their time of spiritual discernment, their spiritual quest, ‘Traveling.’

So maybe that’s how we should think of the flight Into Egypt as Matthew describes it—not as a time of exile, or hiding, or fear—but a time of “traveling.” And maybe that’s what this time of post-Christmas darkness can be for us, a time of “traveling.”

Perhaps our Time Being, our ordinary time, our time of tedium and tragedy, the time that seems so flat and uninspiring after the the sights and the sounds, the vision and the inspiration of Christmas—can be redeemed and transformed if we embrace its ordinariness and its brokenness; if we claim it for Christ and for ourselves; if we use it as a time to “travel inside” and discover the gifts hidden in its difficult and rocky terrain.

As we go traveling with the Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into Egypt of Matthew’s gospel—and traveling in the real world of our own post-Christmas Time Being—may we be transformed by our times of exile and estrangement and despair.

May we know and believe, in our hearts and in our souls, that since the incarnation we celebrate at Christmastime, even the tedium of our daily chores and the pain of our daily sorrows is blessed by the presence of Christ, who walks with us when we rejoice, and when we mourn.

May you experience this truth of Christmas, after Christmas, and every ordinary day; and may each day, no matter what it holds, find you ‘traveling inside.’

Amen.

Watching and Waiting

This sermon was preached at the evening Vesper service at the Holliday Park Plaza retirement center on December 2, 2007. The text was Matthew 24: 36-44.

I feel very privileged to be among you today on the first Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday of the liturgical Christian year and the beginning of that most festive of seasons, the preparation for Christmas.

I must tell you, though, that my husband got me a little bit apprehensive yesterday. He’d been watching the Weather Channel, you see, and saw meteorologists reporting then that a big winter storm was on its way and that 75 mile per hour winds would be raging and howling just about the time you and I were gathering here for worship. “I don’t know,” he said, “It sounds kind of scary to me—being on the top floor of Holliday Park Plaza in a big windstorm.” And yet, despite the predictions of gloom and doom—from the weathermen and from my husband!--here we are, and we seem to be safe and ok, and we’re getting on with worship.

It’s hard to know what to do with predictions of gloom and doom when we see them on television or hear them from loved ones. Regular readers of the Bible, though, are familiar with these kinds of themes—writings and prophecies about disaster, the end of the world, and God’s judgement are common enough in the Bible that scholars and theologians have a word to classify them—eschatalogical—having to do with the eschaton, the Greek word for the end of the world.

We would certainly classify the passage from Matthew’s gospel that we read a moment ago as one of these eschatological passages. Matthew tells us that Jesus is in Jerusalem, having made his triumphant entry into the city to the cheers of welcoming crowds. As chapter 24 begins, we see Jesus leaving the temple declaring to his disciples that “Not one stone” of the temple “will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Afterwards, on the Mount of Olives, the disciples come to Jesus and want to know more. “When will this be,” they ask him, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And, as Matthew records it, it is in response to this question that Jesus unleashes a storm of prophecy, encompassing parables, stories, and warnings, about the end of the world, God’s judgement, and his own part in the completion of history—an eschatological discourse of which our passage for today is but a very small part.

“About that day and hour no one knows,” Jesus tells the disciples. “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. . .if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

We read passages like this during Advent because in this time of year, when we celebrate the coming into our world of Jesus Christ, Emanuel, God with us, Our Savior in that historical moment over 2,000 years ago—we also look forward in expectation of Christ’s return—what we call the “second coming”—a moment, sometime in the future, when Christ will come to gather the faithful, to judge the unfaithful, to unite past, present and future into a triumphant completion of God’s history and God’s purpose.

And so Jesus, and Matthew’s gospel, warn and encourage and implore us--keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

Maybe some of you saw this cartoon in the your Sunday paper a few weeks ago, in the Parade magazine. It’s just one panel, very simple. In the cartoon a gentleman in a biblical-type getup—shabby tunic, sandals, long beard—is on the street holding a sign that proclaims “The End of the World is Near.” Passing by on the street is a man, sharply dressed up in a business suit and holding a briefcase, obviously hurrying from one meeting to another. And the business man is looking at the sign “The end of the world is near” and he says, “This is no time for irrational optimism, pal! We’ve got real problems!”

I thought of this cartoon when I read today’s gospel passage. Are we like that businessman, hurrying by, immersed in our own problems, unwilling to even stop and think for a moment about what the End of the World might really mean? For us, is the Second Coming just some kind of inconvenient myth or fairy tale?

Or—are we so worn down by the unremitting life of tasks and responsibilities, appointments and worries and cares that keep our lives busy and take our whole attention that we think the end of the world might be good news because we could at least then get a little rest? What does it really take to get our attention and make us stop for a moment, stop doing things, and actually think about what it is that we are doing?

Our gospel passage for today, like the bearded man in sandals holding the End of the World sign, invites us to stop for a moment in our heedless rush, to pay attention, to get ready for something that’s not on our “to do” list. Our gospel passage for today invites us to pause in the middle of what for many of us is an overcommitted frenzy of Christmas shopping and parties and TV specials and activities—to pause, to ponder, and to prepare our hearts for the miracle of Christ’s certain presence with us in the past, in the present, and in the future.

Keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

What does it mean to be awake, and ready, for the coming of Christ? Jesus gives us example after example in Matthew 24 and 25, including the example in our passage for today about the householder who needs to be alert and awake to prevent his house from being broken into.

Preparation is something we know about. We prepare for a new baby by getting the diapers ready. We prepare for an earthquake by practicing getting under our desks at school or at work. We prepare for retirement by saving money.

I remember that in the 80’s when I was in graduate school in Boston, we prepared for Hurricane Gloria’s arrival by taping up all of our dorm windows--and then laying in a big stock of beer. We weren’t only prepared to outlast that hurricane, we were prepared to enjoy it. We gathered in a room and waited for the hurricane—and it never came. It went out to sea instead of heading in towards Boston.

So what was all that preparation for? Was it meaningful or important at all? What good is it to be awake, and to be ready, if what you’re waiting for never comes—at least during your lifetime?

For me, the key to understanding our passage for today lies just a little further along in Matthew’s gospel. In chapter 26, as Jesus sits praying through the night in the garden of Gethsemane, waiting for his arrest, he tells the disciples: “I am deeply grieved, even to death. Remain here, and stay awake with me.”

And as Jesus waits and suffers throughout that long night, his disciples fail him and fail him again by falling asleep when he needs them most. “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” he says to them. You can hear the disappointment and the pain and the betrayal of those words.

Jesus’ words of prophecy “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” in Matthew 24 are poignantly echoed by his heartfelt cry, “Could you not stay awake with me one hour?” in Matthew 26. And the Greek word used in the original text is the same one in both places. In my translation, the NRSV, it’s written as “stay awake”—and in other translations such as the NIV, it’s written as “keep watch.”

So. What if we think of staying awake not as being prepared for something to happen, or as waiting in expectation or readiness—but as keeping watch, as Jesus wanted the disciples to do in the garden--keeping vigil in patience and love, companionship and simple presence--while nothing in particular—certainly nothing dramatic--is happening?

What if we think of being ready not as an activity like getting diapers, or buying beer, or having an emergency kit in the car trunk, or anxiously awaiting an event? What if being ready is simpler than that? What if being ready is simply keeping vigil or keeping watch--being present and patient, being attentive, listening, being, companioning—loving—in the time we find ourselves—in this "time between?”

It’s the difference between being vigilant—which is future centered, always focused on an upcoming event; and keeping vigil, which is present-centered, always focused on what is happening now.

When was the last time you kept watch or kept vigil through the night in this sense of the word? Were you standing on the deck of a frigate at midnight in the Pacific? Were you hovering over a sleeping infant with her first cold? Were you breathing through birth contractions, one after another after another? Were you stranded by a snowstorm in the airport at Minneapolis/St Paul? Or were you holding the hand of a loved one as they died, patiently waiting and companioning and loving them as their breaths came further and further apart and they drifted from this life to the next?

What happens to us when we keep vigil—when we stop doing and simply be? It seems like time stops, doesn’t it?

All of our senses are heightened as the world around us quiets and we can hear the rustling of the trees, feel the hardness of the chair or the warmth of a hand, see the stars or notice those first hints of morning light drift over the horizon. Our priorities shift and for a moment what becomes important is a loved one’s breath; or murmured words of comfort; a cold cloth on the forehead; a warm blanket; a favorite song or poem.

We know the grace of doing “nothing” but being—and the holiness and beauty of “being” overwhelms us, more than enough and overflowing.

Theologians might say that the difference between “waiting” and “keeping watch” is the difference between chronos and kairos. The difference between time measured out in minutes, tracked and known by clocks and activities and chores--chronos; and time as God knows it, time experienced as timelessness or fullness, sacred and still and meaningful—kairos.

“Keep awake,” Jesus tells us, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” Keep awake. Be ready. The Son of Man is coming.

But the wakefulness and readiness Jesus wants from us isn’t found in doing, or preparing, or even in waiting. The wakefulness and readiness Jesus wants from us is found in keeping watch—companioning and comforting one another; taking time to stop doing and embrace being; experiencing God’s grace and holiness and timeless presence in the time we have, the patience and the fullness and the completeness of this “time between.”

This Advent, my prayer for you is that you will know this stillness and beauty, this holiness and patience—that you will experience God’s sacred kairos--as you keep awake and keep watch in joyful expectation for the gift of Christmas and for the mystery of Christ’s second coming.

Amen.