January 2, 2005 - Second Sunday After Christmas Day - Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Jeremiah 31: 7-14
PSALM: 84: 1-8
SECOND READING: Ephesians 1: 3-6; 15-19a
GOSPEL: Matthew 2: 13-15; 19-23

I actually had three different Gospels to choose from for this particular Sunday. The first Gospel that is a possibility for this Sunday is the Gospel for the Epiphany. Well, we are going to be doing a service for the Epiphany, but I want you to know that this is about the Wise Men working their way up to Bethlehem.

The second was the lesson where Jesus is a 12-year-old, and the family, I think, has gone to the temple for His Bar Mitzvah. He has come back to talk with the other religious leaders, to the rabbi's, and the family has lost Him and has had to turn back to go find Him.

This particular one I chose because, in light of the devastation that has followed the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, I think there is a particular importance for this lesson; because what we read of this lesson is not the whole thing. If you look in your text, there are three verses that we cut out. Those three verses include Herod finding out that the Wise Men had tricked him, and he became enraged, sending his henchman to Bethlehem to kill every child two years of age and under. We celebrate the lives of those who were killed at the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

There is a woman - I believe her name is Joy Wallace - she is a female priest in England, and she is the inspiration for the British series, The Vicar of Dibley. One line from something she wrote about this said, "We need to put Herod back into Christmas" - because so much of what we think about at Christmas time is all about the wonderful warm feelings. It is just like those little balls that you shake, and there is all the snow. Everything is just perfect in them, and we might get the impression that that is, indeed, the world into which God sent Jesus. But, when you read lines like those three lines that are cut out, where the idea that Jesus, indeed, had to get up and flee, it sets us in a world that is much more like the real world that we live in.

Even without the catastrophic devastation of tsunamis, it doesn't take a lot for us to be really in touch with the difficulties of the world that each of us live in. Those of you who have lost a spouse, and it was unexpected; or, even if it was expected and even after many years, you know what kind of devastation there is with that loss. Those of you who have lost a child; those who have found, in any number of other ways, the reality of the stress and the difficulties of life that are not like those picture book nativity scenes - they are all too real for us. I think it is critical for us to understand that the world into which God sent Jesus, when the Word became flesh, was a world that was full of both sorrow and joy.

There are folks whose voices we tend to see as voices of hatred in the world - one of them being Fred Phelps - the lawyer who began talking about that somehow this tsunami is God's judgment and about there being all sorts of people that God needed to take care of by sending the tidal wave. I don't believe that. I don't believe that that is how God acts with regard to the forces of nature. I don't believe God sends us a message by sending a thunderbolt. Those are from mythologies and superstitions that really don't have anything to do with our faith, but those things do happen.

God sent His Son to be among us, fully human, and, as a sign of that, the human family in which Jesus became a part, had to flee. They became refugees before Jesus was even able to walk, and they spent years in Egypt before He was able to come home, and, even then, couldn't come back to the place where He was born, but had to live in hiding. Those are simple and small signs to remind us that, in spite of everything that happens, God does not provide us, as Christians, that we will never have a drunk driver come near us. God does not promise us that, as Christians, no difficulty and no death and no injury and no illness will befall us, but He reminds us that, in whatever happens in our lives, God is with us. God did not put His own Son off of being a refugee and of being sought after, and, indeed, when we look at the Cross, remember that He did not hold His Son apart from even suffering and death, but chose to offer Him for our salvation.

The idea is that God is with us in all of this, and that is where, when you read the Epistle that we had for today, it talks about when the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, we might understand the hope to which we have been called. All of us have been called to hope. Hope is not about looking out at the world and seeing that everything is just as we would like it and saying, "Isn't that wonderful!" That is not hope. Hope is in dealing with the real struggles of our lives and realizing that, even in the midst of those struggles that cause us pain and hurt, God is with us, and God is calling us to something beyond that - like those lines from the Psalm that talk about turning our sorrows into joy.

We are human just as Jesus was human. Just because we are Christians, we don't get out of the cost of being part of this very physical world. St. Paul talked about that all of creation was sighing and groaning, and there is this sense that, even the created world, besides human beings, is in some sort of conflict and is wrestling as it waits for the final revelation of what God has in store for our world. We see these kinds of things. I see physical disasters, things like the plates of our earth shifting back and forth, and they simply are a part of what it means to be living in this physical world.

There are folks whose first question, when they experience this, is, "Why?" Now, whether it is one person who died suddenly, one loved one who was lost, or thousands, the first question is, "Why?" And I find that the Scriptures that I read don't have an answer that tells me why, but they do have passages that ask me to say, "What now? Where do I go from here? This has happened, and this is what my life is now - where is God leading me through this?" And that question, I think, is one, as grateful Christians, that we can wrestle with, even when we don't really understand what is going on.

My hope is that we realize that, rather than immediately trying to figure out where God was in all of these experiences, we have, as Christians, something else to ask. What we have to ask is, "Where are we?" Where are humans when faced with these kinds of disasters? These things happen, and the world is aware of them. Back in 1755, I believe it was, Lisbon was destroyed by an 8.5-earthquake and the following tsunami, and it left all sorts of folks to wrestle with these questions. The question that we have to wrestle with is, "Where are we?" Our technology has changed, but it wasn't available to the folks there. Where are we? There are some folks who are sleeping without any shelter, but there are others who are put up in wonderful facilities because they come from another country; and it is important to make sure that tourists are cared for better than the people who live there. Where are we in the face of those kinds of challenges?

I would invite you to think about the fact that God brought Jesus into this flesh to be just as human as any of us and to live with and deal with all of the physical and human needs, so that we might know that, whatever we face, God is with us, and God is drawing us to a hope that is beyond just living through the moment, but seeing that there is more in store for us, because we are the ones that God has called to a hope.

The second thing that I would invite you to do is to entrust those whom you have lost to God and to realize that this is not an act of judgment, but that God has promised to care for them as He will care for all of those who love Him. I ask you to remember these things as you wrestle with how you respond to these kinds of tragedies.

AMEN