The Ugly Side of Christmas

There is an ugly side to Christmas. I think you know what I mean. It's not all about bright lights and pretty paper. It's not all soft music and candlelight services. There are some ugly things that start to crop up right about now in the Christmas season. Like the way you feel when you look at the bathroom scales in the morning. Or the blurry way your eyes feel after hours spent with a new computer game or video game that you got for Christmas. Or the mounds of trash piled up for pick up. Or the funny snoring noise Uncle Leopold makes when he's sleeping in front of the Meineke CarCare Bowl game. Or the balance on your credit card bill when it comes in a few weeks. Oh, it can get ugly allright, even at Christmas.

It's sad because it's not supposed to be like this, is it? Family members are not supposed to be annoying during this special season of the year, but somehow they still are. Brothers and sisters are not suppposed to fight with one another in the season of peace, but they do, don't they? Nations are not supposed to be at war, swords are supposed to be beaten into plowshares, and families are not supposed to be separated from their loved ones because of military service, but they are and we are. Our bosses are supposed to be more understanding, salesclerks are supposed to be more cheerful, people who are sick are supposed to make miraculous recoveries in order to be home for Christmas, the stock market is supposed to rise, creditors are supposed to be more lenient, people with serious differences are supposed to bury the hatchet, cats and dogs are supposed to live together. That's what Christmas is supposed to be like, right?

But as we come out into the harsh light of day after the beauty of those evening services with candles and soft lights last Monday for Christmas Eve, we find that, even though the baby is in the manger now, the world is still an unsettled place. The housing market is still dead, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan goes on, and we were witness to the horrible events in Pakistan this week as Benazir Bhutto, a hope for some sort of democratic reforms, was assasinated. If we were expecting Dec. 25 to look a lot different from Dec. 24, we had some huge disappointments.

So we come to Church this morning. Surely, if there is some place to come to hear that the world is different, it would be here. There are 12 days in Christmas after all. While the rest of the world is trying to rumble back to normal and pretend that Christmas is only one day, surely the Church can make the magic last a little longer. Alex is bound to tell us something hopeful, even if it's in some strange story. We're certainly going to sing some Christmas carols. That's what you were thinking, wasn't it?

Then we had to go and spoil the mood by reading the Bible! Well, you know, the Psalm was allright. It's all about praising God, and that's good. Hebrews was a little strange, talking about God sending Jesus to suffer. Not exactly warm and cuddly stuff, but understandable given that that is what Jesus did. But did you hear that passage we read from Matthew? Who decided that we'd keep reading Matthew after Christmas Eve? Didn't the lectionary people know that while the first 12 verses of chapter 2 are good stuff, all about the wise men and their gifts, the next 10 chapter are definitely rated R. No one in their right mind would let children hear this, would they? A story about King Herod throwing a fit when the wise men didn’t do what he asked and ordering all the babies in Bethlehem murdered? Sword-bearing soldiers are definitely not in my nativity set at home!

I remember preaching from this text when this lectionary reading came up in 1995, just three days after Rachel was born. Christmas was strange enough that year, but to go through this miraculous birth and to be celebrating the ways God had come to visit us in our new child, and then to go and preach about the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem was a good reminder that what is good and precious in the world is always at risk. There is always evil. There is always suffering and injustice and we are right to try to protect and defend those we love from it and rage against it when it comes into our families and our lives.

Christmas doesn’t change things so that we can never be hurt, but it does change the way we tell the story of evil. In the Christmas story, Jesus comes and evil does not just flee away forever vanquished. As Herod’s vicious act shows, evil remains and rages against the good, but the difference is that now, when we tell the story of how we and those we love and the whole world have been injured by evil and sin and death, we have a new ending to the story. Christmas shows us that while we were yet sinners, God showed love for us by sending Christ to live with us and die for us. Christmas shows us that God is not content to stand idly by while the creation God made is wounded and distorted by evil. Christmas shows us that God came to write a new ending to the story in which evil can never have the last word. It’s all a part of God’s story of redemption and liberation and salvation now. Even evil is part of God’s story and it can’t ultimately win.

Look at how Matthew tells the story. It’s really a story in three scenes and every one of the scenes ends with the fulfillment of a prophecy. Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth from Mary’s persepective, but Matthew stays with Joseph. You might remember that Joseph was not quite as accepting of the news that Mary was going to have a child as Mary was. It took a dream and a visit from an angel to convince him to do the right thing, even though it didn’t look much like the right thing according to the standards of the time.

But he did take Mary to be his wife and they did have the child, and wise men did come to visit and as they were leaving they decided not to go back to tell King Herod where the new baby was born. They were warned by a dream. Dreams are very important in this story.

So that’s where we pick it up and verse 13 of chapter 2 tells us that an angel appeared in a dream to Joseph again. What the angel had to say to Joseph was pretty terrifying. The angel said, “Joseph, get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt and stay there until God calls you out because Herod is going to try and kill the child.”

Now, going to Egypt is no strange thing for God’s people to do. If Joseph thought about it he might have remembered the story of another dreaming Joseph who was forced to go to Egypt. Do you remember that story? Maybe it’s something you read in Sunday School a long time ago. Maybe you’ve been to see “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” That’s the one I’m talking about. That Joseph became Pharoah’s dream interpreter and saved his family from danger in the land of Israel. That Joseph and his descendents came to be a huge nation which God eventually called out of slavery in Egypt to return to the promised land. It was that story that Matthew remembered because he ends the first scene of this story by saying that when Mary and Joseph and Jesus fled to Egypt they were fulfilling Hosea’s prophecy which said, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

You see how this all works together? Matthew reaches back and says, “You see? Do you see what God is doing here? God didn’t forget. God didn’t abandon Israel and God is still with the people, even though they are occupied by the Roman Empire and oppressed by a puppet king. (That would be Herod.) The future is all tied up in the promise God made in the past and which God has repeated in every generation to everyone who will listen. It’s all about Immanuel. God is with us. God was with us. Lo, I am with you to the end of the age! Scene One ends with the hopes of the people in exile in Egypt once again, but it’s not the end of the story.

Then there is the horrible scene. The one that you often don’t see in movies about the life of Christ. Herod, the puppet king, who was angry to hear that the magi were looking for a baby they called king, who was furious when he realized they weren’t coming back to tell him where this child was…Herod who is devious, impulsive, paranoid and prone to fits of rage, orders the wholesale killing of all the children two and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding area.

It’s an act of pure evil. One that makes you wonder: where were the angels for the children of Bethlehem? Where are the dreams that would tell them to flee to a safe place? It’s incomprenhensible. It’s tragic. It’s outrageous. It’s evil. But even this scene has a place in the story. Because we all know that incomprehensible, tragic, outrageous, evil acts take place in the real world. Acts like September 11 that cause us to ask: where were the angels for the people who died in the World Trade Center? Where were the angels for those who died in the tsunami? At Virginia Tech?

But even in the midst of tragedy, Matthew remembers a similar time in the day of the prophet Jeremiah when the nation wept over those sent into exile. A time when Rachel, the mother of the nation, was “crying for her children, and she did not want to be consoled, because they were no more.” For Matthew this was another such time and God embraced the suffering of the mothers of Bethlehem and found a way to connect the promise of the past with the hope to be found in Jesus. Scene two ends, not with Herod’s success, because even though he exercised all his brutal power, he failed…no, scene two ends with God’s word spoken over human history to give it new meaning.

Then in scene three, still in the echo of the words, “crying for children that are no more,” Herod is no more. Ding, dong, the witch is dead. And guess who gets a visit from an angel in a dream? Joseph down in Egypt is visited once more and the gets almost the same command he got in the last dream. “Joseph, get up, take the child and his mother, and go to Israel, because those who sought the child’s life have come to an end.”

The only hitch this time is that Joseph is a little bit wary about returning to the area where Herod’s son is ruling, so, after another dream, he goes to Nazareth, but even this fulfills a prophecy. Matthew tells us that the Messiah will be called a Nazarene and Jesus is that Messiah. Thus ends the third scene and once again, God has the last word.

I don’t have to tell you that the world is a mess. You can turn on the television and see that. I don’t have to tell you that your life is sometimes a mess. Sometimes more than others, but always more than we would like. I don’t have to tell you that there are still evil forces like Herod, that there are still grieving mothers as in Bethlehem, and that there are still refugees, like the Holy Family in Egypt. Even Christmas can’t hide the fact that we are imperfect people in an imperfect world.

But the story of the ugly side of Christmas is not the whole story. Herod has his day, but it is short-lived. Within the space of four verses he has a fit, orders this genocide and then dies himself. And despite himself he fulfills a prophecy from the God of love.

You see, the message we should take away from this reading is not that there is evil and it assaults us even though Christ came at Christmas. That’s not a redemptive message. The real message is: yes, there is evil but it could not defeat good because God is Immanuel and because Christ came at Christmas. So, Herod, take your best shot. You won’t be the last. Christ will be persecuted, reviled, spit upon, whipped, stripped and strung up on a cross. God will die and evil will still not carry the day because God has power even over death. So try your best, Herod, the headline news will still be the same two thousand years later: King Herod is still dead, but King Jesus is still alive!

If that’s true, then what is to stop us from proclaiming the same thing to the Herods in our lives? Come on, Age! Come on, Illness! Come on, Depression! Come on, Heartache! Come on, Insecurity! Come on, Conflict! Come on, Insensitive Boss! Come on, Heartbreak of Psoriasis! Come on, Playground Bully! Come on, Acne! Come on, Embarassing Itch! Come on, Social Awkwardness! Come on, Low Self-esteem! Come on, Poverty! Come on, Life! Come on, Death! Come on, and give me your best shot, because you don’t have the last reel, you’ve only got the first scene. You can’t define my life because it’s been defined for me by a God who formed me in the womb, who has cared for me since the moment I was born, who has come to live with us and who has promised to never leave us. Come on, Herod, because Jesus is still the king!

So go tell it in the valley of injustice! Go tell it on the plains of pain and suffering! Go tell it in the desert of loneliness and conflict! Go tell it on the mountain of misery! Over the hills and everywhere that Jesus Christ is born. Jesus Christ is born. Jesus Christ is born and nothing will ever be the same!

Do you believe that Church? Do you believe that goodness is stronger than evil? That love is stronger than hate? That a baby in a manger is stronger than a king on the throne? Because I tell you when I looked at that baby in my arms twelve years ago I believed it.

God is here to turn the world upside down. God is here to turn your life upside down. God is here to remind us of the promise that goes all the way back to a garden in paradise. You and I and this whole crazy world are not meant to be victims of evil, we are meant to children of God. And whatever we look like, whatever road we have travelled, whatever heartache we have suffered, whatever darkness has entered our lives…the light has entered the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Thanks be to God!

Matthew 2:13-23
Now after they had returned, look, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph saying, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, because Herod is about the seek out the child to kill him."
So Joseph got up, took the child and his mother in the night and left for Egypt and he was there until Herod's death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled when he said, "Out of Egypt I called my son."
When Herod saw that he had deceived by the magi, he went into a great rage, and he arranged for the slaughter of all of the children aged two or younger in and around Bethlehem, working from the time established by the magi. Then that which was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
"A voice was heard in Rama,
there is weeping and great sorrow.
Rachel is crying for her children and she did not want to be consoled,
for they are no more."
Now upon Herod's death, look, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to Israel, because those who sought the life of the child have died."
So he got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But upon hearing that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to return there. So, having been instructed through a dream, he went away to the region of Galilee. And when he came there he settled in a town named Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled: "He shall be called a Nazarene."