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.