Sermon at St. Mary’s Parish Church,
Alderbury – Team Eucharist - Sunday 29
December 2013
Isaiah 63:7-9; Hebrews
2:10-18; Matthew 2:3-23
May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
Have you all had a Happy and Blessed Christmas? I don’t know about you, but Christmas seems
to take so long in arriving, with all the trappings of Christmas being found in
our shops almost before the Summer has finished and then, after just a couple
of days, Christmas Day itself and Boxing Day, it’s all over and we are eating
cold left-overs for several weeks thereafter.
It is a strange time, between Christmas and New Year, when we look back
at what has happened over 2013 and we start making those promises about what we
will do, or not do, in the New Year.
The Church Calendar is also peculiar at this time as our
gospel reading today is that difficult one about the Slaughter of the Innocents and the flight of Mary, Joseph and the
infant Jesus into Egypt – and yet we don’t celebrate the arrival of the Magi,
at Epiphany, for several more days.
Leading up to Christmas and on Christmas Day itself we
celebrate Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem and we sing about lowing cattle and a baby
who is so good he doesn’t even cry. We have shepherds coming with their gifts
and, probably a little out of chronological context, three wise men arriving
with exotic presents from the east. A
lovely story told year after year in little school playlets videoed by adoring
parents. Indeed, the one time when the story of God’s incarnation reaches many
people who probably never lift up a bible let alone read it and probably have
little understanding of incarnation and salvation. And now, when the large congregations have
gone, we read of the darker side to the story – of a tyrant puppet king who, in
trying to ensure the death of this little baby to secure his own succession,
gives orders to kill every male child in the Bethlehem area under two years of
age. A terrible piece of genocide.
In all probability, as Bethlehem in those days was probably
really a village no bigger than West Grimstead, the number of children who were
put to the sword was probably no higher than 20 yet it illustrates the danger
with which the ruling authorities viewed this infant child – a real danger to
the stability of the Roman-collaborating Jewish hierachy.
Dreams feature a lot in the bible – remember Joseph and
Daniel’s gift of interpretation of kingly dreams in the Hebrew bible - and in
our gospel reading today both the wise men and Joseph are warned not to return
to Judea. In the case of Joseph and Mary they are told to actually go into
Egypt, the very country from which the Exodus had occurred all those centuries
previously. Poor Mary, how she must have
been confused – first told by an angel that she will bear the Son of God,
vilified by her close family and friends when she became pregnant, nearly
rejected by her fiancé, Joseph, made to make an 80 miles journey to a town in
the south she did not know, finding that all the hotels in that town were fully
booked and then given a highly unsanitary room in which to give birth to this
special child.
Following the visit of some shepherds, and perhaps the wise
men too – although it is likely that they would have appeared later – she
treasures up all these memories of how special the birth is being treated –
Joseph then informs her that they have to flee into a foreign country – the
very country where their ancestors had been slaves. Not a very propitious start for the life of
the Son of God, the Messiah. It certainly didn’t seem that God’s favour was
shining on any of them.
It has often been said that bad news is best buried under
good news. I think this often happens at Christmas too. As we sit here, replete after the festivities
of Christmas in our comfortable western world, Christians are being persecuted
and killed in huge numbers in other parts of the world and these stories often
don’t hit our headlines in the way they might if the same things were happening
here. In the South Sudan, a new country is still coming to terms with its
political and religious agendas.
Millions of Christians in China are forbidden to celebrate Jesus’s birth
unless they abide by strict state legislation in state registered and approved
churches where the Good News of the gospel is sanitised to ensure that it
doesn’t compromise Communist Doctrine.
Little has changed really, Bethlehem itself remains a divided city today
with the conflicting claims of Jews, Christians and Muslims, situated on the
west bank of the Jordan in Palestinian territory.
The beginning of Jesus’s life, therefore, was as troubled as
it was during Holy Week. In the words of
theologian Tom Wright - Matthew reminds
us, and it is an important reminder, that
God’s personal redeeming activity had, from the first to make its way in the
disorderly and dangerous real world of violence and conspiracy.”
Egypt plays an important link between our Old Testament and
Epistle readings and the gospel. Isaiah
reminds his readers that it was God’s saving presence there, through the
prophet Moses, that had saved the Jewish people from slavery in years gone by
and that God would come again, by his own
presence, to save them. The writer of Hebrews, in our second reading, talks
about redemption through Jesus sharing in the same problems and troubles as the
people. This is a clear message – a
golden thread which must run through our Faith – that God came down as man to
redeem the world, to save us by sharing in our suffering and suffering himself
for us. It is therefore not surprising
that shortly after his birth he should have to flee with his parents.
As I read the Hebrews passage in preparation for this sermon
I was reminded of a famous piece of newsreel shown during the Second World
War. I hasten to add that I am too young
to remember it personally, but I do have a great interest in that conflict and
in particular trying to fathom out human’s inhumanity towards itself. That piece of newsreel shows King George VI
and Queen Elizabeth examining the bomb-damaged Buckingham Palace which received
no less than seven hits including the destruction of the Palace’s chapel. After the most serious of these raids, in
1940, the famous newsreel was published in which the Queen is heard to declare “I’m glad we have been bombed. Now I feel I
can look the East End in the face”.
The East End, being close to London Docks, had been the first
and most consistent target of the German bombers during the years of the Blitz
and the Palace may have felt remote by comparison.
Jesus’s life and ministry was to share the despair of his
people. To again bring salvation – but in a very different way to that which
was expected by the Jewish religious leaders.
Ultimately he was to bring down the Jewish barriers between the sinful
people and God.
It is during this Christmas period that the prophecies of the
Old Testament are so important in confirming the true identity of Jesus. Matthew refers to Jesus’s flight to Egypt as
fulfilling another prophesy – he refers to Hosea
11.1 which reads “Out of Egypt I
called my Son”. This and his birth in Bethlehem, also foretold in the Old
Testament by Micah (5.2) are clear examples of prophesies being fulfilled.
As we now enter the New Year, we shall move away from the
celebrations and tribulation surrounding Jesus’s birth and flight and during
the next four months we head towards the other bookend of Christ’s life and
ministry – the Passion and the fulfilment of the most important prophesy of all
– that Jesus was sent, as the Son of God, to die for our sins and give us
eternal life and leave us all with the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray:
Almighty God,
We thank you for
sending your Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem the World
As we ponder on these
pieces of Scripture let us remember that he shared our suffering so that we
could bear whatever burden we might be asked to bear
That he came into the
World so that through his death he might destroy the one who has the power of
death and be an atonement for all our sins because he himself was tested by
what he suffered
And that being alive
and reigning with you is able to help those of us who are even now being
tested.
Amen
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