12-28-08

And how was your Christmas? Thank you for being back to church so soon. I hope many of the things on your wish list are crossed off, and your Christmas was near perfect, as well as white. Which is asking a lot, for isn't it wonderful the many images of perfect Christmases we have.

There is the Norman Rockwell Christmas of warm, wonderful family, sitting around the tinseled tree in bathrobes, unwrapping gifts by firelight, dad smoking a pipe, with a box of slippers in his hands, and mom looking, well, great, even though the kids dragged her out of bed at 5 A.M. A peaceful scene sometime pre-Pearl Harbor and preceding the breakup of the so-called traditional American family.

Then there is the Currier and Ives Christmas, captured on so many Christmas cards, where the horse-drawn sleigh transports the bundled family buried in blankets and great with gifts over the snow-covered countryside headed toward the huge house on the hill aglow with the warmth of holiday cheer. We can even hear Bing Crosby singing Irving Berlin's "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas."

Or perhaps our image goes further back, to a Charles Dickens' Christmas, where carolers in derby hats, fluffy ear muffs and six foot mufflers gather on lamp lit street corners and Tiny Tim sings "God bless us everyone."

Perfect images of Christmas, "just like the ones we used to know." They are lovely. I pray your Christmas was lovely, if not quite like that.

But never perfect. Christmas was never perfect. I mean, I don't want to be the Grinch here, but never perfect. Only our images are perfect. God bless our images. God gives us our images. They're wonderful! But reality has never been perfect.

Even our first Christmas was not perfect. Remember? No room in the inn! Roman rule! If the world had been perfect, we would not have needed Christmas. Now, don't take down the decorations too soon. We do get twelve days of Christmas, and we need every one of them. But we also need know the "rest of the story."

We have two biblical accounts of Christmas, one in Matthew, one in Luke. In many ways, well, in most ways, they differ in their telling. Luke gives us the angels and the shepherds. Luke's telling is the rural Christmas approach.

Matthew presents the magi and their gifts. Matthew's is the urban Christmas. Luke includes John the Baptist's birth and Mary's Magnificat. Matthew details the flight into Egypt. Neither covers the other's material. Two different versions of the same story. We blend them together and get one merry Christmas.

But in one significant way, easily overlooked by the casual Christmas reader, they both agree. Both begin their story, Luke 1:5, Matthew 2:1, with the identical words, "In the days when Herod was king..." This, you need to know, is an ominous sentence! It's like starting a story with, "It was a dark and stormy night..."

"In the days when Herod was king." This means the first Christmas was not a Norman Rockwell Christmas, nor a Currier and Ives Christmas, nor even a Charles Dickens Christmas. It was a King Herod Christmas. It's right here in the Gospels.

By the way, there are three Herods in the New Testament, so it gets confusing. We should give them jerseys with numbers. The Herod of the Christmas story is Herod #1, so called "The Great." Not called "great" by the judgment of history, but by his subjects, who were advised it would be a good idea to call him "great." It was the title he preferred. And Herod had a huge ego and short temper. Herod #1 came to power at the age of 25, after murdering his rivals. This caught the attention of his childhood chum, Caesar Augustus, who now ruled the Roman Empire, and who therefore awarded Herod governorship of the eastern flank of the empire, called Palestine, conferring upon Herod the title, "King of the Jews."

But we know Herod was only a puppet ruler under the Caesar. Herod knew this, too, which is perhaps why he was a little insecure, leading him to murder his wife, Mariamne, who was 1 of 10 wives and therefore perhaps expendable, two of his 5 sons, Alexander and Aristobulus, 300 of his military officers, and anyone in the civilian population who would not bow down and obey him. Sound familiar? This kind of ruler is not new, nor old.

For instance, when the Caesar ordered a census to be taken throughout his empire, that he might know what tax rate to establish to support his lavish lifestyle, and how many soldiers to station in each province to keep the captives in line, it was flunky Herod's job to carry out the census in Palestine.

Six thousand Pharisees refused on religious grounds to take part in this secular census. Herod resorted to his usual response to insubordination. He murdered as many Pharisees as he could find, which were several thousand.

It is into this world Jesus was born, "in the days when Herod was king." Do you get the picture? It was "a dark and stormy night," not Christmas card perfect.

In the verses preceding this morning's lesson, Matthew tells us there are "wise men" traveling in Herod's territory. Piquing the puppet's paranoia, Herod invites the wise-men to his palace to present their passports and proclaim their purpose. They seek the baby born to be King of the

Jews, they report. They have seen his star and have come to worship him.

Which does suggest some lack of wisdom on the part of the magi. For Herod is the self-designated King of the Jews and he prefers people to come and worship him. Herod, however, is cunning. Give him credit, he controls his temper, and encourages the wise-men to complete their mission and by all means to return to him and report their findings once they have made their glorious discovery, that Herod, too, "might go and worship the new born king." Right!

By Herod's leave, the wise-men depart, and somewhere along the way get a spark of enlightenment, for following their discovery and gift giving to the baby Jesus, they do not return to Herod, but flee East via another road. Thus saving Christmas. Whew! And setting up this morning's lesson. Realizing the wise-men have out-witted him, Herod orders to death all male babies born in Bethlehem. Well, and just to play it safe, not only all male babies born in Bethlehem, but all male babies born anywhere in Judea. Well, and just to be extra cautious, not only all male babies born anywhere in Judea, but all males born up to two years of age anywhere in Judea.

This executive order comes to be known as "The Slaughter of the Innocent." We do not read this part of the birth story on Christmas Eve. In fact, we usually leave it out all together. But this is the way it was on the first Christmas, "in the days when Herod was king."

Robinson Jeffers put it this way in concluding a poem contrasting our sentimental view of Christmas with the reality of the first Christmas: "Caesar and Herod shared the world, Snow over Bethlehem lay. Iron the empire, brutal the time, Dark was that first Christmas Day."

"In the days when Herod was king." This is the way our Christmas story begins, in Matthew and in Luke. It starts this way for a reason, to tell us something. Jesus was born in a bad time. "Iron the empire, brutal the time." This is not Santa Claus' Xmas.

We tend to forget this as we idealize the first Christmas, and imagine: freshly shaved and showered shepherds, sterilized stables and soft straw, Joseph calm and Mary mild, the infant lulling and cattle lowing.

Don't get me wrong. I love "Away in the Manger." But there is more to the story than this. This is the "good news" of Jesus Christ our Lord, come to save us from bad times as well as to offer us a happy holiday.

Matthew's original audience would not miss this message. You see, for Matthew's readers, this birth story is deja vu. It is supposed to remind them, the Jewish people, of another birth, back in another horrible time in Hebrew history.

Jesus is born during the reign of a wicked king who is slaughtering babies, just as another Hebrew hero was born during the reign of another evil monarch who was killing male Jewish babies. This was the "basket in the bulrush" baby spared to be savior of his people one day.

Matthew's gospel is full of Old Testament parallels, but nowhere are there more parallels than in the birth story. For instance, Joseph being spoken to in dreams is like the Old Testament Joseph. God spoke to him in dreams, too. Remember how it annoyed his brothers? The holy family's flight into Egypt is ditto the children of Israel twelve hundred years before, which in addition fulfills the Old Testament prophecy of Hosea, "Out of Egypt I have called my son."

This is not coincidental. Matthew draws these Old Testament parallels for a purpose. Matthew is telling his Hebrew audience Jesus is the new Moses, born to deliver his people from bondage, born to guide his people through the wilderness, born to lead his people to the Promised Land.

What happened back then with Moses and the tribes of Israel, is happening again with Jesus and them "in the days when Herod is king." Deja vu. History is repeating itself.

And for Matthew, this is a good thing. This is the good news, for history for the "chosen children" of Israel is the history of God saving God's children, often in spite of themselves. So here we are again, in another cruel time in history, when God again hears the cries of God's people, and answers them with another birth story.

Which means, we can have hope. We can take hope "in the bleak midwinter."

Christmas is a wonderful, warm, glowing, giving, loving, relational time. But Christmas is more than this. It is about hope. Hope, not because it reminds us of a time when things were simple and gay, or so we say; not because it reminds us of a time when everything was good and golden, or so we remember; not because it reminds us of a "perfect" Christmas past, "just like the ones we used to know."

Christmas is about hope, because it reminds us of a time when things were brutal and out of joint; because it reminds us of a time when evil ruled, violence was the way, and war was a constant worry if not reality; because it reminds us of a time when people suffered and snow lay on the ground; and God chose this time to enter into the human condition and lead us to new life. Can't you just hear the good news?

Many of you were here for services Christmas Eve. It is such a holy evening, this sanctuary so lovely. Filled with families sitting together. College kids home from school. Grandparents in town. Even dad is here, willingly dragged along. It is lovely, Christmas Eve.

I suppose most of us are here for sentimental reasons. It is a nostalgic time, in a beautiful setting, with an enchanted service of candles and carols, full of good touch and family.

But there are other persons present on Christmas Eve, in every time, knowing that for them their presence here on this holy evening is an act of courage. Widows sitting alone for the first Christmas in their bereaved life. Families sitting together missing a member because of failed human relationships, trying still to hold it together and make it as a family. Singles sitting alone missing family because they are stationed here in service to their country, or family members missing their military loved one deployed overseas in defense of liberty. There are those with illness knowing this may be their last Christmas. And those weary with care of an aging parent, or spouse, who is no longer able to get out and celebrate Christmas. There are those who don't have the means to give gifts the measure of their affection because for them economic times are not good. And those who for so many different reasons sit in discouragement or disappointment, suffering discrimination or disillusion or addiction.

Yes, there are always those for whom this season is unkind, who experience Christmas as "the days when Herod was king." To see them listening to the Christmas story, tears on their cheeks, to hear them singing, "Hail the heaven born Prince of Peace," to know they are praying for guidance and deliverance and the strength to do God's will, is to know they know the rest of the story.

Christmas is more than human warmth in good times. Christmas is holding the candle of your life against the dark times, and knowing God will never allow the darkness to overcome it.

For if Christ was born "in the days when Herod was king," then surely Christ can be born in our lives today. Therefore, "Let earth receive her king!"

AMEN.