Mea culpa. Sermon.

I've not done as good a job as I should in updating this thing. I find that taking care of this blog gets harder and harder during the holidays.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

But it's one of my resolutions to update this blog more regularly now that we're past Christmas Day.

We'll see what happens when Lent rolls around...

I'm posting the sermon I preached today.

1st Sunday after Christmas
Matthew 2:13-23

Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Welcome to reality, courtesy of the Gospel of Matthew. Political flight, intrigue, murder, lament – this week's Gospel is a far cry from the serene manger scene we left last week.

It's not that the Nativity which we heard on Christmas Eve is unreal. But it can be misused, forming part of the “pop culture” mythology around the Christmas season. This mythology espouses sentimentality and sugary-sweetness. What comes to mind? A mother, father, shepherds, animals and angels gathered around a sweet little baby – all without a care in the world. Some of our Christmas songs have the same mindset: “It's the most wonderful time of the year. The hap-happiest season of all.” Some of our traditions we're supposed to have also conform to the “pop-culture” Christmas. A time when we're “home for Christmas”, with family and friends, opening gifts, going to church on Christmas Eve, and just in general supposed to feel happy. A sugar-coated holiday, complete with Santa and reindeer and a sweet Nativity scene.

But our realities are much different. Television and the internet carry around-the-clock updates of the current crises in Pakistan and the Middle East. Many of us have lost loved ones at this time of year, or go through depression, or fail to live up to the season's unreal expectations. Against those expectations, Matthew steps in today to give us a much-needed reality check.

But this isn't an easy Gospel for us. It raises a lot of difficult questions, and doesn't give direct answers. Just a lot of fast action and a few Bible references. Joseph and his family flee to Egypt. CNN would call them political refugees, fleeing a ruler determined to retain power by any means possible. King Herod carries out a campaign of infanticide to destroy this newborn King of the Jews. After Herod dies, the refugees return – but not to Bethlehem. Instead, they settle in Nazareth of Galilee to escape the notice of Herod's son and heir, Archelaus.

We're left wondering: How come Joseph is the only father warned to flee Bethlehem with his family? What about those other children? Does God not care about them? Is God really all-loving? And why does God allow rulers like Herod to commit such atrocities?

It's a little too real. You only need to pick up the newspaper or turn on TV to see that innocent people today are betrayed by those charged to protect them. Janet Parker, a pastor in the United Church of Christ, wrote about a visit she made to Rwanda ten years after the genocide and civil war there. She describes walking into a church where those fleeing the massacre took refuge. “As we walked in we faced shelves holding row upon row of skulls – hundereds of them. Children's skulls, adult skulls, whole skulls, and partial skulls...Most of the bones had been gathered and heaped in a shed behind the church. But enough had been left on the floor to assure anyone that here, indeed, a great evil had been committed. Perhaps most horrifying, a skull had been placed upon the communion table and remained, watching us.”

Modern-day slaughters of the innocents shatter any Christmas sentimentality to which we cling. We may resist that reality at this time of year when we're supposed to be so happy. And like Matthew and Job, we don't get easy answers. But they highlight the ultimate truth of the Christmas season, which Matthew refuses to sugar-coat. Jesus, the ultimate Holy Innocent, comes into a hostile, fallen world that preys upon the innocent in order to save it.

As we heard in last Sunday's Gospel, the angel tells Joseph to name the child Jesus because “he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus will not save people from their sins by cheating death. Jesus doesn't escape death in today's Gospel – it is merely postponed for a time. Jesus enters into the realities of our world to destroy the power of death itself by his own death. The writer of Hebrews says, “Since therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.” Any pretension of sugary-sweetness or sentimentality is shattered by the true meaning of the Christmas story. When we look on the baby Jesus, we are looking ahead to Good Friday and the Resurrection which will transform our reality. We know that the power of sin and death has been broken by the One who at this point, cannot even defend himself.

The Isaiah reading today speaks of God's saving presence. That presence can be awfully hard for us to detect sometimes. It is, after all, seen most fully in a child. But remember this – even though we may have difficulty detecting that true presence amid Christmas expectations, Jesus remembers the reality he was born into. He remembers the realities of sin and death in our lives. And especially at this time of year, he calls to us – bidding us to lay down every unreal expectation of this season and of ourselves. He calls us to come, remembering in this meal of bread and wine the reality of his triumph over the powers that would define and destroy him and us. In this way, the writer of Hebrews really has it right – we are brothers and sisters with the one who redeemed us.

Today we give thanks to our brother Jesus, who accomplished this despite the fallenness of our world. Jesus' presence is active where those fallen realities are present, working to bring God's reality – God's saving reality – to people's lives. So let's get real. Come and see the reality of God in Jesus, who destroys the power of sin and death. Come hear the real meaning of the Christmas season. Amen.