Matthew 2:13-20
There are very few scriptures about Jesus as a child and they often get lost in the time between Christmas a New Year when churches and people are busy with other things. For the most part these stories tell us little about Jesus’ history and a lot about what was important to his earliest followers. They believed with all their hearts that Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one, whom the Jews of the first century expected to come from God to transform their situation and restore their fortunes as a nation. The stories about his childhood connect him with the prophecies about Messiah. Because of our standards of history, we read them as proof of who Jesus was: these things happened so he must be the one who was expected. First century storytelling worked in the opposite direction: Jesus is to us the Messiah, so we will tell stories that connect him to expectations. These stories don’t record events so much as they affirm what people believe to be true about Jesus as the one who changes history.
There are two pieces of this story today. The first I want us to think about is in the middle and is referred to as the slaughter of the innocents. The Wise Ones had gone to ask Herod about a new king they wanted to visit, but hadn’t gone back to Jerusalem to report if they found him. Herod waited and when he didn’t hear from them, he sent soldiers to kill every child in Bethlehem who was born in the time frame the Wise Ones suggested. He was eliminating his competition in a brutal way. There isn’t a record in secular history of this event, so we can’t verify that it happened. But the violence of the first century makes it plausible. Certainly thousands of children died of violence, hunger, and disease in Jesus’ time. Certainly mothers grieved every day for the children they lost.
We live in a time when children continue to die in horrible, wasteful ways. The good news is that the world is making progress and fewer children die before age 5 of hunger and disease. We are spreading vaccination and addressing famine in ways that are making a difference. But the horror of war is exacting a terrible toll on our children. This week Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, who was once the Moderator of the PCUSA, used his influence to remind churches and pastors that Christians have something to say about the continuing slaughter of innocents in our time. As followers of Jesus, who promoted nonviolent responses to the violence of his time, we should be publicly denouncing the brutal attack Hamas made on Israeli villages on October 7 and the disproportionate response which has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, since then. There is no justification for the initial attack AND no reason for the murder of civilians in large numbers in hopes of killing a few leaders of that attack.
Do you remember when our churches stood for peace in the world? When did we go silent? We have lived in times when war was a necessary response to aggression in the world, but when did we let it become the only response? Children are dying in Gaza, in Israel, in Ukraine, in many African countries, in Weiger villages, on the paths leading to our southern border, in schools and shopping malls in America. In the first century “Rachel weeping for her children” was a sign that God was about to lead the people to a different way. It’s time for us to be making much more noise and insisting that war end and our children live in peace.
The second part of today’s story is called “the flight to Egypt” and tells that Joseph was warned in a dream that Jesus was in danger and took his family into Egypt for a while, before returning to settle in Nazareth. Often I hear people saying that this means Jesus was a refugee and therefore we should be helpful to refugees. I wonder if Jesus hadn’t been a refugee, if it would be okay to ignore them. It seems to me that we involve ourselves with refugees because of Jesus, but not because he spent some time in exile in Egypt. Jesus is the one who tells us to love our neighbor, and that our neighbors can be unexpected folks. Jesus is the one who tells us to feed people who are hungry, to share our clothing, to welcome strangers…not because he might need those things but because life is better when we care about each other.
The crisis at our southern border has been in the news lately because some folks aren’t going to fund wars until we make life harder for those seeking asylum. How did we get into this mess? I hear people sharing wisdom about solutions for the migrant crisis – increase workers to process those who come, prepare for housing and feeding those who feel compelled to flee unbearable lives elsewhere, most of all create a multinational effort to change the circumstances leading to migration, including violence and climate change. Those are big problems needing big solutions which are going to take time – and compassion, which right now is in short supply.
We know something about what it means to be a refugee and to welcome new people who are fleeing for their lives. I was inspired this week by a Global Friends mailing written by Nell Lindorff and Claudia, whom she helps. They both wrote eloquently about what it means to come to a new place and new make new friends through Global Friends. This year 77 people in 22 families came to Grand Forks from 8 countries. (There are 17 people already booked for travel to our city in January, 2024.) It made me think that we have wisdom to share after seven months of being busy with these new folks. So I’d like us to take some time to talk about what we know now that we didn’t know when we started, and how our lives have been changed in the process. I’m going to ask Nell to start because she inspired me to do this, and then I hope many of you will join in….
We help refugees because they are people who need us and we can do it. It is hard work, sometimes frustrating, sometimes overwhelming. It’s also holy work which is incredibly rewarding. We have been shaped by the work we’re doing and will continue to be shaped in the coming year. We have more to learn, problems to solve, and most of all more friendships to celebrate.