Matthew 2:13-23
December 30, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
For the past number of weeks, I have anticipated the homecoming of our four children for Christmas. Like the lighting of the Advent candles, each candle represented how closer we were getting to Christmas Day. It had been two years that all of us have been together for Christmas. As I shared with you last Sunday, it was really exciting and a true blessing to have them home and to once again share Christmas together. 2001 was a Christmas cheer!
We didn’t have time on Christmas Day to watch the nightly news or to read the daily paper. Rather, we watched the movie, Keeping the Faith and played Cranium. Nothing was going to spoil our Christmas cheer. While we cocooned and ate turkey together, the world was still going on. It was like that too when Jesus was born. The world didn’t just stop. It went on with all the violence and killings as it has always been.
King Herod’s Massacre
For many weeks now, we celebrated Christmas with messages of joy and hope, love and peace. We sang Handel’s Messiah declaring to the world that Jesus is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and the Prince of Peace. On Christmas Eve, we remembered Jesus, the Light of the world will brighten the darken world and nothing will destroy the Light that gives life to all people.
So why do we have to listen to such a Scriptural lesson on this Sunday only 5 days after Christmas? The odor of evergreens is still hanging in the air and we are still humming Christmas carols while we shop. So why are there tears at Christmas?
King Herod was very good at killing. He had the know-how, the means, and the will. Because of his murderous personality, a popular saying arose that it was safer to be one of Herod’s dogs than a member of his family.
Legend said that Herod condemned to death several of his wives, including his favorite one. He killed her grandfather and mother, his own brother, three of his sons, at least two grandsons, not to mentioned all sorts of lesser folk who were not related to him but stood in the way of his ambition. Later, on his deathbed, Herod accurately calculated there would be few tears at his passing, so he arranged for soldiers to arrest and to execute one member from every family so that there would be mourners and tears.
So in this Christmas season portrayed as a time of peace, tranquillity, and love and TV shows filled with stories of homecomings, celebrative dinners, and reconciling relationships in front of glowing Christmas trees, why are we dampening this hope-filled, season with the murder of baby boys? Our Christmas cheers have turned to Christmas tears.
The Cost of Christmas
The reason why we are listening to an account of such a shocking and horrible tale while it’s still the holiday season is that this is a part of the Christmas story. If you want the Christmas story to be complete, this is a part of the story we need to hear.
Herod had been in power long enough to be able to tell a rival when he saw one. What the uneducated shepherds might see as a baby, a distant relative of David, Herod saw as a threat to everything upon which his kingdom was based. You see, this Herod joins the other murderous leaders of our time, Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden. All these people didn’t mind a little murder in order to advance their political ideas.
The little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie is a lie! O little town of Bethlehem is made miserable by the birth of Jesus, streets running red with blood while mothers wail, lament over their lost children. We like the way Phillips Brooks describes Bethlehem. But the real Bethlehem, the way the Bible tells it, is more like what we see in Israel today. The PLO leader Arafat under house arrest and prevented from worshipping in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem! Israel and the Palestinians still at odds with each other. And the killings of children haven’t stopped.
Matthew reminded us that Herod’s actions echoed the similar actions of another king, the Pharaoh of Egypt. In the book of Exodus, Pharaoh was threatened by the numbers and possible strength of the Israelites. In a Herod-like fashion, Pharaoh ordered the murder of all male Hebrew babies. Yet, even as Israel suffered, God was active in providing a leader by the name of Moses. God will lead his people from slavery into freedom and will restore for them the promised land.
Then centuries later, when Israel suffered under the Assyrian invasion, the prophets recalled the wailing tears as the Hebrew children died. Hosea reclaimed the memory of God’s saving action of bringing Israel out of Egypt as a prophetic sign of hope.
So Matthew tells us that the massacre of Bethlehem’s babies is set in the larger context of how the suffering of God’s people have come under the oppression of murderous kings. This lesson reminds us that, even in this Christmas season, we are still surrounded by evil and violence and injustice. Even as the Christ child is born, other children were dying. Even as we were celebrating our family Christmas of peace and tranquillity, violence was causing children to die. The tears that Rachel wept are not just her tears that her children are no more, but these were God’s tears. This is the reality of the world in which we live.
The church will not let us hide our Christmas faith behind a chorus of Christmas cheers. To follow Christ is to be willing to suffer and live in a world full of Herods intent on killing the innocent. To follow Christ is to be willing to become politically active in our violent world set out to destroy innocent people. To follow Christ is to be willing to follow Jesus on the path to Calvary where we find out that there’s a personal cost to be paid when we know the complete Christmas story.
God Came to Us
We don’t really like this part of the Christmas story. You can see that there are not as many of us here today as there were on Christmas Eve or last Sunday to hear about the shepherds, to sing with the angels, and to see the little baby Jesus. Christmas for us has become an escapist fantasy that for one day of the year everybody becomes miraculously transformed from Ebenezer Scrooges who suddenly do the right thing because of Tiny Tim.
If we will turn down the music in the shopping mall for just a moment we might hear the mothers screaming, weeping for their lost babies. These are malnourished children in developing countries. These are crack babies. These are homeless babies. These are abandoned and unwanted babies. These are kids from poor communities with too many disadvantages to succeed. And when we go to the Bethlehems in our world, we can count up the bodies of those killed by their own governments, to say nothing of the wars and a year on the mean streets of San Francisco. We just don’t know any other way to get what we want than to do violence on innocent children.
There’s a story of an Asian Catholic monk named Telemachus who lived in the fourth century. He had spent most of his life in a remote monastery, tending the garden, studying and praying. He knew very little about the outside world. It’s a bit like when our family just stayed home on Christmas Day eating turkey, playing games, and not wanting to know what was happening in the world.
One day he felt God urging him to go to Rome. Terrified at the thought, Telemachus prayed. The call became even clearer. He couldn’t imagine how God could use him in Rome, but he’d dedicated his whole life to the love of God. He couldn’t disobey.
He gathered the few possessions he owned, strapped them to his back and journeyed the strange roads to Rome. He reached the city in the middle of the holiday festival. But not knowing what else to do, he decided to follow the crowd. He ended up at the coliseum where the gladiators were readying themselves for the games. Having no idea what was about to happen, Telemachus took a seat. The gladiators marched into the arena, saluted the emperor and shouted, “We who are about to die salute thee.”
Sensing unspeakable violence, Telemachus jumped up. “In the name of Christ, forbear.”
Of course, everybody ignored him, and the fighting commenced. Panicked, Telemachus ran down the stone steps into the arena and began dashing back and forth between the gladiators. One knocked him down with his shield. The crowd roared. The little monk sprang up and continued to rush into the way of those attempting to fight. “In the name of Christ, forbear.”
Then he blocked one of the gladiator’s vision. The gladiator barely dodged a blow. Furious, the crowd began demanding the monk’s blood. The gladiator Telemachus had blocked raised his sword and slashed the little monk across the chest and into the stomach. The monk gasped, “In the name of Christ, forbear,” then fell to the ground.
Then a strange thing happened. The crowd grew deathly still. Everyone was focused on the still form of the monk, lying in a pool of blood. In the silence someone on the top tier stood up and walked out, then someone else. All over the coliseum, people began leaving. This continued until the entire place was empty.
That was the last gladiator contest ever to be held in the Roman Coliseum.
When we can understand the meaning of Christmas to also include the reality that there are the screams of mothers weeping for their babies, we begin to accept the responsibility of not just having the spirit of Christmas for one day or for a few weeks, but all the time. Like Telemachus gave his life to end violence, we offer our lives to bring peace and justice in a violent world.
I enjoyed the peace and tranquillity that I had on Christmas Day. But eventually I will need to get out of my cocoon and to see how innocent children are dying.
The only way we might be able to stop the tears at Christmas is to not just hear the Christmas story that we want, but to accept the Christmas story that we need. Christmas is not about idealized, sugar coated images of family gatherings watching movies and eating turkey. Christmas is not even really about love and peace. Christmas is about God Almighty making a home with us, coming to us, as we really are, rather than who we wish we were. We need a God who is willing to come to us to save us. We need a God who is willing to come to where we are because we can’t get to God on our own.
In Hebrews 2:16, we read that Christ “did not come to help the angels, but to the descendants of Abraham—people living in real places on this real earth. Christ came not to the angels but to us.
If God’s love is to come down to us, not to angels, there is going to be some pain in it. And yes, blood too. Someone will get hurt, for we hold on tightly to our other gods. We will not let them go without their being pulled from us. If our allegiances are to be dethroned, it will not be pretty. At Calvary, Christ goes head-to-head with our kings and kingdoms, and there is pain and violence, weeping and blood.
Those who expected Jesus to raise a violent revolt against Rome were wrong. Those political expectations ended in Rome’s brutal defeat of the Jewish people in 70 AD. As for Jesus, his revolt ended at Calvary just a few years after it began in Bethlehem. There, Jesus was decisively defeated by the Romans in the only way empires have for dealing with threats to their power. There was violence, blood, and death.
But the good news is that we know what happens at the end. The Cross was not the end of Jesus’ revolt, but rather it’s the beginning. The first cosmic struggle of killing innocent babies was fought in Bethlehem. But the war was won by God in Jesus’ favor at Calvary when we see the empty tomb on Easter. The kingdoms of this world went head-to-head with the King of Kings whose reign began in Bethlehem, and the baby won.
I want to end my sermon with a Christmas story on this first Sunday after Christmas.
The brand new pastor and his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn, arrived in early October excited about their opportunities.
When they saw their church, it was very run down and needed much work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve. They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc. and on Dec.18 were ahead of schedule and just about finished. On Dec.19th, a terrible tempest—a driving rainstorm hit the area and lasted for two days.
On Dec. 21st, the pastor went over to the church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about head high. The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone the Christmas Eve service, headed home.
On the way he noticed that a local business was having a flea market type sale for charity, so he stopped in. One of the items was a beautiful, handmade, ivory colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work, fine colors and a Cross, embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church.
By this time it had started to snow. An older woman running from the opposite direction was trying to catch the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in the warm church for the next bus, 45 minutes later.
She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the entire problem area. Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle. Her face was white like a sheet.
“Pastor,” she asked, “where did you get that tablecloth?”
The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials, “EBG” were crocheted into it there. They were. These were the initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth 35 years before in Austria.
The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told her how he had just gotten the tablecloth. The woman explained that before the war she and her husband were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow her the next week. She was captured, sent to prison and never saw her husband or her home again.
The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her home that was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day for a housecleaning job.
What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve. The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife greeted everyone at the door and many said that they would return. An older man, whom the pastor recognized from the neighborhood, continued to sit in one of the pews and stared, and the pastor wondered why he wasn’t leaving.
The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and how could there be two tablecloths so much alike?
He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced his wife to flee for her safety, and he was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in prison. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years in between.
The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.
The good news is that love came down at Christmas. No Nazis, not 35 years in between, not even the loneliness and alienation found in big cities will separate us from God’s love that came on Christmas. We will still have tears at Christmas. But the good news is at the end, the baby born in Bethlehem wipes away the tears and gives us his peace.
Let us pray.
Gracious Lord God, we pray for our understanding of the true meaning of Christmas for our lives. May we realize that peace and love can only happen when we take the responsibility of faithful discipleship—including the end of senseless killing of our innocent children. Lord, bless us and wipe away the tears that we have at Christmas. In the name of our Lord who brings peace, we pray. Amen.